The Great Opening Line

I recall one of those books we had to read in high school. In it, one of the characters is writing a book. Or he would be. If he didn't get up every single day and erase the first line of the book he'd written the day before and then spend the entire present day crafting an entirely new opening line (that will only be deleted tomorrow). 

Yet the opening line of the novel wherein this desperate writer is a character was deceptively bland. It goes: The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran. 

Not the shooting star of a first line that you might expect to lead you to lose yourself in the subsequent prose. Yet almost every single one of us assigned to read the novel did get sucked into the story and the brilliant writing.

So what makes a great first line? One exuberant flush of color and delight (like the moss rose bloom in my photo)? Or should they be more calculated? After all, first lines in fiction have so many jobs to do. 

• Convey the voice of the author, the voice of the POV character, and the tone of the story all at the same time.
• Build a world.
• Establish a story question.
• Speak to genre.
• Create a contract with the reader.
  
• Hook the reader.
• Serve the story.

In genre fiction, we're taught early that our first lines must be compacted under pressure into shining diamonds that must do as many of the above within a reasonable (often fewer than twenty) words. It may be a wonder than any of us ever get past the first line of our novels. If we do, it's most likely because our first lines are rarely our first lines. Most of us allow ourselves, out of necessity, to write the worlds worst first lines, then we hone them only after the draft is complete. Anything else leads to madness. And incomplete drafts.

How do you write a great opening line? Don't. That is seriously my best advice. Leave it alone. Write the story. Let the opening line take care of itself until well after the story is complete. Only then, I'd argue, do you have complete insight into the characters, the story arc, and the emotion that will help you come up with a worthy opening line. I'll then suggest that you focus on crafting an opening line that sets reader expectations for the rest of the story. The reason being that a brilliant first line, while a lovely thing, sets the bar for the rest of the writing. Start with a bar that's too high and you leave yourself no where to go. Every single line that follows will need to be equally polished and brilliant. Great work if you can get it. I'm not saying throw away your first line. I am arguing that over polishing a first line or first page or first chapter creates something that no longer serves the rest of the story and creates an expectation that the rest of the story might not uphold. I'm more interested that the writing sounds like you than I am in how clever the first line might be.

"Sun glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain Ari Idylle dead in her tracks." 

That's the first line from my first published novel. Nothing special. But the 'uh oh' moment should tell you that you're about to go on an adventure with Ari. And it should maybe convey that while today isn't shaping up the way she'd expected, there aren't any dead bodies laying around. Because I didn't go with gore and horror to open Ari's story, you might catch the hint from this opening that there's tension to come, but the story isn't trying to be gritty or horrific.You might pick up that since this character is a captain that she's experienced and competent. You might assume that she's clever or at least observant. 

When I wrote that first line, I wasn't aiming for any of the stuff above. I wanted to start the story on action. Nothing more. No normal world. No easing into conflict. I wanted my angle of attack to be a cliff face that Ari (and the reader) slammed into. I wanted those things because it was what I like in a story. I can't help but feel that if you write an opening sentence to your story that reflects what you like in a story, I'm going to know right away what kind of book you've written and that sentence is going to tell me far more than you ever intended. 

That's a great opening line.

Two Sides to Every First Line

The last piece you’ll rewrite is what you wrote first.

Up until this week I had two different views on bookish first lines—who knew! Everything I’d read and been told from my beginning as a writer was to make the first line count, hook your reader, it’s the most important line. 

And up until this week I’ve been following that advice. After reading my fellow SFF Sevener’s posts I realized that as a reader I have a very different opinion on first lines: the first line rarely makes it or breaks it, it’s the first page (or first few pages sometimes) that either hook me or lose me. 

I’m not going to list examples here, a lot of work goes into first lines and I don’t want to knock anyones efforts, but in my recent reads I noted some very boring first lines. I kid you not, one book I reread the opening line three times as I thought I can’t believe a publishing house let this pass! Of these interesting first line reads, a couple of them turned out to be DNFs and the others ended up being solid! Surprise! 

