Tag Archives: creative writng

June 9, 2015 · 9:52 am

Comma Power

I have been thinking about the inordinate power of commas.

I had an intuitive understanding of this power from my manipulation of my own prose as a fiction writer. But I credit Martha Kolln’s textbook, Rhetorical Grammar, for making concrete, as an object of explicit study, what my instinctive ear told me. I never succeeded in passing on to many students a real, self-conscious understanding of how vital such a simple little mark can be to communicating precisely what we want readers to hear: there never seemed to be enough time to think much about style in the classes I taught. But if I had it to do over again, I would indulge myself by finding that time. I’ve worked hard not to be the natural Grammar Curmudgeon I am, but by golly, punctuation is a tool! We’ve all seen those fun exercises where simply moving a few little marks around completely changes meaning (a simple example is “Woman without her man is nothing,” which, with just a few tweaks, comes to mean its opposite). But punctuation also controls rhythm and emphasis, and in this regard, the comma’s a tough little drill sergeant, lining up every word in its place.

So: some disquisitions on commas. Rather, on what I think is going on with commas, with thanks for Kolln for systematizing these observations for me.

Today, emphasis. Read this sentence aloud:

There is in fact a reason for what happened.

Now add the commas in the most obvious places, around the “interrupter,” which grammar books tell us commas should, actually, set off:

There is, in fact, a reason for what happened.

To my ear, and Kolln substantiates this, the commas change the intonation and emphasis. In the second sentence, as in all uses of commas in this way, the emphasis is cast on the words before the commas. So the sentence now reads

There IS, in FACT, . . .

So we get increased attention to the “facticity” of what’s being claimed. The meaning hasn’t particularly changed, but the way we hear it has. We get a beat on the FACT of this utterance.

But that’s not all that happens. The commas break up the flow of the sentence, I would assert, in ways that reinforce meter. In this case, it’s our old favorite, iambic pentameter, the most ubiquitous meter for English speakers (Shakespeare’s meter). And that not only asks us to hit “is” and “fact” with extra emphasis, but also “REAson.” So that the sentence reads,

There IS, in FACT, a REAson for what happened.

This effect is, in part, due to what Kolln calls the “it cleft,” which I’ll investigate in a later post. But the commas hammer home the shift to emphasis on “REAson,” telling readers that this reason is going to be the focus of the ensuing follow-up.

I want to look more in upcoming posts at the comma’s power to break up sentences and direct utterance as words transfer from page to mind. For now, do you have examples of how commas control words in your own writing? Decisions you’ve made about how to re-organize sentences to take advantage of this little power tool?

7 Comments

Filed under College writing, Learning to write, punctuation for writers of novels

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 4, 2015 · 1:16 pm

Rules for First Lines of Fiction: Rule 1

Rules you don’t actually have to follow 🙂

But for fun. . . .

Now that I’ve looked at four examples I found compelling, I feel emboldened to draw some generalizations.

As I do so, I realize I’m starting to wander into territory already pretty well covered by eons of literary, narrative, aesthetic, and rhetorical criticism. I’m not about to chase down citations. I’m going to talk about the pieces of this theorizing that have resonated with me, maybe not as theory (so Don’t Panic!) but as just what seems to work for me.

Rule 1: I already said I thought compelling first lines must make a promise. But what kind of promise? For me—and this goes as far back at least as Sophocles—a promise of a world overturned.

In other words, I want to sense that I’m about to enter a place where my day-to-day expectations will be thwarted. Things WILL NOT go on as usual. I will see, traverse, a new landscape, one with volcanic fissures I must be careful not to stumble into. This rule holds even for novels that are not mystery/suspense. A Visit from the Goon Squad takes me into a disquieting place, a hotel bathroom, where what is “usual” is decidedly not going to be “usual” for me.

