Chapter One
When I wrote my first novel, The Chieftains of South Boston, I did what I think most novelists do when they start a book. I began at the beginning: chapter one. I didn’t think much about it at the time. Before I started, someone suggested I not get too bound up in reworking the first chapter over and over. It was more important to keep moving through the story to the end. Still, I spent a fair amount of time editing those first thirty pages before moving on to chapter two. When I got to the end of the book, I saw the story in its completeness. I realized I would have to do a fair amount of rework on chapter one so it would tee up all the themes and plot lines as needed.
With The Mahoneys of West Seattle, the sequel, I decided to begin the book somewhere in the great middle. I’d save chapter one for a time when I had completed at least half of the first draft. That way, I’d have developed a clear sense of who my main characters were in the years 1999 and 2000.
One day when I was walking home from a Boise café where I had been writing, the idea for chapter one came to me. I’ll guess I was around two-thirds through the first draft at that point.
Java Cafe in Downtown Boise
It would be a scene involving only Matthew and Anne, rather than opening the story at a wedding with lots of characters, as I had done with the first book. Also, it would be an intimate look at how the two interacted in a critical situation. For instance, Anne confesses in the opening pages her greatest fear. That would be getting caught trying to enact a robbery. And, of course, that’s exactly what happens. Only when that situation ends does the story open up into a broader portrait of their lives.
An Odd Anniversary Ritual
Chapter one is also a sort of misdirection play. It initially appears to be about one thing but turns out to be about something very different. The police officers have difficulty understanding and accepting the oddity of the ritual being enacted by Matthew and Anne. They’re plotting to rob a bank, but not really. It’s definitely not a game that most people play, nor is it one that recommend.
As the reader gets to know the couple better, the ritual that Matthew and Anne enact, usually around their anniversary, becomes more understandable while still remaining odd. In every romantic relationship I’ve known, whether it be one I’ve been in or one involving family or friends, there’s at least one thing that doesn’t make sense to those who are outside of that small, two-person world.
The Grand Staircase in the Titanic Exhibition
It can be something as simple as pet names, a weird way of talking to each other or inside jokes. But it can be something more elaborate than that. It can involve a sense of excitement and even danger. Like when Matthew and Anne get themselves locked in at the Titanic Exhibition at Pacific Science Center. I actually went to the exhibition when it visited Seattle in 2001. In the novel, I do a little cheating by having it occur in 2000. Honestly, as a setting for an important scene, it was too perfect to pass up.
In the larger sense of their relationship, Matthew and Anne’s ritual is designed to make them work together through a unique challenge. Doing so helps to keep their spark alive.
Photo Credits
“Easy Street Records (Exterior)” by Patrick Tyree, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Java cafe photo by Foursquare
Titanic “Grand Staircase” by Cliff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
