Creating Something Out of Nothing

How to create vivid character, setting, and conflict in the first ten pages

Magicians would have us believe they can pull objects out of thin air. We know better. But in story, good authors do create something out of nothing, and we delight in their sleight of hand. They draw us into imaginary worlds and introduce us to new friends and foes that endure in our experienced memories as tangibly as if we had walked in their shoes.

What makes this mimicry of God’s creative powers succeed? How do writers become better con-artists and perfect our storytelling hustle? Good storytelling is a kind of three-card monte that reveals character, setting, and conflict at any given moment without exposing the fancy fingerwork behind the scenes.

The Game David Played

The biblical writers knew this artistic game. Before I walk you through a longer example for how to launch a believable story, let’s look at the components of the con in short form—in one biblical verse, 2 Samuel 11:1. In the shocking story of David and Bathsheba, the author gives us a glimpse of all three cards: setting, character, and conflict.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. (11:1)

In three sentences (two sentences in Hebrew and some translations), we learn that spring has come to Israel during David’s reign (setting); that in this culture, kings lead the nation’s army on the battlefield (setting); that this king has enough political power to send a general, all the general’s staff, and all the warriors of Israel to battle (character); and that this year, this king decides to stay home (character/conflict). These scant but expertly handled details spark the reader’s imagination, spin us into the story world, and spur on the cataclysmic events of one of the world’s most well-known stories.

Now that we see how the game works from reader’s point of view, let’s examine the storytelling con from the perspective of the writer.

A Practiced Sleight of Hand

Novice storytellers sometimes get confused between all the work and details involved in creating a story and the work and details required to write a story. The two required processes differ. The first is like hand painting an entire deck of cards. The second is like picking three of the painted cards to represent the deck. The good writer does indeed create a full set of cards but never lays them all out on the table.

Good story requires robust character definition—characters with complex personalities and histories that affect their motives and choices—and builds from a strong conflict at the heart of the plot and character relationships. It hooks readers from the first page. Good story also flows from an essential, discernible setting that grounds readers so they can understand the characters and conflict.

Although writers may easily describe the requirements, fulfilling them presents a challenge. How do you initiate conflict from paragraph one without describing the characters and their wants first? How do you establish setting without showing a panoramic view of the scene or spelling out its history? How do you show character without first examining for the reader all their idiosyncrasies and the influences on their thought processes?

When unpracticed writers encounter these questions and challenges, they falter with their slight-of-hand techniques. They tend to reveal too much, filling the novel’s first few chapters with paragraphs of description, backstory, and exposition. Not only does such filler material slow down the story pace, but it also reminds readers that they are being told a story.

No one truly wants to see how the trick works. We are more delighted when we are fooled by the magic. Readers want to plunge into the story world and immerse themselves in it like merfolk in an ocean of words. They want to breathe it in, swim around in it, and feel its weight all around them. Like the air we breathe on a daily basis without thinking about it, that ocean of words should feel like the most natural environment for the reader to inhabit. They should never stop and think, I’m in an ocean and oceans are wet.

How do you create an ocean out of nothing and convince readers they can breathe in its water? In a similar way to how God created the world: divine fiat. You speak the world into existence from your opening word and toss readers in before they realize what has happened.

World-Building Power through the Right Words

Marilynne Robinson, author of the Pulitzer winning Gilead, has no trouble convincing readers to swim in the mythical world she creates. In her recent novel, Jack,[1] a spin-off from Gilead, she adeptly maneuvers her character, setting, and conflict cards without any extraneous movement that would give her sleight of hand away.

The opening scene employs dramatic point of view (a limited, third person point of view that avoids entering the heads of the characters). As with a stage play, what the audience knows comes only from what the characters say and do. Robinson avoids having the narrator name the two opening characters, as though even the narrator doesn’t know their names until someone speaks them. We aren’t even told one is Black and the other white, let alone which is which.

Far from the dreaded backstory dump where character histories spread across several pages, Robinson’s first scene assumes the reader is in the world with the characters, observing the action. With the power of great dialogue and a few just-right words, she slips the readers into the ocean without them realizing. There is no awareness of a story being told, only the experience of it happening.

Robinson begins the novel with conflict as the most visible card:

He was walking along almost beside her, two steps behind. She did not look back. She said, “I’m not talking to you.”

      “I completely understand.”

      “If you did completely understand, you wouldn’t be following me.” (3)

A couple—or at least an acquainted male and female—are at odds. He’s almost close enough to be walking her somewhere, but is removed by two steps. Not out front, but behind. He’s in the proverbial doghouse and gracious about admitting fault but not disgraced enough to give up the pursuit. Ah! A glimpse of the character card.

