Set the mood, the stakes, and begin to build the world...
Set the mood, the stakes, and begin to build the world…
Rachel Kapelke-Dale
Rachel Kapelke-Dale is the author of The Ballerinas, a novel (St. Martin's Press, 2021) and the co-author (with Jessica Pan) of Graduates in Wonderland, a memoir (Penguin, 2014). She is also on our international panel of reviewers for 2021.
Thanks for sitting down to share first pages tips. How do you approach yours? Start typing? Plan?
RKD: I'm excited to talk about first pages, because I'm convinced that they're the hardest part of a manuscript to write. This is, I think, the main factor that drew me to the First Pages Prize. I have so much respect for the work and craft that goes into great openings; I find them monstrously difficult, myself.
For me, flexibility is key. When I start a novel, I do have a plan. And I truly believe (in that moment) that whatever I've picked as my starting point will end up in the final version. That hasn't happened once so far! But in order to move beyond the first pages, to complete a first draft, I have to convince myself that the opening works well enough for now.
Once that draft's complete and I have some distance from it, I can finally evaluate the shape of the story as a whole and see if the first pages work. They almost never do. So then it's a matter of revisions—many, many revisions!
Is this the same approach you took with your latest work, The Ballerinas?
Absolutely. The first scene I wrote in The Ballerinas now comes more than halfway through the novel: three dancers are on a beach when one of them cuts her foot on a shard of glass hidden in the sand. Knowing that medical help is far away and an injury could mean the end of her career, she sews it up herself. But as I started thinking about the story structure as a whole, I knew that this wasn't the beginning of the novel. It's a flashback, but one I wanted to use at a later point in the story.
So then I had to ask myself: where does this story really start? And that question took me a long time to answer.
How much have your original first draft pages changed on their path to publication?
These pages changed enormously. I have several dozen drafts, all with different beginnings—some variations on the same scene, some entirely different moments.
I can't emphasize this enough: I tried so many beginnings. The narrator, Delphine, on a plane leaving St. Petersburg. Delphine getting the professional news that will bring her back to Paris. Delphine arriving at her mother's apartment.
It took me so long to find a starting point that felt natural but also interesting. After months of rewrites, I finally figured it out: the narrative needed a brief present-day frame to set the mood, the stakes, and begin to build the world; the actual story then began at a much later point than I'd previously tried, when Delphine's already been in been back in Paris for several weeks.
As a reader, what draws you in about others' first pages?
Voice. It's the hardest thing to establish quickly, but it's the one factor that immediately creates an emotional connection with the reader. We ask a lot of readers: to invest hours, days, even weeks in the world of a particular narrative. More than anything, a strong voice tells the reader that their greater investment in the work will be worthwhile.
When I first started writing longer stories, I thought that a great hook was the key element of these first pages. But it's not. I love a good hook, I'm a sucker for a good hook, but it's not sufficient to carry me through these first pages. Without voice, the hook is meaningless, because you won't get the reader to care enough to keep going.
Can you think of a 'forever first page'? An opening of a book that’s stuck with you?
Angela Carter's beginning of The Magic Toyshop. "The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood." In the hands of a lesser talent, Carter's lengthy descriptions of a teenage girl trying on her mother's wedding dress could so easily have been dull or hackneyed. As it is, the second I read that first sentence, I knew instantly I'd have to cancel my plans for the rest of the day.
Returning to Carter’s novel now, I'm struck by how little "happens" in terms of plot in these first pages. Instead, she sets up these fascinating tensions through character, atmosphere, and (again!) voice, and that's enough. It's more than enough; you read the first page and you're just happy to be along for the ride, wherever it takes you.
Are you working on a new project and if so, how are you handling your new first pages?
Yes! My next novel is about a former piano prodigy who returns to her childhood home on her mother's death, only to find that the will leaves everything to a suspicious family friend. The protagonist then has to figure out why her mother made this bequest, eventually leading her to snap in unexpected ways. It's about privilege, Millennial-Boomer tensions, rage, and love.
Can I interrupt to say how much that hooks me right there in four lines?
Thank you! It’s also a lot to set up in the first pages! I also set myself an additional challenge in this novel because the protagonist, Saskia, is starting from a really dark place—and it's hard to seduce a reader into spending time with someone who's kind of a bummer.
At the moment, I'm addressing this by beginning with a flash-forward to one of the novel's turning points, in which Saskia joyfully reveals a dark secret to her father. We'll see if this makes it into the final draft! If the past is any indication, it very well may change…
Rachel, thank you for these great tips and insights into your work, which is so darkly enthralling! Readers, check out the first line of The Ballerinas:
"You start out as potential energy and then you fall."
The Ballerinas , a captivating, voice-driven debut novel about a trio of ballerinas who meet as students at the Paris Opera Ballet School, comes out December 7; you can pre-order here. In the meantime, don't forget to submit your work for the First Pages Prize by February 7 or February 21 for the extended deadline!