The Endless Summer

Drum roll, please. My husband and I have leaped into the next chapter in our lives, marked by our ripe old years. We bought a cute little place in Florida to stave off the northeastern winter chill. As my feisty old man would have put it, we’ve headed to the land where old elephants go to die.

That metaphor is fine with me, because by the time I hit my forties, I was no longer a fan of winter. I’m not one to dismiss the magic of a twinkling first snowflake, but the short dark days and hibernation get old within a couple of weeks. And since the food transition from salads to soups can happen down south just as easily, I will bring a brisket pot with me to satisfy that craving.

Beyond food and snowflakes, I enjoy little else about the cold. Last year, during our three-month stint in Florida, we got out for a long walk every day, sometimes along the ocean in Delray Beach, and I felt happier and healthier. We walked to our meals and never worried about a warm enough coat. We even glanced at the golf courses as we walked the complex, wondering if we had enough skill to hold our own on the links. Maybe it was the cute golf carts, or maybe the chance to hit a ball, that caught our fancy.

Although my greater focus has been on book talks and sharing my own work, last winter I dipped my toe into the art scene in Palm Beach County and found it energetic and highly creative. I’m looking forward to taking more classes at the Boca Raton Museum and the Art Center in Delray Beach while polishing the last novel in the Gilded City series, Michigan Blues.

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Recently, I wrote a blog for a trade magazine about crafting the opening scene of a novel. Since it’s a frequent question I’m asked at book talks, I thought you might enjoy it!

Grab your Reader by the Collar—and Don’t Let Go

Tips from a series writer on crafting opening scenes

A powerful opening does more than kick off the story. It gives your reader a reason to keep reading into the night.

A wartime operating room, deafening gunshots, a screaming woman giving birth, the searing fear of discovering a breast lump, and runaway children meeting a gangster, all serve as opening scenes in the Gilded City series. Each one ties directly to the central conflict that follows.

Hooking your reader, drawing them into the historical period, and revealing the protagonist’s initial challenge set the story arc’s footing for what follows. Best of all, it keeps the reader glued to their chair. After all, isn’t the goal to keep the late-night fire burning?

For me, as both a reader and a writer, the first scene can make or break a story. In my voracious reading life, I have set down countless books that opened with fancy prose but told me little about where the story was going. I once felt guilty about abandoning those novels; now I trust my reaction and see it as the book’s first flaw. There’s nothing worse than a draggy first chapter. As one writing instructor once told me, “The opening is the most important real estate in the book.”

If you agree, read on. The challenge is how a writer accomplishes this. How does a writer find that burning ember of excitement? After completing five novels in a series, I have found a workable approach, and Book Five is set to launch in June 2027.

Although possible openings may already be swimming around in my brain, I first complete the following steps before testing their strength:   

• I have formed my protagonist’s basic identity– age, appearance, disposition.

• I have a clear sense of the opening’s basic problem. I should add that I’m a Pantzer: I enjoy the organic process of free drafting and find outlining too restrictive. That isn’t true for many writers. Still, the opening problem can differ from or become a step into the larger issues that emerge later in the story; it should create enough emotional tension to energize the first pages.

Once my protagonist’s initial mission is clear, I give myself a quiet space to explore the options. I pull out the basic journalistic tools of who, what, where, why, and how, circling through each possibility. Sometimes I sit and think, take a walk, or lie in bed, uncluttering my head of everything else pulling at my attention and freeing up imaginative space. One opening scene once came to me in the shower, and another in early-morning dream fog.

The testing process has its own rigor. Sometimes a few options come to me, and of course, I must choose one. I liken that choice to a traffic circle with numerous exits, each leading to a different place in the story. Do I want to head to the mountains, the sea, a pasture, or into the bosom of a long-lost family? I try to choose the route that will both stir the reader’s senses and carry the opening into the story’s central conflict, where I can introduce my primary characters and link them to the next set of scenes.

Here’s an example. The opening scene from Over There, the third book of the series, is a preface. In those few pages, the WWI Armistice has been declared, but a lost German shooter finds his way into an evacuation hospital and begins firing at the doctors and nurses. One of my main characters is hit and falls to the floor.

From there, I move the story one year into the past, opening Chapter One in a synagogue where the doctor in the preface is marrying the protagonist, a nurse crippled by polio during NYC’s first outbreak. The remaining two main characters, both physicians, sit in the front pew. War with Germany had been declared two months earlier, and each character is considering how that war will affect their life.

From there, I tell the rest of the story through the eyes, ears, and hearts of those four characters, who find themselves in different geographies and face unspeakable challenges. They cross paths through letters and, eventually, in person. It is the most complex novel in the series, so I needed my readers to be immediately invested.

Does the opening process make me nervous? Sometimes when I am drawing blanks, it does. But I know in my gut the opening will come. My process has never failed me—not once.

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And last, here’s my September programs up North. Hope to see you there!