Who Cares?
By Donald Maass | August 7, 2024 |
Have you ever been reading a novel and asked yourself, “Why should I care?” Have you ever set a novel aside because the answer is “I don’t”?
If you have, then you have experienced a common reader feeling—and a common writing shortcoming. Even novels with sparkling prose, a strong narrative voice, a clever premise, all the goodies, can leave us feeling “meh”. We just…don’t…care.
That can even be true when the characters that we meet are sympathetic, heroic, witty or in any other way attractive. Their troubles alone won’t do it. The effect of a hook opening line lasts only one second. Not even saving the cat will necessarily rescue our sense of indifference. Put the world in peril, put anything at stake, personal or public, and there’s a chance that we still…don’t…care.
Why is that? Is it because this is fiction, and just because a hero wants to save his brother or forgive his father, it isn’t real? It doesn’t matter? Is it because we don’t “connect”—as editors are wont to say in declines—because a given heroine’s life circumstances or problems aren’t the same as ours? Certainly, we read to our tastes. (See Kristin Hacken South’s post on that topic HERE.) However, we can also quickly come to care about, and keep reading about, protagonists whose worlds, lives and problems are vastly unlike ours. Scout. Celie. Frodo.
What then, really, is the difference? If it isn’t a hook, intrigue, voice, heroism, pathos, atmosphere, story questions or any of the other scores of engagement factors that we might pack into page one, then how is it that certain novels snag our hearts instantly, while others utterly fail to woo us onward, pull us deeper, sometimes not even to page two?
As usual, the answer lies in asking the right question. The question isn’t what makes us care, but who. The protagonist? That’s the odd thing. You’d think, but actually who makes us care is someone other than the main character.
To find out who that is, let’s look at the openings of a couple of recent novels.
Look Closely
To help us I’ve chosen novels of three of different types, with varying narrative perspectives and different degrees of narrative distance.
The first is Alix E Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January (2019), a Los Angeles Times best seller and a finalist for the 2020 Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Set in the early 1900’s, the novel’s heroine—named January—is the ward of a wealthy collector of objects. On the day before she turns seventeen, she discovers a book which tells of Doors between worlds—Doors which may lead to her lost father and Doors which her guardian has been closing.
But all that lies ahead. The opening does not yet present us the plot problem or the stakes. Instead, it is a voice opening: January speaking directly to the reader…
When I was seven, I found a Door. There—look how tall and proud the word stands on the page now, the belly of that D like a black archway leading into white nothing. When you see that word, I imagine a little prickle of familiarity makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You don’t know a thing about me; you can’t see me sitting at this yellow-wood desk, the salt-sweet breeze riffling these pages like a reader looking for her bookmark. You can’t see the scars that twist and knot across my skin. You don’t even know my name (it’s January Scaller; so now I suppose you do know a little something about me and I’ve ruined my point).
But you know what it means when you see the word Door. Maybe you’ve even seen one for yourself, standing half-ajar and rotted in an old church, or oiled and shining in a brick wall. Maybe, if you’re one of those fanciful persons who find their feet running toward unexpected places, you’ve even walked through one and found yourself in a very unexpected place indeed.
Or maybe you’ve never so much as glimpsed a Door in in your life. There aren’t as many of them as there used to be.
Intrigue is an obvious gambit in this address to the reader. Doors, capital “D”? There’s anticipation, too. You can bet that January is going to go through one of those doors—she does, a blue one in a field—and find herself “in a very unexpected place indeed”. There’s also January’s engaging narrative voice. It’s sweetly artless and, of course, perfectly artful.
It’s hard not to like January. But again, do we care? That’s a different matter. Look more closely. Although January is not in a hurry to get her plot moving, there’s nevertheless an urgency, a grip, to what she is telling us. She could have started anywhere—her missing father, her guardian’s house, it’s many rooms—but instead she starts with Doors. That’s what’s uppermost in her mind. That’s the thing we need to read first. It’s the thing that January wants us to understand…needs us to get…insists that we see for ourselves, and probably we’ve seen Doors ourselves before without realizing exactly what we were seeing.
