4 Signs You Might Be Confusing, Not Intriguing, in Your Opening Scene

By Janice Hardy

The opening scene of a novel walks a fine line between piquing curiosity and confusing the reader. 

Opening scenes are under a lot of pressure. They need to pique reader interest, set the scene, introduce characters, and give just enough information to intrigue, but not overload or confuse the reader. 

That’s a lot to ask of 250 words.

While trying to hook readers and not give everything away, it’s common for an opening scene to be less than forthcoming with information. We hold back details to sound mysterious, we hide clues we think will reveal too much, and sometimes, we even bend over backward not to provide the exact details readers need to get sucked into the story.

The fastest way to lose a reader isn’t boredom—it’s confusion.

Get What's in Your Head onto the Page

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It’s the author’s job to bring a story to life for readers.

Sometimes we envision a story so clearly it plays out in our heads like a movie. We know exactly how the characters move around the setting, we hear all the inflections and nuances in their dialogue, and we even smell the flowers they’re carrying in the air.

Most times, all this detail makes it onto the page as we write and readers are drawn into the scene.

Other times, it doesn’t, and readers struggle for context and have no clue what’s going on—or worse—make misleading assumptions that actually hurt the story.

As the author, you know your story so well, it’s easy to forget your readers are seeing it for the first time.

I Had to Do This: Clarifying Ambiguous Pronouns

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Ambiguous pronouns can muddy a scene, and cause unintentional hilarity. Make sure yours are clear. 

Ambiguous pronouns creep into our work and they're not always easy to spot. We know what they refer to because we wrote them, but if the pronoun isn't near what the referenced noun was, or there are a lot of nouns in the sentence, it's not always clear to readers. It can trip them up and make them pause to figure out what we mean.

It, this, and that are prime offenders.

Exactly what is it referring to?

It is used often when writing, and most of the time it's easy to figure out what it refers to.

Let's try some examples:

Bob grabbed the shotgun and ran for the box of shells sitting on a crate by the ax. It wasn't enough, but he needed every weapon he could find right now.

Okay, what is the "it" here referring to?

The Budrys Rule: Three Writerly Sins, One of them Cardinal

By Dario Ciriello

Part of The How They Do It Series 

JH: Dario Ciriello returns to the lecture hall today with three "rules" writers should never break. And for once, these rules are ones writers really should live by.

As an editor/copyeditor who reads a lot of manuscripts, I see many potentially fine, well-written novels with believable characters, rollicking plots, and crisp dialogue fail because they fell short of what I call The Budrys Rule.

The late Algis Budrys was a famous science fiction author, editor, teacher, and critic. He taught for many years at the Clarion Writers Workshop, and worked as a book editor for Playboy magazine. In his fine little 1994 craft manual, Writing to the Point, Budrys gives one of the clearest and best pieces of advice to authors I’ve ever read, and does it so succinctly it works as a simple mnemonic.

Do You Get My Meaning? Providing Emotional Clarity in Your Writing

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Emotions don't always come through in our writing, especially during that first draft. Here's an updated look at making our scenes emotionally clear.

There's a lot of writing that happens in our heads and off the page--we brainstorm, we outline, we talk it through with friends, we think about it as we go about our day. All of these writing moments help us understand a scene and what we want to have happen in that scene, but it doesn't always make it to the page the way we want it to.

This happens quite often with the emotions our character feel.

We might have characters feel something or react to something in a scene, and why they do it is very clear in our minds. But those reasons aren't shown in the surrounding text, so for the reader, those actions aren't so clear. Here's an example from my third novel, Darkfall:

"I'm sure Jeatar can find someone to fill in for you." He glanced at Jeatar, who paused and looked at me as if unsure whether or not to agree to that.

I bristled. "There is no one to fill in for me. His people are spread thin enough as it is."

The "I bristled" is what inspired this article, because I could see one of my beta readers marking that and asking, "Why is she upset?" There's nothing in the scene that shows why Nya finds this suggestion annoying. She has some issues with the person saying it, but not enough to warrant her reaction based solely on that. Nya's reasons for being upset by this aren't coming through. "I bristled" just isn't enough to carry the emotion behind her reaction if you don't already know why she's upset.

Wait...What? Putting Things in the Proper Context

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

When the movie Armageddon came out in 1998, I went out right away to see it. After the movie, I was standing in line for the restroom behind a gaggle of girls around 13 or 14. Their conversation went something like this:

"Oh my God! He was so hot in that movie."
"He's never looked better."
"He was so totally hot."

I remember thinking, "Yeah, Bruce Willis did look pretty good. All rough and rumble, tough and tumble." Then they said something that made me realize they were talking about Ben Affleck. Aside from making me feel old, (and I was just barely 30 at the time) it was an important writing lesson.

Context, folks, is everything.