3 Keys to Nailing the Opening of Your Novel

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3 Keys to Writing the Opening to Your Thriller

David Gwyn: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Thriller 101, and today we're going to talk about your first five to ten paragraphs, so that you can attract an agent and readers, I'm going to use the top thriller novels of 2024, so you know exactly what to include in your opening. If you wanna write the kinds of thrillers that readers and agents love.

I'm David Gwyn, an agented writer navigating the world of traditional publishing during the second season of the Thriller 1 0 1 Podcast, we're gonna continue our focus on building the skills necessary to write the kinds of thrillers that land you and agent and readers.

During this season, I'll be sharing some insights while also talking to agents, authors, and other publishing profess. way to write a novel. If you want the expert's secrets, Thriller 101 is where you're going to find them. For those of you who are new, welcome. The second season of Thriller 101 is going to have some episodes like this, where I'm going to talk directly to you.

We're also going to have more agent episodes and author episodes. Next week I'll share a conversation I had with Kathy Reichs about her 23rd novel [00:01:00] in the Temperance Brennan series. That's the series that became the TV show Bones. So she has some serious insights that you're not going to want to miss.

Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast if you're not already. So you get notified when that episode drops next week. 

Okay, so let's get into today's topic. How to write the opening of a thriller. If you want to grab an agent's and ultimately a reader's attention in the first page, then you have about 10 paragraphs to do it.

 Maybe less, depending on the size of your paragraphs. I've analyzed some of the best thrillers written this year, and the majority of them masterfully balance these elements to create compelling openings. Today, I'll show you how you can do the same.

 And I'll share how the analysis that I did revealed that you need three crucial elements. I'm going to tell you exactly what they are, but before I do, I just want to tell you how I came to this conclusion. So I had this Idea that I would look at some of the top thrillers released in 2024 as according to Good Reads, and I would track what each of their paragraphs was [00:02:00] doing those first 10 paragraphs of each of these books, and I'd put it into a spreadsheet to see if there were any trends.

 If you wanna take a look at the spreadsheet, you can click the link in the description and I'll send it over to you. I'm gonna be adding to it over time, so depending on when you get there. You might see me poking around and adding more books.

David Gwyn: If you want to see that breakdown, just head to the description for that and I'll send it right over to you. So anyway, after looking at the data, I came to a few conclusions, three conclusions really. But before I share , I just want to be clear that this is not a how to kind of episode where I lie and I tell you that there's some singular formula to writing the opening of a thriller novel.

There isn't. The reality is when I tracked these novels, None of them were the same. None. That being said, there were some trends. So, I do want to talk about what those were.

So let's go through the different elements I tracked, and then I'll share what I found.

Some are going to be more obvious than others, but here they are. The first [00:03:00] one was tension. Anything that raised a question in the mind of a reader as to what was happening or what would happen next. The second was character. Telling a reader about a character, either directly or indirectly.

The third was theme. A suggestion about some big idea. The fourth was setting, that one's kind of obvious. The fifth one was interiority, so if the character was telling readers how they felt about what was happening in the scene. The next was backstory, filling readers in on something that happened before the start of the novel.

The next was action. So pure movement. This one was tricky because sometimes the movement of characters made told me more about that character but I'll explain more as we keep going. And the last one is dialogue.

So anytime a character spoke. A quick caveat, obviously there were some paragraphs doing more than one thing at the same time, right? Setting can reveal about character and dialogue can exist in a paragraph with action and so on and so forth I tried to pick the heavy lifting the paragraph was doing I did my [00:04:00] best.

Again, I wasn't looking for perfection. I was looking for trends. So, before we get into the three that I think you need, I found one thing interesting here. You'd think that the least used was backstory, right? I mean, that evil backstory that we're supposed to avoid at all costs. It actually wasn't.

It was action, which I thought was interesting. But let's get into the three elements that I suggest you have in your first ten paragraphs, but before I do, any guesses? Go ahead. Guess. All right, let's see if you're right. Tension, interiority, and setting.

Except that I kind of lied a little bit about one. But I'll explain when we get there.

Okay, to start, I want to illustrate the importance of balancing tension, character, and setting. So let's start with a sample opening that relies primarily on backstory, like just the telling of the story. So here are the first few paragraphs of this sample that we're going to be tweaking over time.

