Crafting Your Novel's Opening with Danielle Lazarin

In this two-day intensive, we’ll look at the openings of novels, both published works and the writer’s own in progress, to see what they say to the reader about the experience of what’s ahead. How do you hook a reader as well as teach them the way to read your book without giving it all away or not giving enough? How do you use what you know about what happens later to inform where a reader begins? Day one will consist of discussing excerpts of published work, looking closely at how authors use voice, pacing, characters, and other tools of craft to give just the right amount of intimations of what’s ahead for the reader. In our examinations, we’ll also consider what isn’t yet revealed, and the plethora of choices a writer has at their disposal for the novel overall; looking at a book’s beginning necessitates talking about the structure of the project as a whole, and this will be part of our work. On the second day of the intensive, we’ll look at how to apply what we’ve observed to our own work in workshop of pages-in-progress.

Writers are expected to have 20-30 pages of a novel opening to share with the group, and to read multiple excerpts of this length, both from their peers and of published work. For workshop I’ll give detailed instructions for a lighter, more focused, and ideally useful method of feedback to best serve this task.

Course Outline

• Session I: Discussion of Assigned Readings, Lecture
• Session II: Workshops, Discussion