We read to enter alternate realities (duh). This is true even—especially—for those of us who may read the same authors, enter the same worlds, over and over. We enter that foreign world again and again, by choice. Is this escape, then? Not necessarily. I learned of many new worlds in Americanah. But these worlds were not so much worlds where I could escape my own (though I guess I did quite a bit), but rather where I could see my own world slant, in Emily Dickinson’s image: upset, overturned. That can be an unsettling experience as opposed to one that lulls.

So I want the promise that I’m going to see slant. That I’m going to have to reconnoiter to know where I am. That I may just have to get the shotgun if things get out of hand. But that in the end, I will be a native of a larger landscape than before.

Do I need a promise that order will be restored? We enter here the classical territory of the well-wrought form, where the world is purged of the scapegoat entity that disrupted it and dust settles—NOT a metaphor/clichĂ© of abiding peace: dust is detritus, no? Indeed, I read with a firm sense of the artifice of any endings I’m going to encounter. In most mysteries, things settle, but only until the next body is discovered. In Americanah, Ceiling is invited in, but to what? More of the messiness we all experience in trying to live with each other.

As I look at that Dickinson poem, i will posit that reading fiction does “tell all the truth but tell it slant”: tell it in such a way that it’s bearable. That’s the meaning of “vicarious experience.” We experience disruptions in a form that offers the (false?) possibility that they can be resolved, that artifice is powerful enough to adjust all disproportion, smooth all curves. We enter a work of fiction with hope that, even if at the end all is still chaos, our minds can create a unified whole, a “reading.” The need for such a “reading,” a “making sense” of even the most inchoate flotsam, seems built into us—at least, into me.

I do think that such artifice is built into the first lines I find compelling. I note that each I’ve looked at is ironic, containing both the disrupted world and the world that was, but will not be possible to return to. The old days. A quiet rural county. A gymnasium. A hotel. Each of these used-to-be’s is attached to something that pokes a hole in it. I see both, side by side.

So Rule 1 for me: stand me on a cliff and let me feel the ground under me begin to crumble. Let me look down and see myself slide. Promise me a chance to build something out of the rubble, even if it’s only my own feeble creation.

That’s my Rule 1. What’s you

2 Comments

Filed under Learning to write

Tagged as , , ,

May 24, 2015 · 11:01 am

Great First Lines, Part IV

It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.

—A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan

To me, this is the most subtle first line of all, in the promise it makes, and it’s the only one of the four examples that is not, on its face, a novel of violence, mystery, or suspense. Yet, despite receiving no promise of violent conflict, I remember this as one of the most arresting first pages of a novel I had ever read–arresting and disorienting. In both those ways, this sentence is a fitting start to this arresting and disorienting book.

I say disorienting because Egan does not give us a straightforward narrative experience. A Visit from the Goon Squad is a collection of loosely linked episodes in the characters’ lives. This method is not unfamiliar to modern readers, but it still demands a relinquishing of expectations and an understanding that whatever narrative thread emerges has to be one we, as readers, invent ourselves.

The construction of this first line invites us to do some such construction. This construction is not uncommon in fiction, memoir, history. In such syntax, we are promised that we will soon know what “it” is, and what the “usual” way is. Yet there’s a hint in this grammatical choice that what we are about to be given is not unfamiliar to us. The narrator (the character? We don’t know yet) confesses to a history of experiencing whatever “it” is often enough to have a “usual” expectation of what is to follow. We’re invited to imagine that this history is somewhere behind us as well, so that we have this hint of an expectation of our own. We share a history with a character who has not yet been named; we cannot name this person, yet we share a “usual” history, and somewhere low in our souls we feel we should know what “it” is. And this is a history that involves bathrooms in hotels. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Writing and teaching writing

Tagged as , , ,

May 12, 2015 · 1:28 pm

Contest! Contest! Contest!