If you don’t know, my reading tastes are eclectic and numerous and get excited over a powerful line or well delivered idea. Yes, this reader is a sucker for those perfectly crafted hooks. And yes, sometimes those works of art disappoint when in novel form. 

So…do I really believe in the strongest line of your book being the lead off? Or, to go with a baseball analogy here since I’ve been watching my boys play, is it better to stack the lineup with line drives so the bases are loaded when you get the grand slam? 

Anyone with me on this dilemma? As a reader I want to be introduced to a character or world I can’t leave. Can that be done in one sentence—I’m gonna go with not usually. As a writer do I want a strong opening sentence? Of course, but I believe I’m going to abandon the ideal that if I fail to craft a supreme hook of a first sentence I’ve failed to hook my readers. 

That, and I actually really like when book first and last lines reflect one another or are tied together in some way. I strive to do that in my writing and go a little fan-girly when I find a book that’s pulled it off as well. How about you? 

Two Pieces of Advice on Crafting the Perfect Opening Line

Ah, the much-discussed, celebrated, and labored over first line... Is it that important?

(See what I did there?)

Many in the writing and publishing world will go on at length on the critical importance of the opening line of any work, long or short. There are long-standing contests for opening lines - brilliant or cringingly terrible. Writers are expected to trot our their favorite first lines (which I notice is also part of this week's assignment at the SFF Seven). But do those opening lines deserve the significance they're given?

Yes and no. The thing is, first lines are low-hanging fruit. They're easy to pick on. They require very little reading and it's easy to analyze a single line of text. For the teachers, coaches, and advice-givers of all stripes, an opening line is a simple aspect of a work to assess. In that way, they're probably given far more emphasis than they deserve.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of the advice out there - not unlike a lot of writing advice - isn't terribly helpful. Writers are told that their opening line must "hook" the reader, who is presumably like a fish in this analogy, and reel them in to keep reading more. And hopefully buy the work in question. 

And people rhapsodize over favorite opening lines, analyzing brilliance, but - again - this rarely yields useful advice on how to write them.

I spent a lot of years not sure what made an opening line a good one or not. Only recently, with a bunch of published works behind me, have I come across actually useful advice on how to craft an opening line: It needs to establish the sort of story it is, and pose some sort of question. It doesn't have to be a literal question, but it should invite the reader to wonder about something of interest to them.

A famous example of this is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem How Do I Love Thee. (Those who listen to my podcast, First Cup of Coffee, know I've been going down an Elizabeth Barrett Browning/Robert Browning rabbit hole lately. I blame Connie Willis.) Almost anyone can quote the opening line, even if they don't know the rest of the poem: 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

What does this line do? It establishes that the work is a love poem, and invites the reader to wonder about what those ways are. 

Thus, my opening line above: I established what sort of writing this is - an informational article on first lines - and I posed a literal question that I'd be addressing. 

Once I figured out this was all I needed to do, it made crafting that opening line much easier! Here's one of the first ones that I used this technique to write, from DARK WIZARD.

Gabriel Phel crested the last ridge of the notorious Knifeblade Mountains that guarded Elal lands on nearly three sides, and faced the final barrier. 

This first line isn't brilliant by any stretch. What it does, however, is inform the reader that this is an alternate fantasy world, and it invites them to wonder about who Gabriel Phel is, why he's in this inhospitable land, and what this final barrier is. That's it. And you know what? It works. That book has done a better job of hooking new readers than anything else of mine. I think there are other reasons for that book's success, but I think that opening helps.

What's most important to remember is: just because the first line comes first, that doesn't mean it has to be written first. Certainly not perfected first. A lot of writers spend forever crafting that opening, trying to get it perfect - possibly because of this emphasis on first lines - and can circle that effort endlessly. That's my second piece of advice. Craft the opening once the work is finished, or at least drafted. It will wait. And that gives that low-hanging fruit time to ripen.

My First Time...erm, Line

 

The importance of a first line--Do I buy it or not?

