I was sent a letter; that’s how it began.
I went round by my mother’s house, and there it lay, on the floor in the dim front hall among the bills and credit card applications and grocery store flyers. I didn’t recognize the hand¬writing; it was pencil, a pointed and sloppy scrawl with a tendency to lean in two directions at once. My mother had simply shrugged, when I’d asked her about it, and turned her back, the way she does when she doesn’t know what to say. She was on her knees in the flowerbed, digging among the dahlias. I stood on the front steps. They’re green cement, and the marigolds around my feet were like little orange moons against their spiny leaves.
I looked back down at the letter. There was no return address, only my name, Agatha, in care of my mother. I don’t know why I hesitated.—Agatha Dellamonde
Developmental Edit
There’s a terrific little piece of exposition: “I don’t know why I hesitated.” It immediately conjures curiosity, duelling pulls upon the character’s attention, and the suggestion that all is not what it seems to be. Fabulous!
Intriguing? check
Specific?check
Raises a question? check Why would she hesitate?
Drop-kicks us off the end? check Absolutely! There’s a wonderful bit of ‘resonance’ between the announcement of the letter in the first sentence and the hesitant glance back at the letter at the end.
What does this paragraph tell us about the book we’re starting? A female character named Agatha is at her mother’s house when she receives a letter addressed to her through her mother. Why not addressed directly to her at her own home? Why addressed to her rather than her mother? Hmmm. . .curiosity!
Do I want to follow this character through a whole novel? I don’t honestly know yet. But I’m willing to follow her to the next page, because she’s already told me that ‘it’ began with this letter about which she’s hesitating, and I think we can safely assume that ‘it’ is the whole point of this story.
Genre? Probably mystery. It might be a women’s fiction thriller ala Mary Stewart, but the school of ‘if I had only known!’ is not well-known these days.
Do we need to know who the character is, how they got here, where they were before? I don’t think so. I like the focus upon the letter. There are two characters with an obvious relationship and a third unidentified character, the author of the letter. That’s enough to get us going.
Does this paragraph drop us right smack in a specific moment in this character’s story? Yes, it does. Putting the questioning of the mother into the pluperfect diminishes the tension somewhat, but we can handle that in the Copy & Line Edit.
So let’s talk about the structure of it. As I said, I love the ‘resonance’ of bringing the last line back around to the first. There may be a little more distraction by mentioning the moony marigolds than absolutely necessary, but I do like the green cement steps—that’s a nice telling detail. I’m going to remove the semicolon, not because I don’t like semicolons (I do), but because they’re so rarely used nowadays. And I might trim the language a tiny bit to keep the tension high, but I wouldn’t mess with that bracketing.
Copy & Line Edit
I was sent a letter—that’s how it began.
I went by my mother’s house, and there it lay on the floor in the dim front hall among the bills and credit-card applications and grocery-store flyers. I didn’t recognize the handwriting; it was pencil, a pointed and sloppy scrawl with a tendency to lean. My mother shrugged when I asked her about it and turned her back, the way she does. She was on her knees digging among the dahlias. I stood on the front steps. They’re green cement, and marigolds glowed against their spiny leaves around my feet.
I looked back at the letter. There was no return address, only my name, Agatha, in care of my mother. I don’t know why I hesitated.