Writing Right Out There in Public: The First Scene

Okay, now it's time for the first scene. You don't have to have answered the questions you came up with to write the first scene; you write the scene to come up with the answers. Just start writing, without trying to edit as you go, and see what comes out. 

The first scene doesn't have to be the beginning of your novel. It may not even end up in your novel at all, and if it does, it may be edited out of all recognition by the time the manuscript reaches its final form. The point of it is to start the process of turning all those daydreams and ideas and questions and possibilities into the thing that matters: written prose. 

I usually write in scenes of between 1000 and 3000 words. Your mileage may vary, but try to make it enough to tell the reader a little bit about your characters and a little about their world, and to leave the reader wondering what's going to happen next. 

Here's my first scene. It's a good deal smoother than I expected it to be, but then I suppose writing professionally for twenty-two years has had some impact on my writing style. 

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The door latch clattered. Embery looked up abruptly from the heap of vervain on the table, then relaxed as the door swung open and the boy came in. Late, she thought; the great iron bell of the monastery in the valley below had sounded the call to evening prayers not long since. He was muddy again, too, red clay streaking his trousers and shirt, tousled black hair badly in need of a comb’s efforts.  At least he’d had the good sense to wash his hands and feet in the creek.

“Tay,” she said, reproving. “You should have been home long ago—and just look at you. I’m minded to have you scrub your own clothes for once.”

The boy hung his head. “I’m sorry, Mother.” Glancing up: “I’ll do the wash if you ask.”

She tried to keep her frown in place, failed. “You can help me with it. Now get yourself into something a little cleaner, comb your hair, and tell me how school went.”

He gave her a hug and a kiss and trotted over to the far side of the little shack, where a wooden chest next to the smaller of the two beds held his clothes. While he dressed, Embery got up from the table, went to the battered iron stove, got a kettle heating and then checked the soup on the front burner and the iron pot of healing salve simmering quietly in back.

By the time she’d finished, Tay had donned a clean shirt and trousers that didn’t have too many patches, forced his hair into some approximation of order, wriggled into his chair, and propped his chin in his hands and his elbows on the table. She settled into her own chair and said, “Now tell me about school. Was the brother instructor pleased with you?”

Tay beamed and started chattering about his time at the monastery school, the lessons he’d recited with the other students, the little events of the day. As she listened and made herself smile, Embery picked up another branch of vervain, picked off the whole clean leaves to go into a wooden bowl, set aside damaged leaves, stems, and the like in a pile for the stove. The familiar task helped chase away her worries for the moment; helped distract her, too, from her own bitter memories of the monastery school.  It worried her when Tay headed up into the hills the moment his lessons were over and stayed there until close to sundown, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him for it.

By the time he was finished the kettle had begun to whistle its shrill note, and she got up and made a pot of tea—not real tea from far Oriam, that cost more than she could afford, but good plain betony leaves from her own garden tasted almost as good and were better for a growing boy. Once she poured it and the air in the little shack filled with its scent, she told Tay to recite his lessons, and he stood, put his hands behind his back, closed his eyes, and repeated the table of sums and the names of the kings and queens who’d sat on the high throne of Raithwold from King Brandel on, with scarcely a pause. He drew in a breath, then, and stumbled his way though a noticeably less exact repetition of the Fourth Litany of Penitence.

She praised him anyway, told him to work harder on the Litany the next day, and sipped her tea. The boy pondered that, dark eyes watching her over the rim of his teacup. “Is any of that true?” he asked finally. “What the Litany says.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she told him firmly. “You need to learn it so the brother instructor will let you pass to other lessons.”  His slight smile told her he’d heard the words she didn’t dare say aloud.

Later, after they’d finished their tea, the last daylight faded out and she lit the one little oil lamp that was all the light her purse could afford.  By that flickering glow she dished up two bowls of soup and cut slices of coarse brown bread for their supper; by that light they ate, and then washed up the dishes together in a tub of water heated by the last dying coals in the stove.  Once they’d both visited the outhouse out back, she barred the door and the windows, put out the lamp, and found her way by feel and long familiarity to her bed, while quiet sounds told her of Tay undressing and settling into his.

“Will you tell me one of the old stories?’ he asked then.

“First you must say the words,” she said, smiling; the exchange was freighted with years of memories.

“I bind myself,” Tay said then, “never to tell the old stories, nor speak of them even, without asking leave first of the one who told them to me, that the secret be not betrayed and the memory of the land we do not name be forever lost.”

“Do you mean that, Tay?”

“With all my heart.” It was true, too.  Embery could hear that in his voice, and remembered the more clearly all the times she’d said the same words, lying at night in Neely’s cottage below Crannach Mountain, waiting for the old woman’s voice to come out of the darkness.

She took off skirt and blouse and shift, set them folded on the trunk at the foot of her bed, tied a kerchief about her head to ward off the night’s chill and slipped under the threadbare quilts. “It happened once,” she said aloud, “in the days when gods and goddesses lived with us, when the six cities still rose white and golden against the blue skies that bent over the land we do not name, that the nine voyagers set sail from the harbor of Golin to seek the havens of the Sun on the eastern shores of the world. This is one of the things that befell them as they sailed.”

Long before the story wound to its end, Embery could hear Tay’s breathing deepen into slumber, but she finished the tale, as much for herself as for her son. In the bitter chill of a Raithwold night, with the worries of another day waiting for her once the northern sun rose pale over Mollory Edge, it helped to think of the golden sunlight on the hills of far Amalin, the land whose name she never spoke aloud.

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In a day or so I'll post some details about why I did what I did with it, but you can also ask any questions that come to mind. A reminder, though: as i noted earlier, I'm not interested in critique. The only people whose opinion concerns me just now are acquisitions editors for publishers of fantasy novels -- and if you're one of those, please drop me a message and I'll be happy to toss you a manuscript or two. ;-)