To put it differently, there’s something terribly, terribly important that January cares about. Us. It is her first priority that her story—especially the Doors in it—matters to us as much as they matter to her. We need to know. Her care is a palpable force, a momentum all by itself that lifts us up like a wave at the seashore, shoving us insistently toward the land.
The second novel is Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (2017), a New York Times Best Seller and occupant of many best-of-the-year lists, not to mention a TV adaptation. It’s a mainstream novel about an upper-middle-class family, the Richardsons, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, whose story opens on the day that their house burns down, an event which Ng’s omniscient narrator relates to us…
Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. All spring the gossip had been about little Mirabelle McCullough—or, depending on which side you were on, May Ling Chow—and now, at last, there was something new and sensational to discuss. A little after noon on that Saturday in May, the shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen’s heard the fire engines wail and careen away toward the duck pond. By a quarter after twelve there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and everyone within half a mile could see smoke rising over the trees like a dense black thundercloud. Later people would say that the signs had been there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been something off about the Richardson family, that as soon as they heard the sirens that morning they knew something terrible had happened. By then, of course, Izzy would be long gone, leaving no one to defend her, and people could—and did—say whatever they liked.
Once more, intrigue is a gambit. A six-bedroom house is on fire. Story question: Did the youngest Richardson daughter, Izzy, set the fire, as people in Shaker Heights presume? There’s also a solid sense of place with Heinen’s grocery store, a duck pond and a street grandly named Parkland Drive. People in Shaker Heights obviously like to gossip, too, so maybe that’s a point of identification? I mean, where in the world isn’t there a community glued together by gossip?
But do we care? Houses catch on fire every day. There are lots of families named Richardson. There are plenty of youngest daughters who may be a little off the rails. I’d argue that it’s not the house on fire, nor the too familiar operation of the town gossip mill, that gets through to us. Like I say, we can get those without Ng’s novel. Nor is exactly the omniscient narrator’s wry take on Shaker Heights. It’s that the narrator is at pains not to present the plot points, nor even (yet) any characters, but rather a highly pertinent fact: We human beings think that we know why things happen, but actually we don’t.
In other words, the narrator has a point to make. It’s important enough to open the novel. It’s a point that matters greatly to the narrator and the narrator wants it to matter greatly to us. We have to grasp it before the story begins and the narrator cares whether or not we do.
The third novel is Amor Towles’s The Lincoln Highway (2021), a #1 New York Times Best Seller, following the author’s previous A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). This is not a find-the-lost-father novel, but rather a find-the-lost-mother novel, or at least that’s how it starts. It’s 1954 and eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is returning from an eighteen month stretch at a juvenile work farm where he was sent for involuntary manslaughter. Emmett’s mother is long gone and his failed-farmer father is recently deceased. Emmett intends to collect his young brother and head west to find their mother by following the Lincoln Highway—the first transcontinental highway—and the clues left by their mother as a series of postcards sent in the days after she left.
Again, all that lies ahead. As the novel opens, we don’t know anything. Towles works in the grand storytelling tradition of authorial narration, bringing us close to the novel’s various characters but from the outside, telling us about them instead of pretending that we’re dwelling inside them as in close third person. At the opening, the omniscient narrator is behind the story’s wheel…
June 12, 1954—The drive from Salina to Morgen was three hours, and for much of it, Emmett hadn’t said a word. For the first sixty miles or so, Warden Williams had made an effort at friendly conversation. He had told stories about his childhood back East and asked a few questions about Emmett’s life on the farm. But this was the last they’d be together, and Emmett didn’t see much sense in going into all of that now. So when they crossed the border from Kansas into Nebraska and the warden turned on the radio, Emmett stared out the window at the prairie, keeping his thoughts to himself.
