Hit the Ground Running

In the masterful first paragraph of her debut novel, River Sing Me Home, British novelist Eleanor Shearer shows that you don’t need a cascade of words to set multiple levels of story movement in play.

It’s always fun to see what you can glean from an opening while approaching a novel stone cold, so let’s give it a go.

It was the blackest part of the night and Rachel was running. Branches tore at her skin. Birds, screeching, took flight at the pounding of her strides. The ground was muddy and uneven, slick with the residue of recent rains, and she slipped, falling hard against the rough bark of a palm tree. She slid down to the soil, to where ants marched and beetles scurried and unseen worms burrowed through the earth. With ragged breaths she gulped the heavy, humid air into her lungs. She could taste its dampness on her tongue, tinged with the acidic bite of her own fear. What had she done?

Line by line, let’s look at what Shearer accomplishes in only these 106 words. At the end of each explanation I’ll identify in blue the factors contributing to story movement.

 

• It was the blackest part of the night and Rachel was running.

This story literally hits the ground running by setting the protagonist in motion—at night. A question is immediately raised: “Why?”

Character movement, anticipatory atmosphere, question raised

 

• Branches tore at her skin.

This short, declarative sentence leaves no room for doubt—at the moment, Rachel cannot think of her comfort. Nature itself conspires to hold her back. We are entering a story in which stakes are attached. The question evolves: “Why is Rachel doing this dangerous thing?”

Obstacle, interactive setting, stakes, prose support, story question extended

 

• Birds, screeching, took flight at the pounding of her strides.

Rachel blasts through obstacles with pounding strides, exposing her desire and proving her agency. Shearer’s verb choices—“screeching” and “pounding”—extend the sense of danger. Commas spotlight the reaction from the birds.

Desire, agency, specific verb usage, an interactive setting, prose support

 

• Even the birds take flight, as if picking up on Rachel’s fear.

Whatever is going on with Rachel will have an impact on her world.

Interactive setting, foreshadowing, spreading stakes, anticipation of an off-screen antagonist, fear

 

• The ground was muddy and uneven, slick with the residue of recent rains, and she slipped, falling hard against the rough bark of a palm tree.

Nature continues to pose obstacles, this time causing her to fall. The palm tree, and the humid air to come, place the story in a tropical locale. As she suffers this mishap, the forward pace of the prose is slowed with longer sentences, and multiple commas, as if the reader herself was mired in mud.

Obstacles suggest a gauntlet, interactive setting, conflict, setting orientation, consequences, prose support

 

• She slid down to the soil, to where ants marched and beetles scurried and unseen worms burrowed through the earth.

Rachel’s flight intersects with a universe in which living beings come and go, appear and hide, and go about their work as they see fit. This sentence carries enough subtext to further refine the story question: Is Rachel free to move about as she sees fit, and if not, what hidden forces are impeding her?

Subtext, interactive setting, question raised

 

• “With ragged breaths she gulped the heavy, humid air into her lungs.”

Her ragged breaths raise questions: Has she been running a long time? Is she being chased? Is she unused to running? Is she ill? The “heavy, humid air” suggests a theme of freedom: here, it’s hard to even breathe freely.

Question raised, interactive setting, clue to possible theme, subtext

 

• “She could taste its dampness on her tongue, tinged with the acidic bite of her own fear.”

Another sense, taste, is brought into play, helping us bond with Rachel’s experience and emotional state, and inviting us to think about how dampness might “taste.”

Sense imagery, unbalancing reader, visceral emotion

 

• “What had she done?”

The final question in this opening paragraph bonds Rachel with those of us who have also doubted our decisions once the going got tough.

Raised question, anticipation for story to come

 

 Now, let’s look at what isn’t here. There’s no character description, and yet we can see Rachel in our mind’s eye. There’s no block of setting description, just interactions. There’s no backstory to tell us who Rachel is or what caused this nighttime flight—just questions that pull us forward.

Let’s see if you got the gist of the story. Here’s the description:

Her search begins with an ending.…

The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.

Away from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children—the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear. These are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children…and her freedom.

Now you know why she was running, but that knowledge neither adds to nor detracts from the power of this opening paragraph, in which every single sentence contributes to story movement.

Obviously, this is not first draft writing. Each of these sentence shines through too many facets. But imagine, if when starting a new project, you held yourself to the inclusion of just one aspect of story movement in each sentence; that would still be an incredible gift to self. Movement begets movement. What movement you create in your opening will continue to move within you, making the drafting easier.

I don’t know anything about Eleanor Shearer’s process, but I can tell that this opening is not the product of the question, “What do I need to tell my readers on page one?” In a YouTube interview as part of the Sankofa Pan African series, Shearer explained that it was while she was exploring the topic of slavery in the Caribbean for her master’s degree that she realized the limitations of research. “Parts of the past that I’m interested in are at risk of being forgotten or little understood,” she said. With so few people from that time leaving behind written accounts, she added, “you’re forced to imagine yourself into those gaps.” Her desire to write the novel was personal—her grandparents were from the Caribbean—and she wanted to tell Rachel’s personal story. The roll call of her children’s names evokes that beautifully. Her website adds this at the end of the book description:

Only once she knows their stories can she rest.

Only then can she finally find home.

This added context confirms my suspicion that the question Shearer asked herself was not what readers should know, but this: “If I were Rachel, what must I be doing at the start of this story?” With that, Rachel figuratively and literally hit the ground running, and invited us readers to come along for the ride. For all the invitations extended to us in blue, above, we’ll hop on board, trusting that we’ll eventually learn why Rachel is running. For now, we just need to sense the tension surrounding her flight.

The “running” in your novel may not be literal. Your character could be painting a house a shocking color of pink. But if you give us a taste of her desire, hint at the obstacles in her way, and foreshadow the stakes she’s trying to avoid, we’ll sense she has a good reason for doing so. Then, you can’t go wrong by enhancing that story movement with any of the other techniques Shearer displays.

Tell us: how do you set your protagonist in motion (or how will you revise to do so)? How do you invite the reader to participate in your story (or how will you revise to do so)? How do you keep story movement  revved up within you (how can you revise so that your character’s desire, goal-oriented action, and stakes can do so)? If you’ve read River Sing Me Home, what do you make of how this opening paragraph set up the novel?