Post #265 July 26 2021 “First Paragraphs, First Pages” Everyone knows that first impressions are critical. It’s just as true in storytelling as in meeting someone for lunch. In this post, I want to describe a little technique I use to make sure I cover all the bases for making a good first impression on the reader. Following is a major part of the first page of my newest sf novel The Farpool: Diaspora, coming later this year…. Three days and a handful of hours after arriving in Jupiter orbit through the Atlantic Farpool, Europa Clipper had put in at Gateway Station for some light maintenance work and re-provisioning. Alicia Wu and Evgeni Kotlas were sitting at a table in the ship’s crew’s mess, nursing a few beers. Kotlas fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution. “Looks like a fuzzy beach ball,” Wu said. “With hair—“ Kotlas pronounced himself satisfied with the view. “Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds.” “You’re assuming I have a brain…I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for Farpool school.” It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles. “Ten seconds to separation,” Sonora called. The captain scanned her boards and instruments, pronounced herself satisfied with what she saw. Europa Clipper was docked at the forward nose port of Gateway Station, a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Alicia Wu had termed it. “Three…two…one…separating now—“ There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Sonora pulsed Clipper’s aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the Station. Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As Clipper backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a-half-day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation. Okay, so that’s an excerpt from the first page. I want to introduce a little acronym to help you as a storyteller remember to attend to the most important things in your first paragraphs and the first page. It’s called A-T-P. 1. The most important thing you can do as a storyteller in your first page is capture the reader’s attention. That’s the A in ATP. If you don’t grab the reader by the collar right off the bat and say, “Pay attention…this is important!”—you may never get them to enter the imaginary world of your story. 2. The next part of the process is to set the tone. This is the T. Or call it atmosphere. Is it a menacing tone, with overtones of foreboding? A happy, expectant tone? Is it a critical, rational, explanatory narrative? Do this with well-chosen words. 3. The final part of our acronym is to create a problem. This would be the P. Set up a conflict. Create some kind of barrier or obstacle for our hero or heroes to overcome. And make it important to the hero, maybe even life and death. Let’s look at my excerpt and see how I did on these three dimensions. Capturing Attention: Right away, I establish that this is Jupiter, not some farm in Iowa. It’s quite a sight, but with serious radiation dangers. And with an expectation that our heroes are going to be descending into that hard radiation bath, there are intimations of danger coming. Also, the title of the ship and the final paragraph of the excerpt show that our intrepid crew is headed for Jupiter’s moon Europa. They’re not headed to the QuikTrip for a smoothie. Setting Tone: Look at some of the words…cauldron, seething turbulence, fry your hair, cracked golf ball, dimpled and rutted. These are not happy, joyful words. They imply danger, a bit of menace, the possibility of unexpected occurrences, hazards and perils and risks aplenty. Our heroes seem to brave but determined people. Which raises a question: why are they doing this? Creating a Problem: Re-reading this excerpt makes me think I could probably do better along this dimension. I should make their central problem more explicit in this first page. The existence of hard radiation and the obvious dangers of what they are doing are part of the problem. Actually, a few paragraphs later, we realize our crew is headed down to the surface of Europa to start boring through its ice surface to the sub-surface ocean below. In editing and re-writing this section, I may well make that more apparent earlier in the text. So, that’s A-T-P. Use this little moniker to guide you in beginning your story in a compelling and engaging way. If you attend to these initial details in telling your tale, you’ll find your readers will be more likely to be sitting on the edge of their seats, wanting to hear and read more. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 2. In this post, we’ll take a look at what’s important on making a good last page for your story. See you then. Phil B.