Green River Writers 2015 Writing Contest

Green River Writers 2015 Writing Contest. Two Grand Prizes and 14 other categories, including fiction, non-fiction, & poetry. Over $1700 in prizes. Grand prize categories- $3 each entry for GRW members; $5 each entry for non-members. All other categories- $2 each entry or $12 maximum for GRW members; $3 each entry for non-members, but they may join GRW and receive the member rate.  Deadline: August 31, 2015. Details: http://www.greenriverwriters.org/

Will Lavender, the NYT-bestselling author who recently honored us with an interview, will be judging the “Novel First-Chapter” category I’m sponsoring. If you have a novel in progress, enter your first chapter!

BTW, if you’re in the Louisville area, Green River Writers is a wonderful community. I don’t know what I would do without my monthly GRW group!

Leave a comment

Filed under Interviews, Writers' groups, writing contests

Tagged as , , ,

May 3, 2015 · 1:31 pm

Great Novel First Lines: Part 3

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

This one’s harder to analyze. Yet I think it qualifies as a terrific opening line for a haunting, even painful novel. I’m interested in how it does the work of leading me into such a book.

Two things stand out. First and simplest, “had once been” tells us that normalcy is endangered. Something staid and familiar is no more. Gymnasiums, those places that for me signify high-school PE with its silly short jumpsuits and sweaty-sock smells, Friday-night basketball games with their creaky bleachers and more sweaty smells, assemblies and pep rallies with their innocent pom-pom dances showcasing the popular girls: all no more. I see in my mind’s eye a building clawed at by vines and surrounded by crumbling brick, toppled trees, things that rustle in the overgrown grass.

There’s no reason, necessarily, to see the gymnasium this way. Except for “[w]e slept” there. Now, when do people sleep in gyms? After disasters, when the gym opens up as a shelter. So there has been a disaster, a loss. But not a recent, temporary one. In that case, the sentence would have read, “We slept in the gymnasium.” Because even after a hurricane, the gym will supposedly go back to being a gym. No, “what had once been” cuts off that line of speculation. This gym is done.

Do I think from this line that gyms in general are done? There’s such a hint, again from the fact that “we slept” there. This is a world in which people, this “we,” need a place to sleep and this is what they are given. A gym. Hard floors, cots at best, echoing barracks-like atmosphere. Moreover, we’re asked to compare this world where people sleep in gyms with a world in which “the gymnasium” is a familiar environment that doesn’t have to be explained. We all know what a gymnasium is. But “the gymnasium,” that fixture of every high-school and college campus, is not a place where people sleep.

So why do they sleep there? The novel’s promise is to tell us. What disaster of what magnitude is conjured by “had once been”?

The word “once” does work of its own: “Once upon a time.” Loooonng time ago. Once there were trees and a river (apocalyptic 1961 song from the Limelighters). All by itself, the word “once” used in this time sense speaks of things long gone and not coming back, except in dreams.

It conjures mythology as well. A time when monsters and gods roamed. The “once” referred to in this sentence, though, is not the time of gods and monsters; this “once” is ordinary time. Yet, that hint of myth gently infuses the sentence: perhaps there will be gods and monsters—if not then, now.

“We” is easy. I am teased into wanting to know who “we” are. Will I see myself in that “we” at some point? There will be a lot of us; it takes a gym to accommodate us. Alternatively, “we” could be a couple of vagabonds who have sought shelter on this ruined campus. Or “we” could be a platoon of soldiers on the march. Either way, “we” are not reposing on satin pillows, under silk sheets. We are not here by choice; the gym is not Club Med. I sense a stop along the way to somewhere more permanent for this “we,” and I both fear and want to know where the next stop will be.

It occurs to me that the word “gymnasium” and not “gym” hints at foreignness–a time with which I am not all that familiar. A time when calling things by their formal names may offer some touchstone, some anchor, in a world where expectations are adrift.

