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Earlier this year I had an experience that made me reflect deeply on perspective and details. My husband and I attended a Jon Batiste concert. We got the tickets we could afford – high in the balcony – months before the actual event, so far in advance that we nearly forgot about it. But when the date rolled around, we went.
From our balcony seats we clapped as Jon and his band took the stage, looking like a tiny action figure. I found myself closing my eyes to soak in the music. I sang along when he urged the audience to join him for “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and other easy to repeat lyrics like the “woooahh, ooooahho” chorus of Butterfly. Holding hands with my hubby made it a great date night. On our way out we joked about returning the following night because we’d had so much fun.
On a whim I checked the venue’s website the next morning, and there were tickets available. Not just any tickets, but a pair of floor tickets — for a fraction of what we’d paid for the balcony seats! A stroke of luck too good to pass up.
The floor tickets conveyed a completely different experience.
The suit that had been “shiny” from above wasn’t sequins, but stretchy gold fabric. What I assumed to be only a piano was actually an elaborate acoustic amplifier that Jon adjusted occasionally throughout the show. I still don’t know specifically what he changed, but I no longer wondered why “he kept going to the back of the piano,” as I had the night before. Details came into sharp focus.
I felt the bass thump through my body and caught jokes and words and nuances I’d completely missed from the balcony. The song list was identical, but it came alive in a whole new way. And the sing along felt immersive – rather than simply hearing the music, we were the music as it enveloped the auditorium.
And I immediately spotted parallels to writing. By zooming in and sharing specifics, we have the opportunity to bring readers in to experience the story along with the characters.
In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (HarperCollins, 2004), Renni Browne and Dave King offer this advice, “You want to draw your readers into the world you’ve created, make them feel a part of it, make them forget where they are. And you can’t do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand. You have to take them there.”
Evan Griffith accomplishes captivating the reader in the opening chapter of The Strange Wonders of Roots (Quill Tree, 2024).
“Holly hadn’t seen Uncle Vincent since three Christmases ago when he’d visited her and her dad for the holidays. Still, she recognized him as he stepped out of the car: scraggly eyebrows perched over winter-gray eyes, a salt-and-pepper beard, a nearly bald head. Definitely balder than three Christmases ago. A little less pepper and a little more salt in the beard, too.”
His writing takes the reader close to the characters with a physical description of Uncle Vincent, while also conveying important information about protagonist Holly since she’s the one noticing these details and has been waiting at a bus stop in “Middle-of-Nowhere, Vermont” for her uncle to pick her up. The opening provides specific details, but doesn’t give away everything. We still wonder what she’s doing at a bus stop and why they haven’t seen each other in three years.
In Olivetti (Feiwel and Friends, 2024), Allie Millington introduces us to the book’s titular narrator.
“I hold many heartbeats for the Brindles, a copper-colored family with eyes as rich as ink. Ever since Beatrice pulled me from the clutches of a cardboard box years ago, and set me on her desk, the Brindles have been my home.
Beatrice always told me everything. I always listened.
She’d sink into her tattered blue chair, and her featherlike fingers would flutter across my four rows of keys.”
And we soon discover that typewriters see the world a bit differently than humans and are compelled to keep reading.
The narrator of Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow (Disney/Hyperion, 2023) is human, but from the onset we wonder if we’re getting the whole story.
“People are always asking why my family came to the National Quiet Zone.
Like we need a reason. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a place with no internet and no cell phones and no TV and no radio? Who wouldn’t want to live surrounded by emu farms in a town that’s half astrophysicists and half people who are afraid of their microwaves? I mean, isn’t that the American Dream?
Hint: no.
Obviously, there’s a story. So when people ask, I tell them we left Omaha because we were driven out by alpacas.”
The National Quiet Zone feels so far removed from most of our daily lives that I immediately wanted to know more. The specific detail of astrophysicists and people afraid of microwaves feel very at odds with one another, presenting a question I wanted answered.
Of course, it can be tempting to pack as many details as possible into the opening chapter. Describing minute aspects of setting and characters, but that can be intense and overwhelming for the reader. They may be exhausted by the end of the chapter.
My up-close concert experience was amazing and unforgettable, but I’m not sure I could handle it every night. Besides, then it wouldn’t be nearly as special.
Cynsational Notes
Gayleen Rabakukk holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has published numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and two regional interest books for adults. She is represented by Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management.
She serves as board member for Lago Vista’s Friends of the Library and also leads a book club for young readers at the library. She’s active in Austin SCBWI and has taught creative writing workshops for the Austin Public Library Foundation. She loves inspiring curiosity in young readers through stories of hope and adventure. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.