Hold on now, isn’t this a textbook example of an inactive opening? What’s happening? Pretty much nothing. Emmett isn’t speaking, just staring out the window and shutting out Warden Williams. Oh, there are mild story questions: Warden? “…the last time they’d be together”? There’s some story set up which the author is, for now, judiciously and wisely withholding. Okay, fine.
But do we care? Emmett’s not exactly a winning protagonist, not yet. Warden Williams, though, is a bright note. He tries to draw Emmett out. He’s kind. He cares enough to try, and that’s the point. The novel’s narrator could have opened with anything but that’s the narrator’s choice, and not by accident or luck. You could say that the author is setting the novel’s tone, and I suppose that’s true enough. But it’s also true that there’s something else that the author cares about, and it’s not just his main character, Emmett, since so far we know little of him except for his sullen silence.
No, there is something else that the author wants us to see: that there is kindness in the world, for in that kindness lies hope which, as it happens, we’re going to need as Emmett’s circumstances darken and his journey takes a gigantic detour in the wrong direction. Hope. It’s important that we feel that and hold onto that feeling. It matters to the storyteller. It’s going to matter to us. It matters more than anything else, so much so that it’s the feeling with which the novel begins.
Conclusion
So now we’re asking the right question. It’s not what causes us to care, but who: the novel’s narrator.
The narrator has something important for us to see, a point to make, a feeling to hold onto. It’s important not in a plot sense. We’ll get to the plot later. It’s not even important in a storytelling sense. There are plenty of hooky tricks to catch our attention and perhaps, if it’s our kind of story, to keep us going.
No, what we’re drawn in by, the reason that we begin to care, is that the narrator cares, greatly, and conveys that on the page. Why? For us. So that we have something important to see, get, or feel. The narrator does not presume that our hearts are locked in. Why should they be? There’s really no reason in any novel…that is, until the narrator gives us one. And BTW, that principle holds true through the rest of the story too.
Who cares? The narrator. And when that care is urgent, underlying and palpable, we are lifted by that wave. We care too.
Are we going to care about your WIP? That depends. What does your narrator care about, especially on page one?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
I hope this answers your question. Thank you for the opportunity to share the opening paragraphs of my WIP.
When I was six, I visited ‘Tirings’ – a care home for unwanted odd ducks. As ever, I carried my magical book, ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ with me because I could escape inside it whenever I felt anxious – often several times a day.
And because I was often hospitalized for routine medical treatments, I entered Tirings for an overnight stay without a fuss – a fragile egg wrapped in cotton wool expecting to be examined by yet another stern-faced doctor with cold hands and a cold heart.
I receive spontaneous first impressions of places and people as distinct emotional and audible snapshots as a matter of course. As such, I imprinted an overall vision of Tirings’ checkered linoleum as a giant chessboard swirling with flakes of grey paint collecting in every corner and crevice like fallen leaves. The building was depressed.
Brisk footsteps, slamming doors, and tormented human cries drifted through the walls painted a color I immediately dubbed EverGrey. The exhausted building was having a tantrum.
But the most telling energy came from the oscillating vibrations of chamber music warbling eerily from a tinny radio, that wavered in stops and starts. And when it gave up the ghost entirely, the anguished voices stopped to listen. The building’s inhabitants were clearly confused. I held my breath and when the music resumed, the radio’s dial had been tuned to a somewhat livelier station by an unseen hand. The agitated souls issued a collective sigh of relief. The building was having second thoughts, my nerves were frayed, and something terrible was about to happen.
Mother shook my shoulders hard. The last words she said before she flounced out the door were ‘And don’t be walking about. Read your bloody book, and mind you do as you’re told!’
While I waited, I became absorbed in the faded pattern of interlocking leaves entwined with grass snakes on the hall carpet. The snakes hissed. I hissed back and hugged my book close.
That’s well written and a fascinating POV. I love the hissing snakes on the hall carpet. That said, the “care” I’m talking about today is what the narrator wants the reader to see (in the sense of understand), a point to make, or a feeling to hold onto.