That this sentence is so short, that it doesn’t explain itself, also adds to its accomplishment. It’s a bald statement of fact that the speaker accepts. There’s no protest, no sign of a need to “show” lurid details. I’ve made the case that there’s nothing mundane in this situation, yet the speaker’s revelation could not itself be more ordinary: There was this former gymnasium and that’s where we slept. Not dozed, rested, napped. Connotations held at arms’ length. As in the first line from Paris Trout, it’s in the ordinary that we’re promised doom.

And it’s in the way the ordinary is dropped without context into this most nebulous “we” and “once,” both untethered, that the unsettling contrast emerges.

I note that I’ve been focusing on first lines of novels of suspense and mystery. That says something about my own preferences, of course. But I wrote a paper in grad school arguing that all fiction is ultimately mystery, and certainly it’s all suspense. There’s always something that has to be found out, by the characters, by the reader, and whether or not it’s found out in time is what we read to know.

But for next time, I have one that’s not a mystery/suspense novel.

What are your candidates for “best first lines”? Why?

Leave a comment

Filed under Learning to write, Writing and teaching writing

Tagged as , , , ,

April 17, 2015 · 12:21 pm

Best First LInes of Novels, Part 2

This is the second in my series of attempts to understand what makes the first lines of novels compelling. Post your own favorites!

Earlier, I wrote on Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. Today:

In the spring of that year an epidemic of rabies broke out in Ether County, Georgia.–Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

I don’t remember as much about this novel as I should, but ever since I’ve remembered this stunning first line.

The heart-stopping word, obviously, is “rabies.”

What does “rabies” conjure? Easy: madness. And that’s “trouble” with a capital M. It’s a special kind of madness, a diseased madness. The diseased among us, against whom we must lock our doors. I find myself reminded of that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, both the book and the movie, when Atticus shoots the mad dog. That’s another element of the word’s force: something benign that moves freely through our lives suddenly begins to foam at the mouth and attack. Its eyes go flat and malevolent as it staggers toward us. We lock the door, but we cluster behind it, meeting those blank eyes.

And not just an isolated dog in the street. Dozens of them. Epidemics get everyone. Us.

So this is going to be a book about madness. And men in the street with shotguns. In the hot sun. The hot, bright sun that goes with the word “rabies” itself is part of the horror. This madness does not have to creep about at night. It can get us, make us part of the horror, in the least moment of inattention. It can reel toward us right in the middle of hanging out the wash.

The sentence tells us it’s spring, true, not hot summer. But “spring” becomes an ironic juxtaposition. The gasping heat of that dog in the sun intrudes implacably. Right in the glorious springtime, when we’re out picking dandelions.

A smaller component for which my interpretation may be a stretch: the verb “broke out.” Its metaphorical weight is arguably several-fold. We “break out” in boils—a pestilential visitation with Biblical undertones. But also, something that “breaks out” has been among us all along, inadequately (it turns out) contained. It has let itself loose upon us. Get the shotgun.

In support of this reading of the verb “broke out,” I posit how different this line would have read had it stated, “The people of Ether County, Georgia, experienced an occurrence of rabies that spring.”

Similarly, “In the spring of that year,” two anapests, themselves have a Biblical rhythm. An “old” rhythm, potentially mythic. Not the way you write on Facebook. Somebody wants to take you to a strange land.

Finally, to me, the choice of “Ether County” for a location also opens up images of those dangerous creeping-madness streets. “Georgia,” of course, calls up “hot sun.” I have special associations with rural Georgia that may be my own: tall grass in vacant lots alongside dirt roads past ancient sagging barns where wasps hum. Not everyone will experience quite these same connotations. But “ether”: ether is what they use when they want to dim your mind. Do things to you. Ether is dizzy and queasy. Under its influence, you will lose your way.

So the book will take us to a strange land that is superficially familiar, but where things we thought we’d contained can come at us. Where we will wander out into sunlight only to find it full of dark things.

All in one sentence. Sixteen words. A whole book is set up.

Leave a comment

Filed under Learning to write

Tagged as , , ,

April 12, 2015 · 10:43 am

Blog Interview Part 2: Will Lavender!

