First Chapters - Episode 1

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

As writers, one of the best ways to learn how to write well is through reading (stating the obvious here, I know). So I’m going to start a little series looking closely at parts of novels that are done particularly well and to highlight elements that might help you with your own writing.

Hands up if you now struggle to read for pure enjoyment instead of comparing words to your own attempts and wondering how the heck a writer achieved that.

Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash

Exactly. So I thought it would be cool and a bit helpful to dive into some brilliant examples of writing so you don’t have to. You can just sit back and enjoy it. I’ll be over here doing all the heavy lifting. No, you just sit right there. It’s fine.

(SPOILER ALERT: I will look in detail at the stunning opening chapter of In Memoriam by Alice Winn today. At the time of writing this article, I hadn’t read any further on)

The Blurb

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.

When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

The First Chapter

There are a few elements that make a first chapter sing, that draw your reader in and make them want to keep turning the pages. I want this feature to be helpful to those learning the craft, so I will break down the main elements as follows:

Character - how does the author get us to care about the central characters?

Setting - I could talk all day about setting because, for me, it should be central to both the characters and the plot. I don’t want to read anything that could be picked up and placed somewhere else. So how is that achieved here?

Conflict - there is no story without conflict (keep saying that to yourself). The conflict can be internal and external and the first chapter should at least hint at what the conflicts are going to be and where they might come from.

The Contract - what promises are made from the author to you? Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can guess the story and its ending from what is laid out in the first chapter, but it should give you a sense of what you might expect to happen, where the story and its characters might go, the overall tone that speaks to genre etc.

So let’s take a look at chapter one of In Memoriam…

Character

When I come to any book I come primarily for characters. It’s how I write, too - character over plot.

It’s a very rare thing for me to fall so deeply for characters in the first chapter, but Winn has crafted Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood so well that they are already real to me. We see two young men with everything ahead of them, a strong circle of friends, full of desire, and a history that tells us just enough to know them well.

Here’s a tiny taste of their connection that is given to the reader so organically:

Ellwood’s breath was hot. It reminded Gaunt of his dog back home, Trooper. Perhaps that was why he ruffled Ellwood’s hair, his fingers searching for strands the wax had missed. He hadn’t stroked Ellwood’s hair in years, not since they were thirteen-year-olds in their first year at Preshute and he would find Ellwood huddled in a heap of tears under his desk.

This beautiful passage reveals a connection that runs deep. We can see there is affection and tenderness. But it also shows a possible power balance. Throughout the chapter, we are reminded that Gaunt is strong and physical. Ellwood much less so. How will this play out? If nothing else, it makes the reader worry for Ellwood and his dreamy imaginings of war.

These two characters aren’t perfect, either. Like my favourite sandwich (chicken and sweetcorn with mayo on soft white bread, in case you’re interested), characters need layers. Chicken and mayo are fine, but the sweetcorn adds sweetness and crunch. Ellwood’s sweetness is his romantic love of poetry, his crunch his privileged life and snobbery. Spread over him a burning desire to go to war (making us readers plead for him to drop his obsession) and you have a flawed and very real character. Gaunt is shown to us as physically dominant, quiet and closed-off emotionally, yet we know his love for Ellwood cuts him deeply.

Setting

Here we see privilege in all its glory. Public schoolboys, well-educated, with lofty ideas of where their class will take them. Idyllic? Absolutely not. They are institutionalised, one step removed from reality. The outcome of which is Ellwood, the dreamy romanticist who has never known or seen real suffering (except at the hands of his own peers) believes war to be the place that allows for perfect poetry to be written.

The juxtaposition is clear. Here they are safe. What is to come is not.

Conflict

The war looms heavy in this chapter, offering instant conflict for the reader, and there is no story without conflict, of course. The war is happening elsewhere, to other people in other lands, but in Gaunt’s hand he holds the list of the dead - and these are names he knows. This clever detail tells the reader that when - and we know they both will - Ellwood and Gaunt enlist, the possibility of death will be ever-present. So Winn has given us two characters we know and understand quickly, and told us these two are going to war.

Ellwood is desperate to enlist when he is of age, Gaunt is pressured into enlisting by his German family. Two very different motivations are set out at the start. Winn is layering conflict with every page, and it’s delicious.

Gaunt is a very interesting character. On the opening page when Ellwood is pretending to shoot a German, Gaunt is reading the latest In Memoriam where he recognises seven of the nine boys killed. Gaunt is anti-war and he sees the prices being paid. Lives are being lost and he doesn’t want that to happen to him. He has hopes and dreams, he wants to study Classics at Oxford. Going to war isn’t part of his plan. But in just one chapter we see a man taunted for being a coward, with the weight of responsibility placed on his shoulders to save the family name, and with a deep longing for another man (taboo, forbidden, and likely to cause him a great deal of heartache). And by the end of chapter one, Gaunt joins in the biggest soldier game of all - he enlists.

‘Gaunt, who had grown up summering in Munich, did not tend to join in these soldier games.’

We all know the horrors of WW1 - it doesn’t need to be hammered home to us - but that knowledge is what sets this chapter up so well. Here is peril - we know what is coming for these two young men.

But simply having two friends go to war isn’t enough.

There are several passages in this chapter that really show us the desire Gaunt has for Ellwood:

‘He was having trouble tracking anything. He was only staring hungrily at Ellwood, noticing how his long black lashes fanned out slightly sideways, how the whites of his eyes were rather too white. Ellwood had the most absurd lips Gaunt had ever seen, a true cupid’s bow, as if a woman had painted them on his face with lipstick.’

The attraction is so strong that I find myself equally attracted to Sidney. But let’s think for a second about what this simple passage is achieving. Gaunt is in love with Ellwood. You don’t look at anybody like that without loving them deeply. This raises the stakes. These aren’t just two friends

Hook

The hook is that magic thing that makes your readers want to carry on reading - something specific to your story. It can come in many forms but usually will centre around a question in the readers mind. And if writers can place that hook in the opening chapter, WINNER!

For me, Winn nails the hook and it lies in the love between Gaunt and Ellwood. I need to know how their relationship will pan out. And again, this goes back to the brilliant way she has layered her characterisation of the two. There are a million war stories out there. But THIS war story is about Gaunt and Ellwood.

The Contract

Every writer, in the initial set-up of a story, makes a sort of ‘contract’ with the reader. They promise things with little whispers in the ear - ‘if you keep reading, this might happen’ wink wink. It’s what keeps us turning the pages (if it is done well). So what has Alice Winn promised us?

• Forbidden love. That is already there on the page with Henry’s yearning for Sidney. And with forbidden love we have consequences.

• The war will intervene heavily in their lives. Might one of them die? This feels like a very real threat as the closeness of their relationship is laid bare for us. There is so much jeopardy in this element of the setup.

• There is a very real chance that Ellwood will marry Gaunt’s sister. It is joked about, and hinted at, and there are already flirtations. Another possible heartbreak heading Gaunt’s way.

Wrap Up

The opening chapter of In Memoriam is one of the best I have read in a while. I have been pulled in by interesting characters who leap off the page and been told that they WILL face the evils of war. I am strapped in and ready for the ride of their lives.

If I have tempted you, please do consider ordering your copy of In Memoriam here, in support of my local indie bookstore, Storytellers, Inc.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

And happy writing!