Ya know, if you can nail that first line in your book it is absolutely going to work in your favor. It's never not going to be a good thing. Charissa and James gave great examples in their posts from Sunday and Monday. Plus, "Best Of..." lists abound, and who doesn't love the free marketing of landing on those? Okay, okay, we also love the warm fuzzies of readers responding enthusiastically to our prose.

Is your work going to be an instant DNB/DNF if that first sentence doesn't grab the reader? I dare say, nah, as long as you've hooked the reader within the first page. My qualifier is that the longer it takes to hook the reader, the more readers you lose. Imagine the reader's attention being in a sieve, and the only way to plug the holes is with interesting content. At any point in the book, if you have too many holes exposed, the reader is going to get bored and put the book down. 

That's not to say you should fall into the trap of obsessing over your opening line. I've seen too many baby writers feel defeated because they can't "entice within ten words." Courage, my friends! Slap some words on the page and keep going. Write the book. Come back and revise that opening hook (and paragraph) once you've drafted the story. By then, you know your character and your world, so crafting a sticky opening is easier. 

Often, the first thing written is the last thing finished. 

Am I a mistress of hooky first lines? Depends on one's taste, I reckon. Nonetheless, here are the first lines from the first books in their respective series:

From Larcout:  Blood beings could be chattel or they could be char.

From The Burned Spy: The antidote burned worse than the toxin.

From Celestial Ascent (WiP): Summer’s night lay like a coarse wool blanket soaked in bull urine.

From Worthy (WiP): Negative humors held the color of wisteria glistening with fragile dew on a background of sinister blue.

Will those WiP openings change once I finish the drafts? Maybe. Possibly. Maybe not, though. I'm not done drafting the stories yet. 

The importance of a first line.

 Or, how to get a reader interested in your work. As far as I'm concerned you get one chance to make a first impression, and you should make it count.

Is it the most important part of a story? No. But it's rather like the first step into a large body of water. you put your foot in to test whether or not the waters are right for you, and if it's too cold, you might well decide not to go for a swim. 

The first sentence should catch the eye and keep your attention, the same way that an elevator pitch should attract enough interest to get n agent or editor interested in your work. You have one chance to get it right. Why not make that first impression as memorable as you can?

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Stephen King's first sentence from THE GUNSLINGER the first book in the Dark Tower series. It's a strong sentence. Who is the Man in Black? Who is the Gunslinger? What is going on between them? Why is this happening? There are enough questions there to catch your attention, and that's what you need, in my honest opinion.

"It was a pleasure to burn." 

Ray Bradbury's first line in the novel FAHRENHEIT 451. Once again, it sparks the imagination. What's burning and who derives such pleasure from destruction?

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

from J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT. What the hell is a hobbit and why does it live in the ground?

These are simple sentences and in each case, they ask questions that I as a reader, wanted to see answered.

"Looking at the homes, landmarks, and lush green hills, you'd think that Brennert  County and the towns like Wellman were just about postcard perfect, but as is often the case in the south, there are thus not mentioned, places not spoken of in polite society, that hold dark and sometimes even dangerous secrets."

'From THE TOURIST'S GUIDE TO HAUNTED WELLMAN, a forthcoming novel by yours truly and my coauthor, Charles R. Rutledge.

Maybe a little wordy, but once again, there are questions asked that want answers. 

Hopefully, at least. If I'm doing my job the right way.

There are other ways to catch the attention, I remember one book where the first line spoke about a cast iron pan being used to smash a bay's head into pulp in the first line. Of course, I kept reading. How could I not? The book, Ed Lee's THE BIG HEAD, started off with a disturbingly graphic scene of violence and continues on that way relentlessly. It was a dark book, but Lee made it work. his penchant for violence is only made tolerable by some beautiful prose.

The point remains the same in each case. The starting sentence is enough to water the fertile soil of the imagination. From that moment water comes the growth required to keep a reader interested if your writing is good enough.