Welcome to Part 2 of our interview with Will Lavender, author of Obdience and Dominance! Please feel free to shoot me some comments or questions. Is your writing process like Will’s? Have you had similar experiences? What do you think of MFAs and two-book contracts? Let us know!

6. What is the “best education” for a writer? For example, are there particular ways of reading that writers should cultivate? Would you recommend college courses, MFAs, online forums or webinars?

I actually recommend the MFA. It’s gotten a lot of flack over the years (especially recently), but my MFA experience was so unusual, and so outside the realm of anything I’d ever done, that it was highly beneficial. At no other time in your career will have you have that many eyes on your unpublished work. It can be, if used correctly, incredibly helpful.

Otherwise I think writers should always be versed in their medium. If there are novels out there that are like your manuscript, then you should know about them. I do a lot of events with aspiring writers and am often surprised at how poorly read people are. I’ll mention books—extremely popular books—that folks will not recognize. You obviously don’t have to have Penguin’s spring catalog memorized, but it’s always beneficial to know the landscape so that you can write toward it.

7. Do you get feedback on works in progress (from editors, writers’ groups, friends, colleagues)? If so, how do you recommend “managing” feedback: for example, are there ways writers can evaluate feedback to determine what to use and what to set aside?

I generally don’t like to talk about my WIPs, but what happens in publishing is that they need you to talk about your unfinished work—they don’t want to be surprised by anything, especially by someone without a strong history of sales. I’ve gone off-track a few times while working on novels and had to be reigned in by my agent and editor.

But the issue for me is that the more I talk about it, the more mystery that’s sucked out of the thing. I like to work in total secret and then to be confident in the work before I show it to anyone. I’m a firm believer that things can be jinxed, and I’ve jinxed quite a few WIPs by blathering about them.

8. Do you have a sense of how writers should address ongoing changes in the writing/publishing world (online publishing, self-publishing, death of independent bookstores, blogging)?

Writers should always keep their options open. One should never say, “I would never self-publish,” or “I hate traditional publishing,” because you never know when you might have to go that route.

Things have radically changed in publishing just in the last five to seven years. Imagine five to seven years from now. I think there will be an entirely new and unthought-of process for getting books out into the world. Yes, printed books will never die, but they’ve been staggered and the writer should respect that.

The traditional publishing model has also been staggered. When people ask me about self-publishing I always recommend starting at the very, very top. Try to get your dream agent. If that doesn’t happen, then begin to adjust your goals. If you end up having to self-publish, then you do your best with that book and start another one. I think writers make a mistake sometimes by putting their soul into a book. The best and most successful writers are those who are always looking to reinvent themselves and begin something fresh.

9. How do you make a space for writing in your personal life?

It’s difficult with two young children. I generally write on evenings and weekends, but one of the more important things about writing well is sticking to a routine. Very hard to find that when you have a family and a 9-5 job. It takes a rigor that some of these professional novelists have down but the rest of us struggle with daily.

10. Is there anything you’d advise an aspiring writer NOT to do? (Pretty broad, so take it where you will.)

This is a tough one because there’s so much advice that works for some people and not for others, and some “never do this” kind of stuff that great writers do all the time.

I think one of the main things that aspiring writers struggle with is confidence. Confidence is an innate thing, maybe, but I believe a lack of confidence is also a byproduct of “art.” It’s not the coolest thing in the world to stand up for your creation. The artist has been taught to be modest, to be almost shy, and to “let the work speak for itself.” Those that get out in front of the art—and if you’ve ever been to a book fair you’ve seen the people who adamantly try to sell their work—are labeled as hucksters while the quiet ones among us who demure are the geniuses.

But to be published, you have to be able to talk coherently and strongly about your work. And for the work to even be publishable, you have to have belief in it—not the unerring, I’ll-never-change-a-single-word-of-this belief, but more of a sense that you know what the book is going to be and how it’s going to be sold. Many writers I talk to seem unsure about their product; “Well, I’m working on a zombie novel now, but I’m thinking of changing to a…” No, that’s not a good tack. One needs to be firm about their WIP and what it’s going to look like once it’s finished.