But what about setting? Surely we cannot understand these characters or their conflict without some sense of the world they inhabit? To be fair, three paragraphs in and we have no image of this couple in our heads. No mention of “the lanky, fair Jack, whose slumped shoulders bore the weight of his father’s ministerial profession,” or how “Della’s pert smile betrayed the fire of her words.” The characters walk as silhouettes spaced two footfalls apart on the sidewalk. We need Robinson to quickly illuminate the scene before we lose interest or imagine a different scene, and she does in the next line:

He said, “When a fellow takes a girl out to dinner, he has to see her home.” (3)

The word fellow sends us back to an earlier era, likely the 1950s or earlier, and the chivalrous manners accompanied by walking through town confirms that chronology. And now we know that this pair indeed was a couple, at least for one date that seems to have veered in the wrong direction.

Conflict, character, setting—all cards have passed by the reader, and the reader is sucked in. We’re not thinking, Well, the author is trying to set up a biracial relationship story in the early twentieth century and establish conflict by explaining what happened that first evening. Instead, we think, What happened to derail the dinner? We stay in the game and place another bet. Round one goes to the author.

The story continues and the tension grows. The woman dismisses the man from her company and his obligation of manners. The man responds:

“I can’t help the way I was brought up,” he said. But he crossed the street and walked along beside her, across the street. When they were a block from where she lived, he came across the street again. He said, “I do want to apologize.”

      “I don’t want to hear it. And don’t bother trying to explain.”

      “Thank you. I mean I’d rather not try to explain. If that’s all right.”

      “Nothing is all right. All right has no place in this conversation.” Still, her voice was soft. (3)

In a nod to Hemingway, master of the dramatic point of view, Robinson keeps the dialogue simple—mundane, even. She hides the full deck of cards to which she alone is privy. Yet even in this spare style—maybe because of it—the revelations are striking. We learn that the man comes from a gentle upbringing. While he’s persistent, he’s also deferential to the woman’s need for safety and dignity (he continues walking with her but across the street). He’s polite but mysterious about what he has to hide. And we realize he does have something to hide—indeed, the woman has just experienced this fact.

Suddenly, Robinson breaks point of view with either a narrative commentary or a flash of insight into the man’s mind (we don’t know which yet): “Still, her voice was soft.” Without the “still” we might chalk up this observation of voice tone to a dramatic note. But the “still” is commentary. The woman is apparently in the right in this disagreement, has righteous anger toward the man, yet she speaks tenderly?—for surely soft here means much more than volume. We are intrigued. We see that character card flash as the author shuffles, and we think we can point it out. We put more money down. Round two to the author. And we’ve only read the first page.

The Devil’s in the Details

The three-card-monte con works because the con-artist always has someone—a shill— convince the victim he can find the money card. The story artist needs a shill as well, some way to give readers just enough insight that they fill in the gaps with their imaginations and believe they see the whole trick. The storyteller devilishly slips out just enough detail to whet the reader’s thirst for discovery and direct or misdirect the reader’s attention.

As the page turns in Jack, we learn that the man seems to have a proclivity for hurting others and that he had disappeared at some point during the dinner and then reappeared behind the woman as she walked home. He fears he might have frightened her, but she responds she knew it was him behind her, as “no thief could be that sneaky” (4). The tension ratchets up, and just as we wonder what sort of man this fellow is, Robinson flashes the money card at us (literally):

“Well,” he said, “in any case, I have seen you safely to your door.” He took out his wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill.

      “Now, what is this! Giving me money here on my doorstep? What are people supposed to think about that? You want to ruin my life?” (4)

Instead of a thief, he seems to be a man who wants to pay his debts—and yet that action reveals a deeper problem in this relationship and story world. This is not just any couple. They are not in just any era. Eyes on the street are watching them, and so are ours:

He put the money and the wallet back. “Very thoughtless of me. I just wanted you to know I wasn’t ducking out on the check. I know that’s what you must think. You see, I did have the money. That was my point.”

      She shook her head. “Me scraping around in the bottom of my handbag trying to put together enough quarters and dimes to pay for those pork chops we didn’t eat. I left owing the man twenty cents.” (4)

Without any exposition or flashback to the previous event, Robinson deftly deals with the current moment and the past at the same time. And then we wonder, This man likes this woman well enough. He has the money to have paid the bill. What could have prompted him to abandon her at dinner?

A lesser author would have let the man explain himself right here, but not Robinson. She slides that card back in the deck and misdirects:

He said, “I thought it was a very nice evening, till the last part. One bad hour out of three.” (4)

The woman will have none of it:

“You go home, or wherever it is you go. I’m done with this, whatever it is. You’re just trouble.”

      He nodded. “I’ve never denied it. Seldom denied it, anyway.”