Bernard: "James had always been an ordinary man, [00:05:00] working a nine-to-five job at the local bank. He spent his weekends fishing at the lake, reminiscing about his childhood. His father had been a fisherman, too, and had taught him everything he knew. James had inherited his father’s tackle box, a relic from the past filled with rusty hooks and faded lures. He often thought about how life had changed since those simpler times.

In high school, James had been the captain of the football team. Those were his glory days, filled with the roar of the crowd and the thrill of victory. He met his wife, Emily, during his senior year, and they had been inseparable ever since. They moved to the suburbs after college, where they started a family. James loved his two kids more than anything.”

David Gwyn: Okay, so that opening gives us a lot of backstory. Because of that, it lacks the elements that make a thriller truly gripping or interesting at all, really. There's no immediate tension, the character is hinted at but not deeply explored, and the setting, while kind of described to an extent, doesn't really [00:06:00] contribute to the tone.

So we're going to edit this over the course of the episode and revise these paragraphs to include tension. Bye bye. character and setting. First, let's talk about tension. This element is crucial for grabbing the reader's attention from the start. Tension doesn't have to mean action. It can be a subtle sense of unease or like the hint of a conflict.

Think of it as like a question planted in the reader's mind, like what is happening or what will happen next? So take this opening line from The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins.

Samantha: ”There should be some kind of warning when you’re life is about to change forever”

David Gwyn: As a reader, I'm wondering what is about to happen to this character. It propels me to read further.

But you already know this, right? A lot of writers do. We use tension in our writing, especially when it comes to thrillers. So in these novels that I tracked, most used one to two paragraphs of tension. A lot of them were single line paragraphs.

One sentence on its own paragraph, and [00:07:00] it's because it carried a lot of weight, right? The author wants you to slow down. And pay close attention to it.

But the reality is they didn't really linger on the tension build here in these opening paragraphs. It was a dropped paragraph or sentence where they put something in your mind as a reader and then they let you chew on it for the next few paragraphs. The biggest mistakes I see when writers try to create tension is this.

They release the tension and they make this mistake in two ways, usually. First, the pitch automatically relieves the tension that you're building in your opening paragraph. If you tell me in the pitch that your main character gets kidnapped, I'm not going to be on the edge of my seat when the intruder enters.

I already know the outcome. The other thing writers do is that they write a sentence in a way that removes tension. I see this all the time. Let's take the same example from above. Someone breaks in. The writer might say something like, I didn't know that my kidnapper was inside. You tipped your hand, even if the pitch doesn't say it, you [00:08:00] just did.

Why even say that at all? Tell me the character heard a noise upstairs. Let's live in the character's shoes, right? 

So here's how we can introduce tension into our opening. Let's go back to James. 

Bernard: "James gripped the steering wheel tighter as he drove down the road. The sun had long set, and the darkness outside was suffocating. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror for the third time in as many minutes. Was someone following him, or was it just his imagination?

The old tackle box on the passenger seat rattled with each bump in the road, a reminder of simpler times. But tonight wasn’t simple. James's heart raced as he thought about the package hidden in his trunk. What had he gotten himself into?"

David Gwyn: Boom! I mean, that's better already, the inclusion of tension, the feeling of being followed, and the fear of his secret being discovered, that does enough to already make this opening stronger. All right, let's shift gears here and talk about interiority.

I had a difficult time choosing this [00:09:00] one, and here's why. It wasn't in all of the opening paragraphs. It was in most, but not all, and it was like one paragraph. There were far more about character than there were about interiority. So, I want to be clear about this. This is the one I'm cheating on.

There was more on character, and again, you can see for yourself, you can see that data set , by going into the description and clicking the link, check it out, you'll see a lot of character there. I think authors already do a lot of character. The thing that is missing, the element that you need in order to stand apart.

For readers or agents is the interiority. That's why I chose it. It's a better way to explain character, and it doesn't take much, but it tells us a lot. Also, the writers that didn't use it, it was often because it was a point of view that didn't allow it. So there, so that's the hill I'll die on. You should, if possible, based on your narrative structure, use interiority.

It's about getting inside your [00:10:00] character's head. It's about letting a reader inside your character's head. Show us their thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Don't just tell me what's happening to a character. Tell me how the character feels about what's happening. Here's an example from Stacey Willingham's Only if you're lucky.

The detective says, girls, and the narrator thinks, 

Samantha: “I don’t like the way he says that. Girls. Like we’re children being scolded. Some words should be ours to own, at times vicious yet tender terms of endearment we toss around like glitter that suddenly taste sour in the mouths of men.”