11. What are you working on now? In what directions are you taking your career?

I’m still under the aforementioned two-book contract. The novel I’m working on now is a thriller about…well, I don’t want to jinx it. I’ll let everyone know when it’s finished.

Leave a comment

Filed under Interviews, Self-publishing, What Not To Do in Writing Novels, Working with literary editors

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

April 11, 2015 · 11:43 am

Interview: NYT Best-Seller Will Lavender!

Hello, all,

This is first of our two-part interview with Will Lavender, author of Obedience and Dominance. It’s always great to hear from people working their way through the publishing world!

Please send comments and questions. If we have some, perhaps we can arrange for a Q&A down the road!

1. Give us a sense of your writing trajectory. For example, what kinds of writing have you done and how have these experiences informed (or not) your fiction writing?

I write what the publisher calls “literary thrillers.” My novels are all set in or around college campuses, and I use my experience as a former writing instructor often in my work. I use not only my interactions with students but also simple things like the geography of the campuses where I’ve taught. For my first novel, Obedience, it was really important for me to have the campus mapped out in my mind, so I used bits and pieces of all the colleges I attended and appropriated certain quirks of each of them to my fictional campus.

Otherwise I think we’re always using bits and pieces of ourselves. It’s impossible to write well without some sense of the biographical. I find myself using phrases and words I overhear in the world; I’ll catch a turn of phrase on NPR and it will invariably end up in my writing. Writers are sort of receptacles for language and culture. The best writers use that information wisely and artfully.

2. Where do you get your ideas for your novels? Do you have a particular creative process for coming up with ideas?

The best ideas I come up with are what-ifs. I find that playing out a scenario in my mind helps kickstart my imagination. When I’m really writing well, I’m coming up with stuff—language, prose, ideas—that’s borderline weird. It’s only in the editing process that you reign in those things. But in the drafting itself, I think writers who really allow themselves to explore and hunt out unfamiliar territories have the most success. It definitely makes the drudgery of writing a novel easier.

3. What, in your experience were the most challenging parts of the publication process (e.g., finding agents and editors, working with editors, working with publishers, etc.) and how did you address these challenges? What were the most rewarding?

The most challenging part about publishing is staying published. I found getting an agent and my first book deal relatively calm. After that things got hectic, because when that first book comes out you’re saddled with the one thing that keeps writers afloat: sales numbers. My second novel didn’t do as well, but I was lucky to have a two-book contract in the bag before that book was released. Fulfilling that contract has taken me the better part of three years, because the publisher is concerned about the numbers of my second book. It’s a nerve-jangling thing, and it’s one of the reasons that I think it’s always better to work from a finished product rather than a novel-in-progress. My first novel was finished except for the editing. My other novels have been unfinished and have been bought at various stages of their completion. This means that the writer has to fulfill the contract by finishing the novel—that feels to me like working backwards. I would rather be rewarded for a completed thing than have to push to complete that thing under a set of parameters that are at times not my own.

4. Writers in all genres today have to do a lot of self-promotion. Have you been involved in promotion for your books, and if so, what has that experience been like? For example, what has been most difficult, what has been most effective, how did you develop your marketing skills?

All writers are going to have to do some marketing. I’ve done a little, but I’m not very good at it. Some people—a friend I went to college with named Tiffany Reisz writes erotic romance, and she’s hellaciously skilled at interacting with her fans; it’s something that intrigues me but I don’t have the wit or creativity to do it well—are great at it. Others, like me, not so much.

One thing I try to do is answer all my e-mail, even if it’s negative. I always respond when people write to me, and I’ve been lucky to receive quite a bit of correspondence from readers.

