Submission to The First Line

If you're having a bit of writer's block, staring at that white screen, wondering how to begin your next story, then there's a journal just for you: The First Line.

Based in Texas, The First Line publishes four issues annually. If you're looking for a jump start to a new story, here's the next first line to run with!

Winter:
George pressed the call button and said, "Mrs. Whitfield, you have a visitor."
Due date: November 1, 2015

Getting That First Paragraph Right

"When I'm starting a book, I compose in bed before I go to sleep. I will lie there in the dark and think. I'll try to write a paragraph. An opening paragraph. And over a period of weeks and months and even years, I'll word and reword it until I'm happy with what I've got. If I can get that first paragraph right, I'll know I can do the book."

Stephen King is quoted here from The Atlantic, and I wonder how many of us share this trait with him.

My life as a writer would be a lot easier if I could just vomit words on paper to get past the first paragraph, to write the story in its entirety only to then go back and revise that opening paragraph.

But I can't.

I'll spend months working over the first paragraph, trying to find the right voice, the right angle, and until then, I don't feel the connection with the story to write it all.

So thank goodness I'm not alone.  

And still, Stephen King cranks out 2,000 words a day. Onward...

Skimmy Dipping

What's it like to skim through dozens of opening paragraphs, hoping to catch a surge of creative inspiration, before you nestle into your writing chair with fingers poised above the keyboard, ready for those words to come that will hook not only the reader, but you the writer?

Is it kind of like dipping into a Ben & Jerry's with a spoon when you're stuck mid-sentence, only to double dip, knowing the second bite will be even more satisfying?

Maybe it's more like rewriting that opening line, over and over and over again, changing one word, then a phrase, while studying your fingernail cuticles.

Surely it's not like waiting in line for 90 minutes for the Tower of Terror ride at Disney, only to find its all a blur of noise as you search in the dark for a glimmer of light.

Determined to find out, I pulled out my 38 issues of One Story and my six copies of The Pen/O.Henry Prize Stories and sat down to skim.

* I should note here: I don't believe this is the correct method of carefully studying literature. Just like skim milk cannot nourish a baby the way whole milk can, skimmy dipping into literature isn't a writer's multivitamin, it's more like licking the buttercream frosting off that last cupcake.

So back to the stories, lots of them. After only a handful of stories I found it hard to skim, so I stopped skipping words and slowed down.

Longer sentences, consisting of four or five lines lost my attention compared to sentences with only ten words or less, like this one:

Andy Catlett was a child of two worlds. (in Wendell Berry's "Nothing Living Lives Alone" 2012 PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories)

After more than 20 stories, I found myself coming to the conclusion that each story has a unique opening. Patterns may be repetitive. Dialogue in the first sentence is rare. My favorites included character, plot, and tone in the first sentence. And in some of them, I saw myself, or rather my style of writing.

Whether skimming opening paragraphs is a trait of slush pile readers, I don't know, but after an hour of reading the first few lines of each story my head buzzed and I had to check the mirror to see if my eyes were crossed.

So much talent in so many words did leave me feeling inspired, but I realized one thing that's impacted my writing the most: I can't find my voice, my words, in the writings of others. The words of other authors are like the songs of birds, beautiful and moving, but my own song can only come from within, and I hear it best when I tune out the words around me and listen to what I have to say in my own way.

Hooking a Reader: Should you write a prologue or jump right in to Chapter One?

After years and years of reading hundreds and hundreds of books, what is your initial reaction to the question: What do you think of prologues?

My answer: I've read enough poorly written, wordy, boring and long-winded prologues to make me feel an initial negative distaste for prologues. I'll be honest, if a prologue is several pages long, I skim it or even skip it.

However, I've also read some fantastic, captivating prologues that make me want to physically gobble the book up in one gulp. I can't wait to jump in, I'm so giddy to get going.

The success of prologues comes down to their purpose: a prologue serves to hook a reader but also to provide information necessary to the story as a whole that a first chapter cannot do alone.

If you are toying with writing a prologue to hook the reader, ask yourself these questions to see if  a prologue is in the future of your book:

The Prologue Test

1. Does your prologue provide some piece of backstory or history that doesn't fit into the big picture story line? For example, an event may occur several years in the past that is crucial to the story, but your story is set in the present time and it is too awkward to include the past as a first chapter.

2. Does your prologue offer useful or enlightening insights or clues, an ominous opening to provide the element of mystery?

3. Does your prologue clue the reader in to a scene near the end of the book? Is it the character's perspective from later in the story? If so, how is this part crucial to the telling of the story? Does it do more than simply hook the reader? Is there a hint to the story question?

4. Would you read it? Is it too long? Is it too repetitive of the first chapter? What is your gut feeling? Do your beta readers have questions after reading the first chapter that the prologue might answer?

For more information, I recommend The Seven Deadly Sins of Prologues.

Monday: Hooked on Hooks Critique

Please send your hooks our way (thegoodhook(at)yahoo(dot)com). Until then, here's another one from Kimberly Zook in a short story titled "An Abbreviated Mother."

Evelyn’s shapeless gray shirt and jeans faded into the crowd as she picked at the only blip of emotion registering on her face: bewilderment at the women surrounding her on the pier. The newly minted wives chimed and jangled in their charms as they arched upward in their stilettos. Less complicated wives, the ones draped in sleeping newborns, beckoned their toddlers to jump higher on the San Diego pier as the naval ship sailed under the Coronado Bridge. Evelyn drifted with the crowd down the pier, feeling foolish as she continued to wave farewell to hundreds of strangers on the ship, her new husband among them. Stan stood somewhere behind the reflective glass of the bridge, destined for an eight month deployment.  Evelyn turned toward the throng of recently married wives until an insistent tug on the hem of her shirt reminded her of her new station in life: a stepmother to Stan’s children, Jack and Zoe. Evelyn looked down at their round faces stained with the salty residue of tears and asked, “What now?”

 

Monday: Hooked on Hooks Critique

The Good Hook is on vacation this week.
To give you a clue of where we've taken our pen and paper, we give you this week's hook:

Friday Favorites

In the spirit of summer and gardening and eating fresh produce, we found this opener to a non-fiction book, "Eat Local for Less" by Julie Castillo, quite the catchy hook:

Do you eat?" This was how my husband's Uncle Nick welcomed me into his house the first time I met him -- his standard words of salutation, I learned later, usually followed by, "Do you like meat? 'Cause that's all we got here."

Coming from a meat and potato kind of family, where my grandfather was forever buying creme horns, donuts, bread, and ice cream for all the grandchildren and Thanksgivings consisted of a dozen different casseroles, turkey and ham, and of course, potatoes of all kinds cooked in all manners, I instantly related to this first paragraph. Having met Julie Castillo at a book festival, her kindness and genuine passion for local food is what hooked me first. But then I read the first page of her book, and didn't stop reading.

Hooks happen in any form of writing, even non-fiction!