how to start a book

The purpose of this lens is to get you started, to get you writing. You'll find a series of simple opening gambits for stories or novels, something to whet your appetite and set those creative juices flowing. Now, these 'springboard sequences' may well have nothing to do with the story that's rattling round your head, but that doesn't matter: these little exercises are there just to get you started. Once you're writing, you can head off in whatever direction you wish.

There is no copyright on the opening gambits I've provided. You can use them in their entirety, however you please, for pleasure or profit. Feel free to alter them to suit your own narrative. Think of them as a gift. A strange, quirky little gift, but a gift nonetheless.

Don't forget to bookmark this page: I'll be adding new material on a regular basis.

Writing requires very little in the way of materials: pen, paper and a dictionary, if you want to go with the old-fashioned approach; or a computer. And that's it.

"What is it?" said James.

Paul said nothing, just carried on staring at the pale thing in the sandbox, poking it with the stick of bamboo he'd stolen from Mr Burchielli's garden only an hour ago, when everything had been normal.

"I don't think it's anything," said Angela. "I mean, it doesn't look like anything. Not really."

"Well, it has to be something," said James. "It can't be nothing. Can it?"

"Whatever it is," said Paul, still staring, still poking, "I think it's bleeding."

It wasn't that Nataly didn't love her little brother, she did, she really did, but he was just so weird and demanding and weirdly demanding, and she really hadn't been able to take anymore.

She hadn't meant to hurt him. She'd just wanted to make a point, and maybe scare him a little. But that was all. Not this. She hadn't meant for this to happen, at all.

The mirror was beautiful, the art noveau frame carved from mahogany, its vines and flowers interspersed with birds, butterflies and grinning cherubs. The glass was flawless and smooth, the silver beneath untarnished.

It was all Lauren could do not to drag it from the wall and throw it to the floor.

Wretched thing. Perfect mirror.

Beneath the first layer of wallpaper was another layer of wallpaper. Beneath that layer, another, this one painted over with a thick yellow emulsion, making it almost immune to the effects of the industrial-strength steamer Matthew had borrowed from his brother-in-law. After an hour, Matthew was forced to give up entirely on modern technology and resort to brute force and a craft knife.

When Marie appeared holding two tall glasses of iced tea and said, "What's that?" Matthew stepped back and was about to say, "No doubt another damn layer of wallpaper."

Instead, he found himself saying, "I don't know."

"Looks like some kind of mural," said Marie. She placed the iced teas on Matthew's work bench, stepped toward the wall and wrenched away a broad sheet of wallpaper that looked like the thick, yellow hide of some long-dead creature.

"What the hell is that?" said Matthew. Then, his voice dropping to a whisper, "Is that you?"

Michael knew something big was going to happen the moment he saw Marvin Gaye's ghost browsing the Social Sciences section of Books a Million. Marvin was whistling Soon I'll be Loving You Again and swaying a little. Michael wondered if it meant something, that particular tune, if it was pertinent to the whatever-it-was that was going to happen. He'd have asked Marvin himself but, even by the skittish standards of most apparitions, Marvin was particularly shy and liable to just vanish with that sound they always made when they departed, like ice starting to crack and about to give way entirely.

Yesterday, he'd seen Curtis Mayfield sitting on a pile of tyres on the forecourt of Howard's Used Autos. Curtis had been singing Little Child Running Wild at the top of his voice. The day before that Mississippi John Hurt had shuffled past him on Page Street, his worn out ghost shoes letting in the ghost rain. As always, John had been smiling and humming Nobody's Dirty Business.

Something big was going to happen. Michael had no doubt.

By then, his coffee had gone stone cold, but Oliver drank it anyway as a kind of punishment. It was the least he deserved. The very least.

He drained the cup and slammed it down hard on the counter, hard enough it should have shattered. It didn't shatter, though, didn't even crack. So he slammed it down again and this time it did shatter. It made a noise like a gunshot.

No. Not like a gunshot. Not like a gunshot at all.

Oliver knew what a gunshot sounded like and a shattering coffee cup didn't even come close. A shattering coffee cup sounded like... well, it sounded like a shattering coffee cup. A gun shot: now that was something else. A gunshot, up close, sounded like God cracking His knuckles in readiness for the mother of all fist fights.

"A tattoo?"

"That's what I said: a tattoo."

"Very funny. I don't have a tattoo, Doctor Ahlberg. I think I'd remember."

Doctor Ahlberg stopped smiling.

"You're serious?" he said. "You really don't know that you have a tattoo? On your back? Right between your shoulder blades?"

Stephen's smile faltered, fell away, returned. "You nearly had me, there."

But Doctor Ahlberg still wasn't smiling.

"I'm really not kidding, Mr Phelps. You have a tattoo. On your back."

Stephen's smile vanished.

"What?"

"Come here, let me show you."

The doctor guided Stephen over to a full length mirror.

