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Baby Jesus moved.

  Carol Baker blinked and shook her head. "Okay, Carol. When you start seeing statues move, it's either a miracle or you've got problems." She stared hard at the brightly lit, life-sized Nativity scene that filled one corner of the town square. ... "Okay, Baby Jesus is definitely moving."

  Within a few paragraphs, we find out that "Baby Jesus" is actually an abandoned infant, and the heroine finds her life taking a dramatic turn.

  Where Not to Start

  Just as there are some good ideas for starting your first page, there are some not-so-good ones, too:

  1. Do not start with a flashback or include one in the first chapter. Flashbacks are confusing when the readers haven't yet established a connection with the characters and the story.

  2. Do not start with a dream or with a character waking up. A dream sequence is usually confusing and hard to explain. Starting with a character waking up is almost always a variation on starting too soon. Instead, begin with the character's first important action.

  3. Do not start with a long descriptive passage. Beginning with a sentence or two of description to provide context is often useful, but readers want to get acquainted with the characters, and they're usually interested in the background and the scenery only as it affects the characters.

  Prologues

  A prologue is a very short scene (one to two pages, in most cases) from a time before the present-day story begins. A good prologue is limited to precisely what the readers need to know to draw them into the story. Most often, it is a brief, intriguing glimpse of a mysterious aspect of the story or the main characters. It can also be a snippet from a time long before the beginning of the story, if that event is extraordinarily important to understanding the later action.

  Romantic suspense novels sometimes use prologues to great effect because they allow the author to introduce the mystery and the villain to the readers long before the main characters have any reason to think they're threatened. Romances that involve characters meeting again after a long separation occasionally make good use of a prologue to show a dramatic, defining, long-ago moment between the characters.

  But few stories really benefit from a prologue. Prologues often hurt the story by going on too long or by giving away information about the characters' motivations too soon, destroying the suspense. Many so-called prologues—especially in the work of beginners—are actually lengthy introductions telling all about a character's life up to the point where the story starts. Such prologues are evidence that the author has started telling her story too soon.

  In her historical single title The Viscount Who Loved Me, author Julia Quinn effectively uses a prologue to explain an anomaly in her hero's character that makes him unwilling to fall in love:

  Anthony Bridgerton had always known he would die young. ...

  It happened when Anthony was eighteen. ...

  Anthony stopped short when he saw Daphne. It was odd enough that his sister was sitting in the middle of the floor in the main hall. It was even more odd that she was crying. ...

  "He's dead," Daphne whispered. "Papa is dead. ... He was stung by a bee. ..."

  A man couldn't die from a bee sting. It was impossible. Utterly mad. Edmund Bridgerton was young, he was strong ... no insignificant honeybee could have felled him. ...

  He walked into the room where his father's body still lay and looked at him. ...

  And when he left the room, he left with a new vision of his own life, and new knowledge about his own mortality.

  Edmund Bridgerton had died at the age of thirty-eight. And Anthony simply couldn't imagine ever surpassing his father in any way, even in years.

  The main reason for this prologue is to set up Anthony's conviction that he must not allow himself to fall in love because he—like his father—will not live past forty, and so his wife would certainly become a widow. The complete prologue is longer than most (seven pages in all), but everything in the prologue relates to that single event and its effect on the hero.

  In most cases, it's better to keep the hero's reasons for avoiding love confidential for a while, often until near the end of the story. If Quinn had waited to share that information until the last chapter or two, however, the readers would likely have found Anthony's reasons inadequate and unconvincing. But since the readers start the story accepting (though not necessarily agreeing with) Anthony's belief, they understand why he acts as he does nearly fifteen years after the event detailed in the prologue.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The most important goals of your first chapter are (1) to introduce your main characters to the readers, (2) to establish the conflict between the characters, and (3) to make the readers care so much about the hero, the heroine, and their problems that they can't put the book down.

  Though you will probably include more than just the two main characters in the first scene, try not to introduce your whole cast right away. There will be plenty of time to bring other people into the story, but you only have one chance to establish your main characters as interesting, important, and sympathetic.

  The first chapter should focus on the main characters, who they are, and why the change or challenge they face is a serious threat to them. The most effective way to do this is to show the hero and heroine in action. Don't make the mistake of simply telling your readers about them.

  The first chapter should show the hero and the heroine confronting the initial problem or problems. By the end of the first chapter of Maureen Child's Some Kind of Wonderful (opening lines on page 86), Carol has not only discovered an abandoned infant, she is named as the child's temporary foster mother. She meets the sheriff who will be investigating the abandonment, and he makes it clear he's suspicious of Carol and will be keeping an eye on her. The readers know this situation will be particularly challenging for Carol because she herself was abandoned as a child.