      “I’ll grant you that.”

      They stood there for a full minute.

      He said, “I’ve been looking forward to this evening. I don’t quite want it to end.” (5)

How much we know of this man now, and we don’t even know his name! We know his desperation, his self-effacing attitude, his persistence, his politeness. We know his home situation is transitory. We know he doesn’t quite fit in to polite society—he knows the rules but not how to keep them. He cares for this woman but seems to keep causing her pain despite his efforts not to.

We are too invested to stop playing. So now Robinson turns the three cards over to show us what is in play. First, the Della character card:

“Well, here’s my door. You can leave now.”

      “That’s true. I will. I’m just finding it a little difficult. Give me a couple of minutes. When you go inside, I’ll probably leave.”

      “If some white people come along, you’ll be gone soon enough.”

      He took a step back. “What? Do you think that’s what happened?”

      “I saw them, Jack. Those men. I’m not blind. And I’m not stupid.” (5)

Then, the Jack character card: Jack explains that he didn’t leave out of embarrassment of the woman’s race but out of fear of debt collectors. He hopes she can forgive him. She accuses him of trying to be ingratiating. He responds,

“It doesn’t work. How well I know. It is some spontaneous, chemical thing that happens. Contact between Jack Boughton and—air. Like phosphorous, you know. No actual flame, of course. Foxfire, more like that. A rosy heat of embarrassment around any ordinary thing. . .—”

      “Stop talking,” she said.

      “It’s nerves.”

      “I know it is.”

      “Pay no attention.”

      “You’re breaking my heart.”

      He laughed. “I’m just talking to keep you here listening. I certainly don’t mean to break your heart.”

      “No, you’re telling me the truth now. It’s a pity. I have never heard of a white man who got so little good out of being a white man.” (7)

And finally, the setting and conflict card:

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, don’t. I have to talk about the Declaration of Independence on Monday. There is nothing funny about that.”

      “True. Not a thing.”. . . “Miss Della. . . it’s ridiculous that a preacher’s daughter, a high-school teacher, a young woman with excellent prospects in life, would be hanging around with a confirmed, inveterate bum. So I won’t bother you anymore. You won’t be seeing me again.” He took a step away.

      She looked at him. “You’re telling me goodbye! Why do you get to do that? I told you goodbye and you’ve kept me here listening to your nonsense so long I’d almost forgotten I said it.”

      “Sorry,” he said. “I see your point. But I was trying to do what a gentleman would do.. . . I could cost you everything, and there’s no good I could ever do you.” (7–8)

Five pages (the story starts on page 3) and we have all the details we need to understand the core of the conflict, characters, and theme—with only one word of narrative commentary. A polite, prodigal white bum, who for the moment has money in his pocket, pursues the love of a well-positioned but racially disadvantaged woman. Contrary to social conventions, he has everything to gain; she has everything to lose from this arrangement. And still, her voice is soft.

We have yet to know the name of the city these two inhabit (St. Louis), but we already sense the racial and economic pressures there. Robinson has given few details, but the ones she has revealed have exploded in our imaginations. The tension she has created feels true. It draws us to explore further past those essential “first ten pages.”

Robinson does change to a less limited point of view after the first two scenes, allowing us deeper into Jack’s thoughts and deliberations. But by this time, we the readers and Jack are already friends. Such intimacy doesn’t throw us because we have already come to know him by his words and actions. We like him. We identify with his turmoil. We want him to find joy. We live in his world.

Epilogue

So what happens when you play your cards right in those first few pages and continue mastering your craft to the final word of the story? By the end of the book, we readers are left penniless, having spent all our emotional and rational capital on experiencing the world of Jack. We turn the last page and the three-card monte evaporates. We come up for air and realize it was all a game, yet our memory says otherwise because now we know these people, this world, this story. They are real to us.

Unlike our own messy daily experience, whose mysteries take months and years of reflection to unravel, in our memories of this story, the author has left us the pieces of a map to understand it. This map is the object of our delight, the reason we don’t mind being conned. While we’ve been observing the character, setting, and conflict cards flash by, the author has been spinning the tale and building the structure of the story’s underworld—the story argument—unseen.

So in Jack, we come up for air with our knowledge of new friends, and we suddenly realize that the entire relationship that began with two people walking down the street was actually about being drawn to grace—wanting it, seeing it in the most unlikely of circumstances, feeling unworthy (because of course we are), yet wanting it all the same. Like Jack, we constantly act to make grace go away, and yet grace returns and welcomes us all the more. At the end of this book, as with that other Book of great authorship, we the readers find ourselves penniless, but it’s all right. The author has let us in on a secret: grace abounds. And grace is nothing if not turning a nothing into a something.

[1] Marilynne Robinson, Jack (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).