◉ Novel Study
Opening chapters are both hard to write and crucially important to a novel’s success, which is one reason I’m looking closely at the first chapter of every novel I’m writing about. Novelists have to draw us into the story and get us hooked on the plot while also getting us up to speed on the characters and setting. In other words, we readers want things to start happening, but we also need to understand why they are happening and what’s at stake in order for us to care. It’s a tricky balancing act!
I picked Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Dial A for Aunties in part because her ambitious double-barreled plot requires her to cover a lot of ground in her early chapters. By the end of chapter one alone, she’s accomplished the following:
Introduced us to our protagonist, Meddy, and established her core backstory conflict: She feels loyal to her mother and aunts (due, in part, to a family curse that means all the men in the family leave), but that loyalty has thwarted both her career ambitions and her romantic relationships.
Established the supporting cast of Meddy’s mother and three aunties and their complex sibling dynamics.
Kicked off one plot: Meddy and the aunties are preparing for the biggest wedding they’ve ever handled in their family business; the tensions (and stakes) are high.
Established a second plot: Meddy’s mother has set her up on a blind date that is going to lead to the accidental murder that will become only one of many complications for the wedding job plot.
Sutanto manages all of this in the space of twenty pages—that’s only about five thousand words! Let’s see how she does it.
To start, she covers one key piece of the backstory—the family curse—in a prologue. I’ve discussed the pros and cons of prologues in depth in my post on prologues, but this is certainly a case where a prologue helps Sutanto accomplish her goals. Set eight years before the story begins, the prologue introduces the family curse, which goes back generations, and shows how it influences Meddy’s choices—in this case, her decision to attend nearby UCLA rather than go to Columbia University, even though all of her male cousins have decamped for the East Coast as soon as they could.
The final beats of the prologue sum up Meddy’s reality:
“You so lucky,” Big Aunt says, for the millionth time, to Ma. “She stay with you forever. You always have companion.”
Is it true? Am I doomed to stay with them forever, just because I’m the only one not heartless enough to leave? I force a smile and nod benignly as they fuss about me, and I try to look forward to the rest of my life, living here in the same house with my mom and aunts.
We readers know, however, that this isn’t the story of the rest of her life—otherwise we wouldn’t have a novel ahead of us. Our initial story question then is this one: How does Meddy break out of these limitations she’s imposed on her life?
Chapter one opens in the present day with the entire family packed into a crowded dim sum restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, in what is clearly a familiar ritual. The setting is a savvy choice on Sutanto’s part because it provides a lot of rich sensory texture for her to explore, as well as opportunities for her to show this family’s complex interpersonal dynamics and linguistic and cultural makeup.
For example, the process of ordering establishes that Meddy’s Mandarin is less fluent than her aunts’, who also speak to one another in Indonesian, another language Meddy isn’t fully fluent in. And look at this passage:
The table being round means all the dishes are equally within reach of everyone, but Chinese family meals aren’t complete without everyone serving food to everyone else, because doing so shows love and respect, which means we all need to do it in the most attention-seeking way possible. What’s the point of giving Big Aunt the biggest siu mai if nobody else notices?
Do you see just how much work this passage is doing? Sutanto teaches readers unfamiliar with dim sum restaurants or Chinese culture what the norms are, works in an evocative food detail (siu mai are delicious dumplings, usually filled with pork and shrimp), and establishes that Big Aunt has the most power in the family.
Similarly, as the first plot—the big wedding job—is discussed, each character naturally reveals which aspect they are in charge of and, at the same time, a great deal about their personality and relationships with Meddy and the rest of the family. For example, Fourth Aunt is in charge of the music. She gives her report and then Sutanto stitches in a bit of background:
Fourth Aunt’s face goes from icy glare to satisfied smirk. “Of course, the band and I have been practicing night and day. People keep coming by the studio to listen to me sing, you know.” There are two versions of Fourth Aunt’s life story. Version one has to do with her being a celebrated child prodigy with a voice that newspapers described as “angelic” and “a national treasure.” She was well on her way to stardom, but chose to leave it all behind when all her sisters decided to move to California. Version two has her as a so-so singer who cunningly convinced her entire family to uproot themselves and move to California so she could pursue her pipe dreams of breaking out in Hollywood. One version is Fourth Aunt’s; the other is Ma’s.
Again, triple duty: We learn Fourth Aunt’s role in the upcoming wedding, we get one possibly unreliable version of the family’s immigration story, and we see the sibling rivalry between Meddy’s mother and aunt.
After we learn the basics about the wedding and Sutanto reminds us again of Meddy’s underlying conflict (she “desperately wants out” of the family business but “pretends to love all of it”), she sets up the next plot, which introduces some immediate drama. Meddy learns that her mother has signed up for a dating app, pretending to be her, and has set up a date for her after chatting with someone for weeks.
Meddy’s initial response is horror and indignation, but then Sutanto dips further into her internal thoughts to show why she eventually agrees to go through with the date:
But the last time I went on a date was . . .
Last summer? Last fall? Christ on a cracker. Has it really been that long? And don’t even get me started on the last time I got laid. As my best friend Selena likes to remind me, “Girl, you need to get some before that thing closes up shop for good.” I look down at my lap, at that “thing.” Why can’t Selena just say “vagina”? You’re not gonna close up shop for good, are you?
Okay, I have just started talking to my vagina. Maybe Ma’s right. I desperately need to go out on a date. And so what if it’s been set up in the weirdest, most awkward way ever?
This is a wonderful example of how to write internal monologue that is lively, engaging, and supremely entertaining. The quick reference to Meddy’s friend Selena feels natural and also establishes a useful secondary character. In addition, we see Meddy’s voice coming through: her use of the phrase “Christ on a cracker” and her willingness to use the term “vagina,” unlike Selena, who sidestepped it.
By the end of the chapter, readers have a number of open story questions they want to see answered, which will pull them forward into the book:
How disastrous is this blind date going to be? (Because we can already guess it will be a disaster.)
Will the wedding be a success? Will the sibling rivalries or Meddy’s lack of enthusiasm cause problems?
Will Meddy ever gain the courage to live the life she wants rather than the one her family wants for her?
In my post on subplots, I’ll show you how Sutanto answers—and deflects—these story questions as the novel unfolds, but first we’re going to do a close examination of a single scene.
Takeaways
If you need to introduce a large cast of characters, find a setting that allows you to gather them all in one place and show readers the group dynamics and tension.
Reveal key details about characters naturally through dialogue and action.
Activating two plots at the same time can help you maintain interest and pacing by giving readers two sets of story questions they are eager to have answered.
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Keep exploring
This is one novel’s breakdown from Novel Study — my series reverse-engineering how bestselling books actually work, opening to ending. The full method, with all the charts, is collected in the books.
This post is collected in Novel Study, Book 1 of the series.
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