"Look," he said.

"Oh," said Stephen.

"I don't know what it is," said the Doctor. "Looks familiar, though."

"It's The Ancient of Days, by William Blake," said Stephen. "I think I need to sit down."

Thomas couldn't believe nobody else had noticed the cloud. They must have seen it, the cloud shaped like an infinity symbol, that sleeping figure eight. It had been there for, what, four hours now? Other clouds had come and gone, shepherded on by the wind, but this one had remained.

They must have seen it. Thomas could only surmise that everyone else had opted to ignore the cloud, had blocked it out somehow. And who could blame them? It was simultaneously meaningless and mind-shaking. An armada of alien spacecraft would have been similarly mind-shaking but it would also have been meaningful; it would have been a frightening sight but, ultimately, one which could be processed and dealt with. But an infinity symbol cloud which refused to do the natural thing and obey the elements? That was all kinds of weird.

Then, Thomas noticed the woman, petite with short black hair and a pronounced underbite. She was staring at the cloud and smiling.

By Thursday, at least I'm pretty sure it was Thursday, but I can't be completely certain, by Thursday, there were only eight of us left. Helena and Justin didn't look too good. They had the marks all over them. By Friday, there'd be just six of us. No doubt. And six wouldn't be enough.

"We're not going be able to do this," said Catherine and her voice wasn't much more than an arid whisper.

"You been reading my mind, again?" I asked and tried to grin but my lips were too dry and sore, so the most I could manage was a kind of grimace that didn't fit on my face right.

"Not this time, Robert, no. No more mind reading. It's all gone now." She stumbled a little and Becky put a hand out to steady her. "All gone. The inside of my head's like a..." She barked a laugh. "I have no idea what the inside of my head's like. I don't have the words. I don't think their are any words."

"It's probably just like ours," I said. "Normal."

"Yeah," said Becky. "You've got a straight forward, regular old mind now, just like us."

"How can you stand it?" said Catherine.

How to start a book? How to start a book?

Imogen could remember the day she'd keyed that precise phrase into Google. The over-enthusiastic search engine had thrown up thousands of results, thousands, but she'd been drawn to one in particular, a Squidoo lens: How to Start a Book.

And now look. She could hardly move for paper. Her manuscript had taken over the dining room, then the lounge, followed by the hallway. It had crept slowly up the stairs and now it was taking over her bedroom. Hundreds of thousands of pages. Story without end.

How to start a book?

What about how to finish a book?

... make one the opening of Chapter 1 and another the opening of Chapter 2, then see if you can make the two stories converge.

For example, what if the story of Stephen and his mysterious William Blake tattoo and the story of Thomas and the stubborn infinity cloud were part of the same overall narrative?

Perhaps, you could combine three, four or even all of them!

What are those boxes doing up in that tree? And, perhaps more significantly, what's in the boxes?

And what if that strange disembodied face were to smile? What if it winked, or suddenly spoke, or blew out a wide and impressive smoke ring?

Where are they going? What is all that stuff they're carrying?

God wasn't happy with me, and He let me know in His own inimitable way.

The only thing I can think of which might explain all of this, is the fact that I was born during a solar eclispse.

This was back in the days before cell phones and even answer machines, back in the days when, for a teenage girl, the words 'It's for you' were a source of excitment and delight.

To think, none of this would have happened if I'd just done what Karen had asked and mown the lawn last Wednesday.

John hadn't known about the hidden camera.

The flowers died on Monday, and everything followed on from that.

It was a beautiful house, gambrel roof, gable windows, immaculate, and it burned a treat.

At first, Nick thought it was just a bundle of rags that had blown onto his lawn during last night's gales.

Everything else he had been prepared for, everything except the blood, the redness of it, the impossible quantities of the stuff.

He couldn't get back to sleep, but he couldn't drag himself into a complete state of wakefulness, either.

Andrew didn't even have to open his eyes to know they were here.

The shoes, the shoes he had worn yesterday and for the last few months without any problems at all except for the usual breaking-in period, his shoes in other words, didn't fit anymore.

Sophia wondered how she could possibly have failed to notice his eyes before: one blue, the other a pale brown.

"Take it from me: you can never have too many scars."

The pain came back on Thursday and Vincent was so relieved he broke down and cried like he'd never cried before.

The man on the doorstep was soaked, water dripping from his overcoat and evaporating the moment it hit the dusty, sun-drenched porch.

On every page of the diary, the same nonsense word scrawled over and over again: scissormirror, scissormirror, scissormirror, scissormirror, scissormirror...

"Simmer down, kids," Ravi whispered. "It'll be dark soon. And we all know what that means, don't we?"

The road forked, north-east and north-west, but inbetween, a dirt track that was hardly visible at all.

Chris didn't care what the politicians said, or the weathermen, or the newsreaders; the arabesque patterns in the carpet told him all he needed to know.

... more to follow!