A weak first sentence is never good for the chances of keeping a reader's attention and why, oh why, would you do that to yourself? That's a death sentence as surely as having your twelve-year-old nephew or niece who can barely draw a decent stick figure handle the front and back cover illustrations for your novel.  And don't get me started on that particular debacle! once upon a time a publisher I knew hired his talentless girlfriend to do the cover for one of my novels. It wasn't pretty. That same novel, with a truly wonderful cover by Lynne Hansen, has had phenomenal sales ever since the book was taken away from those publishers and treated with a little respect. No, not saying which book, but believe me the difference between the covers was monumental and so were the sales.

Listen, you want every advantage you can get when it comes to being noticed favorably. Take the time to do it right. That's really all I can say about the subject.

Keep smmiling,

Jim

First Line Power

Hey all! This week's topic at the SFF Seven is The Importance of the First Line: Do We Buy It or Not?

Back in 2009, when I decided to start writing again, I wanted to learn everything I could about the craft. I can't begin to list all the writerly advice I absorbed that I've since realized doesn't work for every writer or every book. That said, one bit of advice seems to apply to most everyone in the publishing game: A catchy first line can hook your reader. But does it have to?

A hooky first line can act as a sales tool. If someone picks up your book or opens the sample online, that first line can make them curious enough to want to keep reading, thus hopefully purchasing your novel. A strong first line can deliver voice, theme, POV, and cause the formation of the first story question in the reader's mind.

Here's the first line from my novel, The Witch Collector:

It’s been eight long years since the Witch Collector took my sister.

Hopefully, that line entices the reader to want to know more about the above situation, who the Witch Collector is, why he took the POV character's sister, and why the POV character is stating this at the opening of the story.

Here are some of my favorite first lines. Note how each one creates a question for the reader--a desire to know more:

From The Golem and the Jinni:

The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship.

From A Discovery of Witches:

The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable.

From Circe:

When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

But here's the thing about writing advice: it isn't always true. Great novels don't always have great first lines, and yet can still go on to be blockbusters.

I was absolutely enthralled by the novel Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. It's fantastic. But the first line? I love Thursday nights.

Granted, the author relies on the question tool--Why does the character love Thursday nights? Yet that line in no way encapsulates the sci-fi/mind-bending novel that this book is. It does, however, create a question for the reader. Apparently enough of one to keep millions turning pages.

So do I buy into the advice of crafting a great first line? Most of the time. Is it wise for newer writers to craft strong first lines? I believe so. As a newly-published author, I try very hard to intrigue the reader with those first words because I can't risk the opposite. I don't have years of books under my belt or a massive fanbase that would overlook a weak first line. (Not that I'd do it anyway...it's not my style.)

But do I believe it's a must 100% of the time? No.

I'll leave you with the first line from my upcoming novel, City of Ruin, book two in the Witch Walker series:

Thamaos’s ancient temple is deathly quiet, save for the crackling flames of a hundred candles and the sizzle of my blood burning in the offering bowl.

What do you think? Would you read further?

~ Charissa

Top 5 Ways to Be a Happy Writer

I not at all comfortable pretending I know what it takes to be a success as an author. So instead, I think we'll chat a little about what makes me happy as a writer. A subtle shift, maybe, but an important one, I think.

In no particular order, I present Marcella's top 5 ways to be a happy writer.

1.  Writer know thyself.

Know what works for you. Know your process. Know your style, your voice, your genre. Know how your particular weird, creative brain works. If you don't know any of those things, find out. How? By trying all kinds of tools and methods and story types. You find out whether you're a plotter or a pantser by trying to plot a book or by through out your carefully laid out outline and seeing how it goes. You'll figure that one out pretty quickly. 

What's in it for you to know thyself: Trust. You learn to trust yourself and your process. You're harder to derail when a new workshop comes along and tries to tell you that you've been doing it wrong.

