Friday Favorites

Christopher Jackson said it best at Fuel Your Writing:

Great opening lines are perfectly crafted, set the tone for the story to follow, and usually raise questions in the reader’s mind that they want to read on and find answers to. The best ones transcend the story that follows, they are quotable and find themselves part of culture far beyond simply being the first sentence in a book.

 So we begin our Friday Favorites inspired by collectors of first-lines from around the world...

From Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible:

Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.

This opening sentence intrigues us with "a ruin so strange," because aren't all ruins strange in their own way? But the second half of it says the strangeness of it must be so bizarre that the ruin never happened. How is that possible? Our brains are set off-balance and the only way to right ourselves is to continue reading!

Hooked on Hooks Critique

Tinkering with that first sentence or the first paragraph of your WIP?

Here at The Good Hook, you can share either one and the readers of this blog can give you their thoughts on it!

Please send your first sentence or first paragraph to thegoodhook(at)yahoo(dot)com, and we will let you know the day your hook will be posted so you can let all of your followers know to stop by and critique your hook.

First Sentences are Doors to Worlds

Ursula Le Guin wrote these words to inspire us all to open a book and delve into a world of the writer's imagination but our own experience.

And as writers, we are singers carrying the reader through the door and along a journey in the new world.

She writes again:

“It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing not only with the kind of accuracy of language absolutely essential to fantasy-making, but with real music in the words as well. Wherever Pat Rothfuss goes with the big story that begins with The Name of the Wind, he’ll carry us with him as a good singer carries us through a song.”

If you haven't read Patrick Rothfuss's book, The Name of the Wind, I will share with you the opening from the prologue. His words keep us wondering what happens next:

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

This opening immediately tilts the balance of our minds.
What, silence has three parts?
And it is night, so why is the Waystone Inn so quiet?

We need to know more. We are hooked.

Three Authors on Writing Great Hooks

Ann Whitford Paul

Author of Writing Picture Books

(Click HERE for a detailed interview with Ann on writing!) (This link will take you to my former blog, Zook Book Nook)

Dive Into Your Story with the 6 W's:

Who is the main character

What is the problem, goal, or conflict

When does the story occur

Where is it taking place

What is the tone of the story

WOW! the reader with the opening line

8 Ways to Create a WOW! with the First Line:

Time

Mood

Setting

Opinion

Provocative Statement

Middle of the Action

Conflict

Scrapbook (letter, journal entry, newspaper article)

Les Edgerton

Author of Hooked

(This entire book is about the opening of your WIP,

so I'll only pick out some key points)

First Line Successes:

Give the reader an unexpected response to an event

Give the reader a character who is "cut out of different cloth than Everyman"

Give the reader trouble (either past, present, or future)

Give the reader pleasure, then "drop the forbidden apple into your Garden of Eden"

Give the reader a reason to read the second sentence; provoke the reader's curiosity

Openings to Avoid:

A dream

An alarm clock buzzing

Too little dialogue

Opening with dialogue

James Scott Bell

Author of Plot & Structure

Grab the Reader:

Action

Raw Emotion

Look-Back Hook

Attitude

Prologues

Bond the Reader and Character:

Identify with being a real human being

Sympathy (from jeopardy, hardship, underdog, vulnerability)

Likability

Inner conflict

These authors provide much more detail on the topic of writing hooks,
so please check out their books!

 Have you written a post about hooks on your blog?
Please leave the URL to that post in my comments!

Bad First Impressions

Off the book, I like to think we can recover from bad first impressions. After all, we've all been there.

The day we woke up too late to shower, or even brush our teeth.
Barking at our toddler in the grocery store, because the 100th "I want" has put us over the edge.
Making a joke within the first few minutes of meeting someone who doesn't have an ounce of understanding that life is too short to not be sarcastic.

How do we recover?

Apologize. Smile. Admit your mistake. Laugh at yourself. Make the right first impression the second and third time around.


But that's off the book.

How many times have you picked a book off a shelf in a store, read the first paragraph and put it back for whatever reason? It didn't hook you. Are you likely to pick it back up? The author can't be there, holding our hand, admitting the mistake, urging us to give it one more try.

I have picked some books back up and opened them to the first page again. But 9 times out of 10, I pick it up because I'm more curious about the idea of the book based on the synopsis on the back. Maybe the first few sentences didn't hook me. Maybe I was wrong to get a bad first impression. Maybe, just maybe the second impression will win me over.

If this is one of the main reasons I pick a book back up, hoping for a better impression, it tells me the synopsis on the back of the book is darn well important.

On the second read, however, if that first opening paragraph still hasn't hooked me, I put the book back on the shelf and move on.

Good thing humans are more forgiving when it comes to first impressions off the book!

Letting That Hook Go

You may fall in love with a line you've written, and if it happens to be the first one that opens into your story, you fall twice as hard. This hook is like your first kiss, your first acceptance, your first step toward the best story you've ever written... making it all that much harder to let it go when you discover it doesn't quite fit.

The opening sentences to your story should accomplish three things:

1. Character
2. Plot
3. Tone

It's entirely possible that you may write a fantastic first, second, and third sentence to start your story, but as the story unfolds, you may start to have a nagging feeling that something is off. Going back to the hook, you may find it just doesn't fit. But you love that hook so much you don't want to give up on it. So you battle on, adjusting the story, writing it to the end. Or you may find yourself unable to write another word until you start again, capturing it in a new light that matches where you want to go with the story.

Can you let that hook go, moving forward to finish the story?
Can you let that hook go, and rewrite a new opening?

When I find myself in this uncomfortable spot, I put aside my writing and browse my bookshelf, reading the opening lines of many stories, and that is where I find myself inspired all over again. I can breathe in that space of great literary minds. I'll get it right, if not right now, then later.

The Best Advice From a Teacher

"Take your opening sentence and do the opposite with it."

From Mark Cugini (at The Writer's Center), who heard it from his teacher, who probably heard it from his teacher

Do you find comfort in starting story after story in the same way?
How does it begin...

• vague and leaving your options wide open
• drop the plot on the reader's lap asap
• describe, describe, describe the scenery to set the tone
• channel the character's feelings
• cheeky and playful
• dare to use dialogue
• Call me Ishmael.
• toy with reality so the reader is in disbelief

Here's one of my latest ones (rough stage that I gasp dare to share at the risk of exposing myself by sharing the very first draft)...

I watch my hands digging past the computer parts, the tarnished jewelry, even the occasional coin. My hands are like mechanical steel blades, mining this landfill, as I search for an unopened can of food and anything at all that can protect us from the sun flares. On good days, I come away with a decent jacket, maybe even a broken umbrella, but every day is a bad day if I don't find any food.

Now, according to Mark, I must take that opening and do something new with it. Rewrite it so it does start with dialogue. Attempt to be cheeky, playful, humorous with the situation. Paint the scene in layers like Hemingway would have done. Have the character introduce herself. "My name is Becca and I smell like..." First, I'd have to stand in or on a landfill to determine what she really would smell like, and then I'll let you know.

So try it out with your opening. Who knows, maybe you will stumble upon a new way to open your stories. Maybe you'll even change the way your current story begins.