  By the end of the first chapter of Anne Gracie's The Virtuous Widow (opening lines on page 85), a badly wounded man, drawn by the light of her daughter's wishing candle, stumbles into Ellie's cottage. Ellie takes him in, then tries to explain to her daughter that he is not the father the child barely remembers. She tucks him into her own bed and—because the cottage is small and cold and there's only one bed—she climbs in with him to keep them both from freezing. By the end of the first chapter, Gracie has introduced her main characters, established the conflict and a couple of complicating factors, and started to build sexual tension between the hero and heroine.

  CREATING A SENSE OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT

  If you put your main characters in danger before you've let your readers get well acquainted with them, it's harder for the readers to care what happens. If the tornado wipes out the town in the first scene, the readers will be intellectually sorry about the casualties, but they won't be shedding any tears. On the other hand, if the readers have come to know and care about these people, and then the twister sweeps through, they're going to be sitting on the edge of their seats, hoping against hope the characters will be all right.

  A wise writer once said, "Show me the pictures in the soldier's wallet before you lull him." A dead soldier on a battlefield is one of many—very sad, but easy to lose track of in the multitude. If, however, the readers know that his pockets contain a picture of his little girl, a letter from his mother, and a lock of hair from his sweetheart, he becomes a real person and his tragedy becomes an emotional upheaval.

  Give your readers enough information so they can form an emotional attachment to the character before you put that character in serious physical or psychological danger.

  Anne Gracie's hero in The Virtuous Widow is seriously wounded when he first appears. Though we care about his condition, we don't yet have an emotional reaction to the danger he's in. We have, however, gotten emotionally attached to the heroine, and we can quickly understand why having a badly wounded man on her hands is going to threaten her entire way of life.

  CREATING A POSITIVE FIRST IMPRESSION

  If you want
your readers to like your main characters, your main characters need to be likeable. Frequently, beginning writers first present their main characters in a very negative way—the heroine is swearing at her mother, or the hero is throwing things at his secretary. When readers point out that they don't like the characters, the writer is devastated because she knows these people are really wonderful. What she may not realize is that she hasn't given the readers any rea-

  son to like the character. If the readers understand why the heroine is swearing at her mother (or better yet, see her wanting to swear but restraining herself), then they'll be more sympathetic.

  Main characters can't be perfect, but neither should they be awful. Show a mix of qualities, but bring some of the good ones in early—before showing the readers the characters' warts, or at least at the same time. The readers will then be willing to give the characters the benefit of the doubt, and they'll read further to find out why they're behaving the way they are.

  In the example on page 86 from Girls Night, Stef Ann Holm presents Jillene sympathetically by putting her in a situation nearly every woman (and certainly every mother) has faced—having to shut herself in the bathroom to get just a moment of peace and quiet. If a character like Nicola Cornick's Jack, Marquis of Merlin, from The Rake's Bride (page 85), were to come up out of his bed swinging at the valet who is opening his curtains, the author could redeem him by having him apologize, balancing out any injury he'd caused. His action would be more sympathetic, because the readers would understand that post-traumatic stress disorder had him revisiting a battlefield in his nightmares. If he'd merely been hungover, the readers would be less understanding. In the example from Liz Fielding's The Billionaire Takes a Bride (pages 85-86), Ginny is sympathetic because, even though she's trespassing and possibly intending to burglarize, she's obviously not a career criminal—so the readers assume she must have a good reason for her actions, and they're willing to read on to find out what it is.

  It doesn't take a lot of positives to make the readers like the main characters. But if the first presentation is entirely negative, they may not read far enough to discover what wonderful people the characters really are. In Nicola Cornick's The Rake's Bride, the heroine is marrying a man for his money, plain and simple—not the most heroic behavior. But the fact that she feels guilty about it is enough to make the readers go on to find out more:

  "Pray stop at once!" Thea said, more sharply than she had intended. To hear her sister itemize the material benefits of the match made her feel intolerably guilty, for she was marrying Bertie Pershore for his money and could scarcely deny it. She wished that it was not so; somehow she felt that Bertie deserved better than that she take advantage of him. Yet she was in desperate straits and he was chivalrous enough to come to her rescue.

  Cornick is careful not to overdo the explanation here; she simply shows Thea feeling guilty, hints that she would like to find a way out of the marriage not for her own sake but for Bertie (another honorable touch), and then moves on with the story.

  THE HERO AND HEROINE MEET

  One of the most critically important moments in the first section of your book is the first meeting of the hero and heroine. This moment may be the first time the two of them lay eyes on each other. Or it may be their first meeting after a long separation, if they've had a previous relationship. Or they may see each other regularly, but this is the first meeting that is significant to the plot and conflict—the first encounter connected with the event that is going to change their lives.

  This first meeting sets the stage for the interaction in the rest of the book. If

  the readers don't see it happening, they will feel cheated and left out, and won't likely be involved enough with the characters to want to continue reading.