In this opening, you are emphasizing what’s visual, leaning on the intrigue of that to rope us in, which is not exactly the same thing. I would be more drawn in–care–if what I am presented with is less what your narrator is seeing (in the sense of eyes and ears), and more of what it is important for me to understand about her (?) unique way of perceiving. Less “this is what I see” and more “this is what it’s like to be me”.
That’s a subtle distinction, but I hope it makes sense.
Thanks, Don, the penny finally dropped, several hours later… and I can now see the way forward to your premise about the narrator as a human to human contact. Some days, I’m slow. But you made sense. cheers – V
I read the first page of the Hobbit many years ago now but I have never stopped worrying about the fate of the Shire.
Quite. “…it was a Hobbit hole, and that means comfort…people considered them very respectable…” The narrator is at pains for us to know that the Bagginses are successful, decent and keep a clean house. They are worthy of our care…and our concern, of course, because life in the Shire is to be disrupted…
Often (almost always, in fact) when I hear the sermon at church, I think, “How on earth did the pastor write a sermon so perfectly designed for me?!?”
The same is true for your post. Thank you for this, Donald. You are brilliant. You never fail to simplify the essentials that I too easily forget or neglect.
Thanks! To see how great storytellers do it well, sometimes you have to look at it a different way, go beyond the usual things that we know, say and teach about fiction craft.
Sometimes I just think it will never happen…but here it is, my novel’s first paragraph…thanks, Don. WHEN THE COTTONWOODS BLEW
She never meant to run this far, rows of cottonwoods arching overhead, so many crows caw-cawing in the swaying branches, Ella Singleton again on Greenwood Avenue, the corner home where Cecile had raised her…and Ella stopped, checking her watch, fifty minutes until her 3-11 shift… enough time to see if it was still there, the abandoned house at the end of their street.
In childhood, an exciting place of danger, of ignoring Cecile’s warnings: Bingo Gallagher, Rick the Skinny daring neighbor kids to climb crumbling, shattered walls, escape iron rebars reaching out to gouge anyone who scrambled, jumped. A place of escape, child Ella lying on smooth stones, falling asleep under overhanging branches, those tangles of weedy trees magically protecting her during a spring shower…all before, the child who screamed.
Had an ambitious realtor purchased the land, hauled away the crumbling house, its ghosts? And now, was her right arm beginning to ache, tissues, pain fibers reigniting? A crazy idea, no proven clinical reason, she simply remembering the over-zealous policeman grabbing her arm, insisting Ella run home, she barely seven, wanting to know because…the child who screamed…
As I said to Veronica above, the “care” I’m talking about is generated by what the narrator wants us to see (in the sense of understand), or the point to make, or a feeling to hold onto. To my eye, in this opening you are presenting a situation–Ella at the (now) abandoned house where she was raised–and a smattering of memories.
I am squarely located where she is, and know that the place is significant to her, it’s the right information but information itself is flat. What is it that I don’t understand, but need to? What does the narrator want me to gasp that I wouldn’t on my own? What should I feel other than, to me, an obvious feeling of mild intrigue and maybe a faint touch of pathos?
Good morning.
I think this post just helped me understand why I’ve been so adamant that I open with a POV that is not the main character. It’s because this POV is most able to communicate the themes that drive the novel. First, the motivating force of memories and second, the dilemma of using/not using our talents.
For the first, the first paragraph –
People say true love is eternal. Sure. But you know what else never goes away? A memory can hang around forever, long after the owner is six feet under or washed out to sea. The way I see it, life is a journey through luck and love, trust and cons, giving, taking, and embracing what you’ve been dealt, but most of all it’s about treasuring the memories, even if they weren’t originally yours. The good ones, they belong to all of us.
For the second, the last paragraph of first chapter –
I know, I know, I’m good at what I do. I got some skills and I don’t shy away from using them. What do they say? Don’t hide under a bush? Shine that light. That’s what I do, in my shop all day. Even when I go to the clubs afterwards, listen to some live music, I’m out there being helpful, man, while I’m looking to get lucky. I always figure, hey, maybe I can help someone else get lucky, too.
