Setting the setting

[xenith]

I think I'll blame green_knight for this :) I've been thinking today on how to establish time and place at the start of a novel. How's it done, obviously. How soon is it done. Opening lines? First page? But also, how is it affected by what the reader brings with them, from the cover, from reviews, from the blurb. That is, when you pick up a book, do you already have some idea of what time & place, whether real or imaginary, you're getting involved with. And, as I think the answer to that is yes, how often does the writer rely on that to do the job for them.

Obviously I need to look at some examples of opening paragraphs, but the problem with relying on library books, if I'm not going to have many modern/recent novels at home that I can look at. (Suggestions for good and bad examples?)

Comments

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

In my experience, the blurb is written AFTER you've done your book. Monissa, just write the thing and worry about the opening paragraph afterwards. This is the beauty of computers. You can change it without having to re-type the lot.

Otherwise, you could end up like that man in Camus' "The Plague" who spent twenty years on the perfect opening line and never wrote the book!

If you have already written it, of course, you just need to ask yourself if this opening would pull YOU in. :-)

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

But that's not the point :)

It's more about what expectations readers bring to the book and how the writer manipulates them, because that's what the opening does :)

(I'm also thinking on the difference between historical and otherworld fantasy, and how this is presented, both in the opening and beyond. There's a lot of thinking packed into the short post.)