  Yet many beginning writers tell about the first meeting, rather than show it as it happens. Or they include just a couple of lines of dialogue between hero and heroine, then jump to a scene hours later where the heroine is telling her best friend in five pages of dialogue how gorgeous the hero is. Or they have the hero think about how he reacted to the heroine.

  The importance of the first meeting cannot be emphasized too highly.

  It should receive the amount of attention from the author—and therefore the readers—that it deserves.

  Show the hero and heroine as they meet. What does the point-of-view character—let's say it's the heroine—notice about the hero? What makes him stand out? Some of that will be physical, like the color of his hair, but what makes him different might be the way other characters respond to him.

  What do the main characters say? What do they do? How do they react to each other?

  The very beginning is not a good place for the main characters to be experiencing overwhelming sexual attraction, but even if they think they don't like what they see, there will be an extra level of awareness between these characters—a sense that the other person is somehow very important.

  In this example from the sweet traditional category romance In the Arms of the Sheikh, Sophie Weston shows us a few physical characteristics of the hero, along with reasons for both hero and heroine to be wary and suspicious:

  The man emerged from the darkness between two huge bushes. He was not stealthy, but he walked lightly. He was tall, wearing something dark.

  Natasha's first impression was that he was very professional. Professional what, she was not sure. ... Her second impression ... was total arrogance.

  Natasha knew arrogance in all its forms. ... [0]nce, it had nearly cost her her life. She detested it. ... Her backbone locked and her chin came up like a fighter plane taking off.

  The man looked at her. ... The reflected light from the porch picked up high, haughty cheekbones and eyes that pierced. Just for the moment she thought of a jungle cat, watchful and contained. And dangerous. ...

  "Ms. Lambert to see Ms. Dare. ... Ms. Dare invited me for the weekend."

  He pretended to think about it—with insulting slowness. "That was the weekend that started last night? Or this morning at the latest?" ...

  "I was held up. ... Look, what is this? I'm supposed to be spending the weekend with friends. Not giving a rundown of my recent diary to— to—" she looked at the height, the impassive face, the body impervious to cold, those eyes focused elsewhere, and the perfect insult leaped straight out of her childhood "—to Lurch the butler," she finished with relish.

  In addition to the introduction and physical picture, we get a hint of why the hero's arrogance will be more of a threat to this heroine than it might have been to another woman—one of the barriers this couple will have to overcome.

  The first meeting should come early in the story. Though the hero and heroine aren't required to meet on the first page, a romance novel can't really get moving until they're together and interacting—so the first meeting should fall no later than at the end of the first chapter. Many editors prefer both main characters to be on stage and together within the first few pages.

  The shorter the romance novel is, the less room there is to develop the story, and therefore, the earlier the hero and heroine should meet. In short category romances (such as sweet traditionals and short contemporaries) and novellas, the hero and heroine often meet on page one. In single-title books and longer category romances (such as historicals, long contemporaries, and romantic suspense), the author usually develops a more complex story in parallel with the more involved romance. For this reason, the author can show more of one main character's life before the hero and heroine actually meet. Still, since the romance is the focus of the story, the couple's first meeting is too important to delay for long.

  The first meeting might be only a few paragraphs—a couple could have a brief encounter and then move on, only to discover later that their problems will draw them back together. But it's more likely to fill an entire scene, with the couple's awareness and tension intermingled with a conversation about the troubles they're facing and why they have to deal with each other to make the
problem go away.

  First-Meet Cliches

  In the thousands of romance novels that have been published, there are many similar first meetings. Some of them have been overused to the point that they've become cliches. Heroes and heroines who meet when their cars collide, or when she smacks into the hard wall of his body, or when she falls off a ladder/wall/step stool/tree and he catches her, or when one of them walks in when the other's wearing only a towel, are among the first-meet scenarios that now make editors flinch and roll their eyes. Unless you can come up with a creative new twist on one of those ideas, it's wiser to find a different route to the hero and heroine's first encounter.

  1. Reread the first half-dozen pages of the romance novels you've been studying. In each book, which characters have you met? Have you met the hero, the heroine, or both?

  2. What do you know about the main characters you've met? What don't you know?

  3. What do you want to know about the main characters?

  4. How did the author catch your attention? Did she start her story with action or with description? With ordinary life or a change in the main character's circumstances? With an unusual statement or line?

  5. If the hero and heroine have met, what was their first reaction to each other?

  1. Where does the action of your story start?

  2. What event goes on page one of your story?

  3. Does your story start with the heroine, the hero, or both of them together?

  4. How do your heroine and hero meet for the first time? 5. How do they react to each other?

  6. What does your viewpoint character notice about the other main character? 7. How does the initial problem—the conflict between the characters—come to the attention of the readers?

  Starting to write a story is fun. The author who's been thinking for a while about his characters often has the first scene clearly developed in his mind. He knows exactly what happens, exactly who says what, exactly how everybody looks and what each of them does—and so the first part of the story may flow easily onto the page.