Thank you for your insight.
Ada, in the first paragraph the point is “treasuring the memories”. Okay, fine, but nothing surprising in that idea. I like the narrative voice, but can it make a point that I wouldn’t make on my own?
In the second paragraph (end of first chapter), the narrator is saying something about herself (she?), and it’s a bit unexpected and provocative. “…maybe I can help someone else get lucky, too.” She (she?) must be popular at bars! Seriously, there’s something caring in that and I found myself caring more about this story in that paragraph. Have you considered making that one the first paragraph of the novel?
Well, I will certainly consider that now, Don, lol. It’s a he speaking, btw, and he is a generous person, not creepy. Funny how exactly the part I suspected was weak was what you noted. It helps so much. Thank you!
Wow. What a simple, powerful point, Don. That even before the story has time to involve us with the characters… those first words can already be pointing us toward what we need, and starting to win us over. With something as simple as a sullen protagonist and a warden (a *prison warden*!) showing kindness in the first lines.
*That’s* how much freedom an opening has. Even when the story’s just the first marks on a blank slate, a good author can choose what we’ll see first — if the author cares.
You’re right, Ken. The narrator’s care starts with the author’s care. My point today is for writers, you, to be aware of that.
The narrator in my children’s picture book cares that a chick is sad because they are different from their family. So my narrator introduces Tree, who has supported generations of the chick’s family, into the story to help.
This will sound cold, but it’s true: A chick who feels different doesn’t make me care. Why should I care? Plenty of chickens…uh, I mean people…feel different. That’s not special. On the other hand, tree sounds like a character who immediately brings hope. If so, there’s a reason to care.
Thanks for the post Don, it’s given me a lot to think about.
My son is starting High School this year, and, for the life of me, I don’t know where the time has gone.
*Not an opening line*
Oh, you are telling me! In a few weeks our daughter starts college. She’s moving away, to Ontario. How did this happen? Where did the time go? It’s too soon! I feel for you.
Thank you so much for this. I started my next WIP yesterday and woke up this morning thinking, “I care about this. But who else does?”
Your examples and conclusion have shown me the way, and now the work is up to me to make it happen.
You’re welcome! Good timing for this post, I guess!
Donald, your post came at just the right time. I’m rewriting a book sequel’s first page, after winning a first page critique from an online writing blog. Your examples set me straight and I’m going with the narrator’s voice who makes us care! I’ve been writing notes from your perspective to keep me on track with the rewrite. Thank you! 📚🎶 Christine
Excellent, glad to hear you tackling a page that already was good enough to win a contest. That’s heartening.
Great post. As always. I write almost exclusively in the first person (because that’s how I live.) I think of the voice as the character my reader will spend the next three hundred pages with, so I try to provide a voice to relate to doing, saying, or thinking something for the reader to care about. Here is my opening of a retelling of a Greek myth:
As we made our way through the noisy agora, Amenos was transfixed by the expressionless face on the head that hung there.
“Why did they …?” he asked.
“Lawless men attacked Koristophon’s farm,” I explained. “Four of the King’s Companions recovered the stolen sheep and hung the thieves’ heads in public places to remind all to respect the law and the rights of Corinth’s citizens.”
That seemed to satisfy him.
Here’s the opening of a mystery/detective story:
I was slogging through a month of mail when the chime under my desk said someone had entered the waiting room. I had no appointments scheduled. I raked the mail into a file drawer, shoved the wastebasket back under the desk, squared my big, broad shoulders, and prepared to go forth.
If this were one of those hardboiled detective novels set in faraway LA, my visitor would be a glamorous blonde in a clinging dress and diamonds, big sunglasses, and desperate for my help.
Three out of four ain’t bad.