David Gwyn: And there you go, you learn a lot about the character from this interiority. The thinking and the contemplation about what's happening around her. So here's how we can go back to James's story and add in some interiority.

Bernard: "James gripped the steering wheel tighter as he drove down the road. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror for the third time in as many minutes. Was someone following him, or was it just his imagination?

Emily’s [00:11:00] face flashed in his mind, her smile a beacon of normalcy. She didn’t know about the package, about the danger he was in. He hadn’t wanted to involve her or the kids. The thought of their safety had kept him awake at night. But now, as he turned onto their street, he wondered if he had made the right choice. Secrets had a way of unraveling, and he feared this one might tear his family apart. The weight of his decision pressed heavily on his shoulders.

The old tackle box on the passenger seat rattled with each bump in the road, a reminder of simpler times. But tonight wasn’t simple. James's heart raced as he thought about the package hidden in his trunk. 

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. This was it. There was no turning back now. His mind raced with possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. He had to see this through, for his family's sake."

What had he gotten himself into?"

David Gwyn: Okay, okay, so now we're talking, right? We've got some interiority, we've got some tension. The last [00:12:00] one, and this is, I think, the most common item on the list, right up there with character, certainly, probably the most used setting. It's also the easiest, so I'm not going to complicate it, at least not today.

I am going to complicate the hell out of it on a future episode. But just not today. Describe the setting with tone. And there you go. I saved the easiest for last. So let's go straight back to James here, and let's see if we can just add a little bit when it comes to setting to give readers a clearer sense of

the feeling here.

Remember, we're doing this to build a stronger atmosphere that supports the tension and interiority. All of these things are working together. So let's see how this turns out. 

Bernard: "James gripped the steering wheel tighter as he drove down the deserted road. The sun had long set, casting the world in shadows, and the darkness outside was suffocating. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror for the third time in as many minutes. Was someone following him, or [00:13:00] was it just his imagination? The flickering streetlights did little to ease his growing paranoia.

Emily’s face flashed in his mind, her smile a beacon of normalcy. She didn’t know about the package, about the danger he was in. He hadn’t wanted to involve her or the kids. The thought of their safety had kept him awake at night. 

But now, as he turned onto their street, he wondered if he had made the right choice. Secrets had a way of unraveling, and he feared this one might tear his family apart. The weight of his decision pressed heavily on his shoulders.

The quiet suburban neighborhood was eerily silent at this hour. Maple Street, usually bustling with children’s laughter and the scent of fresh-cut grass, now felt like a ghost town. The only sound was the hum of his engine and the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind. The tall oak trees that lined the street seemed to close in on him, their shadows stretching ominously across the pavement.

The old tackle box on the passenger seat rattled with each bump in the road, a reminder of [00:14:00] simpler times. But tonight wasn’t simple. James's heart raced as he thought about the package hidden in his trunk. 

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. This was it. There was no turning back now. His mind raced with possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. He had to see this through, for his family's sake."

What had he gotten himself into?"

David Gwyn: There it is! The final version. I mean, think about how boring the original version was, and how much stronger this one is. In this final version, we've woven tension, interiority, and setting together to create a much stronger opening.

Each paragraph primarily focuses on one element, but contributes to that overall suspenseful atmosphere that we're looking for. Remember, we're trying to grab a reader's or agent's attention in these first paragraphs. A strong thriller opening doesn't just introduce the plot, it tries to pull the reader into the protagonist's world and hooks them with that sense of urgency, drawing them in, [00:15:00] making them want to read more.

That's what we're going after. As you work on your opening, aim to balance these three elements. At least one paragraph should create tension, while others can delve into interiority and vividly describe the setting, and the rest can be a blend of these other elements I listed at the beginning of the episode.

Again, check out the dataset by clicking the link in the description, and you can see how your favorite thriller writers are pulling this off. But the balance is what will captivate agents and readers. And that's all we're shooting for as writers. That's all for today's episode.

Thanks for hanging out with me on the Thriller 101 podcast. Remember, next week is a conversation with Kathy Reichs about her newest novel. You're not going to want to miss that. She's got so much experience, talks a lot about how to incorporate your expertise in a novel. It was absolutely brilliant talking to her.

You're going to love it. If you hung out this long, that means you really, really, really like me, and I really, really, really appreciate that. If you would make sure you subscribe to the podcast, [00:16:00] rate and review.

I'm really enjoying hanging out with you, and I'll see you next week.