Otherwise I do what everyone else does. I Facebook a little, tweet a tad, go to conferences and so on. I think people will be interested in a good book. Bad books don’t get much publicity even if the writer is a kind of PR savant. It helps if you have an online footprint, but it always comes back to the writing.

5. Are there books or other sources of advice or information that you would recommend for aspiring fiction writers?

Stephen King’s On Writing. For me, that’s the list.

Tomorrow: Part 2!

1 Comment

Filed under Finding literary agents for writers, Interviews, Myths and Truths for writers, What Not To Do in Writing Novels, Working with literary editors

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 7, 2015 · 4:49 pm

Blog Interview! Will Lavender, Author of Dominance and Obedience: This Weekend!

Saturday and Sunday, April 11 and 12, I’ll be posting a two-part blog interview with New York Times best-selling author Will Lavender, author of Dominance and Obedience. Stop by to learn about Will’s experiences working with major publishers and developing ideas for his “literary thrillers.” Chime in with your own experiences. I’m excited and I hope you are, too!

1 Comment

Filed under Interviews, Working with literary editors

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 1, 2015 · 3:25 pm

First Lines of Novels: What Works?

They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.–My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

In the spring of that year an epidemic of rabies broke out in Ether County, Georgia.–Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.–The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.–A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan

I’m collecting first line of novels that I think provide particularly good models and possibly rules of thumb for those of us hoping for just that one read. Why are these so important? I can’t help remembering my trip to the Backspace Conference in New York, sitting around a table for a “two-pages-two-minutes” critique with editors and agents. Reader after reader got stopped before getting past one-minute-one-page, or in some cases, thirty-seconds-one-paragraph. “This is too familiar,” said the agent. “I’ve heard this a million times before,” said the editor.

That experience impressed on me something my own experience as a browser in bookstores confirms: yes, the language of your whole book has to sing, but if you want people to pay the price of the concert, the first line has to be so high and clear and pure it blasts through their earphones as they’re passing on the street.

I thought I’d spend a few posts thinking about why these are examples of first lines that did that for me, in hopes of deriving some ideas as to how it’s done. I’d love it if readers would post their own favorites, with some speculation as to what makes the lines work. Be specific! Don’t just tell us “I like this” or “It works for me.” Why does it work? How does it work? So we can see whether we’re hitting your criteria in our own efforts.

Obviously, it’s not that the first line carries the book. The paragraphs that follow have to bear out the promise. But I do think that one strength of these lines is that they do make a promise. We read on to see if that promise is going to be kept.

Okay, the Daphne du Maurier line: what promise does it make?

It’s actually fairly simple at first glance–this is a haunted place. Only something bad can be set in motion here.

That promise resonates for me because I’m a firm believer in the truism that in narrative, only trouble is interesting. Promise your readers upcoming trouble in twelve simple words and they will at least finish the paragraph.

There’s more going on, though, I submit. This, like Rebecca, is to a great extent a Gothic novel, and “the old days” conjure the fatally romantic past that, in Gothic novels, no one will escape. The old days aren’t gone; they’re hovering in the shadow cast by this nameless “they” whose memory just won’t be expunged. The whole atmosphere of the book emerges: something looming. Its shadow is that of the noose.

I hear the rhythm of the sentence as well:

They used to HANG men /at Four TURNings /in the OLD days

It breaks into three parts, like a poetic stanza, with an accent on the next to last syllable of each phrase. We almost have three anapests, with a falling syllable after each. There’s all kinds of literary and neuro-cognitive speculation as to why rhythm captures us as it does; suffice it to note here that the accented moments are the central moments that almost deliver a message in themselves: HANG, TURN, OLD. Something old is going to turn on us and deliver us to that noose.

I’m going to finish the series before I try to generalize some rules from this example. I’m curious whether I’ll see the same things in all four.

4 Comments

Filed under Finding literary agents for writers, Learning to write, Working with literary editors, Writing and teaching writing

Tagged as , , , , , ,