Both of those openings are high in intrigue. What I’m not getting quite as strongly is whatever I need to understand that I wouldn’t understand on my own, a point that’s not immediately obvious, or a feeling that’s important to hold onto. Nothing bad about those openings, mind you, they serve and I’m curious, but that is not the same thing as caring.
Thank you.
Thank you for this great lesson on how to make a reader care. Here’s the opening of my picture book, with Boots (a cat) narrating. Boots really hopes you will care about his plight.
On the first long day of summer, Mama and Papa bring home a new kitten, Bonnie. She is silly and daft. She chases her own tail. She chases *my* tail. When I hiss, she leaps, managing to land so as to knock the breath out of me. Ufff!
Bonnie has terrible table manner, too. She dips here dirty paws in the water dish. She eats from my bowl. Worse, she pounces on me *while* I nibble my kibble. When I swat her, she has the nerve to swat back. I’ve never heard an apology from her.
But she can meow! She parades around with a *toy* mouse in her mouth as if it’s a prize. Mama and Papa think it’s cute, but I don’t pay her any attention.
Everyone who comes to visit makes a fuss over Bonnie.
I am getting a strong feeling from that opening: jealousy! Life would be so much better without kittens, eh? That’s a feeling I can hold onto. Boots isn’t being very generous, but strangely I care.
That was badass.
Thank you.
That’s the first time I’ve ever received that particular compliment, many thanks!
Don:
Maybe some of the confusion about the concept of care could be cleared up by calling it intrigue, curiosity, or engagement. As an example, I’m thinking of the opening to James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. The combination of the endearing character — a wry, world-weary older Jewish man, who apparently also laid claim to being the world’s greatest dancer — the bizarreness of the situation — a skeleton found at the bottom of an old well — and the narrator’s dry, omniscient voice, has me saying “I don’t know exactly what’s going on here but I gotta find out.” I also trust the narrator to deliver on the story promise.
I’ll stick with my distinction between caring and intrigue, curiosity and the catch-all term engagement. Same goes for story questions, stakes and pathos. None of those are inherently bad, though I do think that pathos often does not produce the intended effect in readers.
Intrigue engages us mentally but caring happens because an appeal is made to us, human to human. A narrator is telling us in some way that something matters, it’s important, and asks us to understand and feel so too.
It matters not just to the characters in the story, it matters to us too, or ought to. That’s the appeal made to us. Have another look at my examples and see if you agree.
Thanks, Don. I get it now.
I gather that this is a slight variation of show verses tell? Don’t tell readers how a character feels; show readers something that gives them a reason to care how a character feels.
Here’s the opening to a fantasy novel I’ve written that’s a somewhat twisted retelling of Alice In Wonderland:
Alice stood facing the giant mirror that took up almost the entire wall behind the bar. Mildew lined the edges, the grayish film spreading vine-like fingers through fine webs of cracked glass. The blemished surface didn’t hinder the mirror’s power to record history. It saw everything, and it remembered. Alice’s heart beat a little faster at knowing those memories were about to become her own.
She’d come here to watch a brutal crime that had already taken place and all she had to do was touch the glass. The tips of her fingers began to itch. She ached to make contact, yet dreaded the vision that would give her nightmares for days to come.
Thanks, Don! Your posts are always so helpful.
Karen, I love the idea of a mirror that records history. Alice has merely to touch it, but this time she will see a brutal murder. Great premise.
While I can visualize this and am intrigued, that is not the same thing as caring. I’m not yet feeling that. My point in this post is that the caring comes from the narrator and whatever it is that the narrator urgently needs us to understand, or the point that the narrator wants us to get, or the feeling that the narrator wants us to hold in onto.
In your opening, what I would like to get is not just what Alice is doing, or why it is unusual, cool as those things are, but a strong sense of why she is compelled, what it is about the mirror that is irresistible even if what it will show you is horrible, some sense of why it matters—not just the plot reason but the human reason—so that I can feel that if I was there then I would touch the mirror too.
Do you see what I mean?