Check out the video version of the essay!
How do you know a book is good? For me, it’s when you love it so much that you’re not even jealous that the author is more successful than you are. This is the case with the books of Laurie Elizabeth “L.E.” Flynn. She’s only published two books, but she’s blown me away with both of her Young Adult efforts. Firsts is an absolutely beautiful book. Maybe I’ll write about my experience with the book someday, but right now, I want to explore the opening and structure of her sophomore effort, Last Girl Lied To.
After making me laugh and cry with Firsts, I was so excited to read Last Girl Lied To that I bought the hardcover, knowing it would be worth every penny. The reverse of the book jacket and the jacket copy feature two evocative tagline, but I’ll introduce you to the book through the traditional description:
While thrillers aren’t my primary genre, I love a good mystery. And I love—as was the case with Firsts—the author puts a ton of balls in the air. There is friendship. Tragic romance. Unrequited love. Common teenage psychological issues.
I also love that Flynn leans into the idea of secrets: the lifeblood of a mystery. Let’s take a look at the structure of the book and how she begins. First of all, if you flip through the book, you can see that the story is unspooled over the course of ninety-one chapters, some of them very short. This kind of structure is advantageous for a few reasons. For example, the book is a fast read, and the reader is propelled from question to answer very quickly.
Here are the first few paragraphs:
The first-person protagonist (Fiona) is addressing Trixie, the character at the center of the book’s mystery. We immediately get a physical description of Trixie, which isn’t compelling in and of itself. Flynn makes the description matter. Trixie’s alternative look reflects upon her, but also helps us understand Fiona.
The end of the section I provided is my favorite part and represents one of the things Flynn does that I love so much. “Really, I would have given you anything of mine you wanted.” Not only does the sentence establish the friendship between Fiona and Trixie, but the sentence establishes the big stakes. Whatever happened to Trixie, it matters to the first-person protagonist, so it matters to us, too.
Overall, this first little chapter does its job: it introduces the mysterious tone, the friendship, and that something has (probably) gone horribly wrong for Trixie. We want to read on and to know more.
Check out the second chapter:
We get the tagline from the back of the book jacket and a short, potent discussion of secrets and lies. These are the underpinnings of any mystery, but they’re also at the heart of any relationship. (Especially between two teenage girls.) Again, Flynn stokes our interest without boring us.
In chapter three, Flynn settles into the structure that she employs for many of the book’s remaining chapters. Check it out:
Flynn opens the chapter just as she did the novel: with direct address from Fiona to Trixie, then Fiona goes back into detective story narrator mode. I enjoy the tactic because it maintains the central emotional conflict of the book (Fiona vs. Trixie) and the italicized bits aren’t so long that I start to lose the plot. (Literally and figuratively.)
What is Flynn doing? What can we steal from the way she opened and structured Last Girl Lied To?
Everything, including character descriptions, should have a purpose and contribute to the driving thrust of the novel.
The structure must reflect and serve the characters and the story.
A first-person narrator must not neglect his or her obligation to actually tell the story. Yes, the author is always in the background, controlling the narrator, but in this book, Fiona must, in many ways, serve as a surrogate for L.E. Flynn. (But isn’t that the case for the relationship between most writers and their protagonists?)