2. Create community.

Writing, by necessity, happens in solitude. Writers tend to be just normal enough that few people are willing to off you that 'oh, they're an *artist*' pass, yet writers are categorically odd enough to *need* that pass. Don't believe me? Go visit your browser search history and get back to me.  The best people suited to understand and commiserate with us are other writers. Not our families. Gods. Not our poor, beleaguered families. Your community need not be huge. A few other writers you can talk with about story arcs, business strategies, and writer drama will be enough to keep you from feeling like you've been chained up in an ivory tower.

3. Create accountability.

Use your community to help one another, if that works for you. If a little competition gets your writing blood going, set up a sprint room where other writers can join and you can compare word counts between sprints. Or set up a regular meeting time to write with another writer who wants the comfort of knowing someone else out there is writing, too, but without the pressure of comparing numbers. Meet at a coffee shop to sit together and mutually ignore one another while you write and drink your preferred beverages. While it helps to not always be alone, it really helps to know that someone else in the world is counting on you at the same time you're counting on them. It's common to find we'll do for someone else what we won't for ourselves.

4. Make space.

Make space in your day to day for writing. Make space inside you for deep work - which is a function of focus - which is attained with training. Make space inside your head for learning more, whether from classes or from other writers, or from reading other people's stories. Make physical space for writing, too. Whether it's a specific seat in the house, or a table, or a room, or a local dive bar. You need a place you can rely on where you can go and put the rest of the world on a shelf while you attend to creating your worlds. 

5. Be unapologetically you.

Write what sets your imagination alight. Never forget there's someone in the world making incredible bank writing about sexy, space-going dinosaurs. There's no reason you can't create something completely implausible and weird. In fact, I'll argue that you should. The moment you begin censoring yourself or pulling back out of fear over what you want to say, you begin to die as a writer and as a person. Listen. Just because you write something, it doesn't mean you have to share it with anybody. Allow. No limits. Not while you're writing. Those are second thoughts are for later. When you're editing and deciding what content will and will not be seen by other eyes.

Jeffe's Five Effective Work Habits for Writing Productivity

My series rebrand of the six-book epic romantic fantasy saga, Sorcerous Moons, is complete! Book One, LONEN'S WAR, releases Friday in Kindle Unlimited (KU), with each subsequent book releasing one/day for the following week. 

This is my first (and possibly last!) real test of whether my books can be successful in KU. I've run A/B tests before and I've always made 2-3x as much money in sales on Amazon alone than via page reads in KU. But we shall see! Tell your KU-loving friends. :D 

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is The Write Stuff: What five effective work habits make a professional writer the most successful? I can only tell you mine and that's defining "success" as being productive. The other kind of success - fame, money, adulation, awards - depends hugely on timing and serendipity. But we're focusing on work habits, so here are mine:

1. Consistency

You don't have to write every day, at the same time every day - though I do extoll that as THE single most effective method for building a consistent writing habit - but consistency is key. I build my schedule around protecting my writing time and that habit carries me through all sorts of difficulties.

2. Persistence

The other piece of building a writing habit is keeping it going. So many writers give up without finishing a book - or finishing multiple books! - or they give up after a few books. Or, when attempting to write consistently, they take time off, change their minds, prioritize something else. Persistence is what gets words on the page.

3. Focus

Shut out the world, ignore the new shinies and frolicking plot bunnies. Close the office door, put in the noise-cancelling ear buds, disconnect the internet and silence the phone. Focus on the writing and only on the writing for the time that you're doing it. Think about the story and only that. All other considerations come later.

4. Integrity

Write what you believe in and write it your way. Don't chase trends or try to make your stories a clone of someone else's. This may not seem like an effective work habit, but it is! Keeping to the integrity of the story YOU are telling allows you to focus on that and not the market, or whatever the loud voices are currently shouting about.

5. Flexibility

The previous four have all been about ritual and drawing firm lines, but with those come a need for flexibility. Be ready to change up what you're doing if you have to. Reinvent yourself regularly. Try rebranding series and putting it in Kindle Unlimited. (See what I did there?) The world changes, sometimes rapidly, and we have to be ready to change with it.