Chapter One: The Devotion of Suspect X

This is a continuation of my series of first chapter dissections where I analyse the opening chapter of a successful novel to find out what makes it work, how the author hooked the reader, which rules were followed, and which were broken to good effect.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is a mystery novel of the classic 'genius' detective type. If you'd like to read the first few pages for yourself you can do so here.

The book opens as follows:

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Chapter One: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Usually I use my Chapter One series to look at the opening of stories by debut novelists, with a view to working out how they caught the interest of readers who had never heard of them. This time I thought I would look at a big name author and use his most recent best-seller.

It’s all well and good impressing a readership who already have a good idea of what kind of story/writer they’re dealing with, but when you’re the new kid on the block you need to win people over, and the first chapter is where the battle is fought. Or so the conventional wisdom says. What I discovered with this book was quite eye-opening.

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Chapter One: The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a debut novel from 2011. It is one of those books that publishers decide will be culture-changing and so market the hell out of it. Most reviews praise the ideas and imagery of the first 150 pages or so, and criticise the story and plotting from there to the end.

Luckily, that is of no consequence here. We shall be looking at the (rather short) first chapter to see how Miss Morgenstern uses it to grab the reader’s attention, which she certainly does (even if later she loses her grip).

The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theatre office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also the first to arrive carefully pinned to the coat of a five-year-old girl.

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Chapter One: Neuromancer

The latest genre in my series of first chapter breakdowns is Science Fiction. As with the other books I’ve analysed (Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Notebook and others can be found here), I will attempt to see how a debut novelist managed to create an opening to his story that successfully pulls the reader in.

William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) is the preeminent cyberpunk novel. A good example of a very derivative work on one level (Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, noir and hardboiled all rolled together) that is at the same time influential in its own right, spawning countless books and films and even fashions.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

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Chapter One: Rosemary's Baby

The latest genre in my series of Chapter 1 Analyses is horror. Rosemary's Baby was written in 1967 by Ira Levin, and was made into a hugely successful movie. It is a supenseful supernatural chiller set in a modern city with a cast or urbane characters. It is not an out and out blood and gore type of story, but it is horribly effective at getting under the reader's skin.

It is quite short at 195 pages. Chapter one is about 8 pages. There will be spoilers.

The opening lines are:

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse had signed a lease on a five-room apartment in a geometric white house on First Avenue when they received word, from a woman named Mrs Cortez, that a four-room apartment in the Bramford had become available.

The opening is not particularly scary. In fact the whole first chapter is about the couple trying to get out of their lease and move into the Bramford. The actual story doesn’t start until they become residents, and the novel could easily have opened with them moving in. So why didn't it?

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Chapter One: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The latest genre in my series of Chapter 1 Analyses is crime fiction. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was written in 1972 by George V. Higgins, an experienced lawyer. It was his first published novel (although he had 14 failed attempts under his beltt—hope for us all) and it was made into a film soon after starring Robert Mitchum in the title role.

I looked at a number of crime fiction books for this post as I would have preferred something more recent, but most followed fairly standard approaches, many of which we have already discussed in this series. However, this book, considered a classic and much admired by people like Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane, had a first chapter that really made an impact on me. Here are the opening lines:

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Chapter One: Fight Club

Previous examples of my Chapter One Analysis series can be found here. If you want to read the first chapter of Fight Club for yourself you can find it here.

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.

In a publishing climate where men are considered a poor demographic to aim a book at, I thought I’d take a look at one of the leading lights of what is called transgressive fiction. No holds barred, down and dirty, psychologically and morally questionable and questioning. 

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Loitering With Intent

Why write? I don’t mean in general or in existential terms (I write because I must), I mean the story you’re working on at the moment, your current WiP, why are you writing it?

Most people, when asked this, will deflect or try not to give a straight answer. Like writing a pitch or a synopsis, it’s seen as an awkward chore to be done only when absolutely necessary.

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C is for Chapter One: The Notebook

In my previous Chapter One post I had a look at the opening of A Kiss Before Dying, a tautly written thriller. This time I’m looking at The Notebook, a romantic novel. I had intended to take apart the first chapter in a similar way to last time, but it turned out to be quite a different kind of book and quite an eye-opening experience. The conclusions I came to after spending some time with it were unexpected to say the least and I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

The Notebook is a very slim 50,000 word romance that was Nichloas Sparks’ first published novel in 1996. It was picked out of a slush pile by an agent and sold for a $1 million advance to a major publishing house, and instantly became a bestseller. This should make it clear that everyone along the way, agent, publisher, public, took to it immediately. People knew it was something special. The strange thing is, I thought the opening chapter was terrible.

It not only doesn’t obey any of the basic guidelines of opening chapters, it almost completely goes against all of them. It’s slow to the point of being static. It’s unclear who the characters are or where we are. The voice of the narrator (first person present tense) is strong, but quite tedious and self-involved. The story is rambling and unclear. But someone picked up this book and said yep, that’s a blockbuster. How did that happen? I certainly wanted to do my best to find out.

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B is for Backstory-a-go-go

Let me tell you a joke. Two men walk into a bar. And the barman says, “Welcome to the Trapatonni Bar and Grill, first opened in 1932 by Giuseppe Trapattoni, a squat Sicilian who left his homeland with only the shirt on his back and a dream that one day…”

How much more of Giuseppe's story would it take for you to realise the background information had nothing to do with the joke? Not long, I'm guessing.

It used to be different.

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Book Autopsy 2: A Love Story

In my last post I analysed the first chapter of Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, but to be honest this was something of a soft target. As a thriller it naturally follows most of the 'rules' of contemporary literature popular with creative writing teachers and how-to books. Starting off with a hook, keeping pace high, using action to move the plot, these are all fairly standard for the genre.

My dissection of the first chapter still revealed some interesting things, but I think it would be even more intriguing to take the same approach with a book from a completely different genre: Romance.

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Chapter One Analysis

I'm going to take the first chapter of a successful novel and break it down to see how the author hooks the reader, what information he feels is necessary at this point of the story, how he approaches things like POV, character and voice.

The book I've chosen is A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, Stepford Wives). A 237 page, tightly written suspense thriller, it is a commercial novel but with many unconventional touches, extremely well plotted with some very clever twists and turns. It was his first novel, which is also one of the reasons I chose it. Chapter One is just over four pages long.

There will be the spoilers. 

Chapter 1 starts with these lines:

His plans had been running so beautifully, so goddamned beautifully, and now she was going to smash them all. Hate erupted and flooded through him, gripping his face with jaw-aching pressure. That was all right though; the lights were out.

On the surface this gives a very clear indication of his mood.  In fact it tells the reader directly that 'he' is angry and blames 'she'. The writing is visual and the last line gives a nice sense that he's hiding his feelings, but in many ways this would seem to be a overly 'telling' start. But as we'll see, it isn't. 

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