Good afternoon!
Monday, September 17, 2018 at Martha Merrell's Books and Toys in Historic Downtown Waukesha, WI., at 6:30, Chapter One will be conducting its first ever in person meeting for writers of all levels.
The topic?
How important is that first line?
My goal with this group is to wake the author in anyone who ever thought they had a story to tell. We'll start at the beginning...which would be the first line.
The first line of any story is vital. Gone are the days when, as my mother, who served as a school librarian for many years, you had to give a book 30 pages to really get into it. Readers don't have that kind of patience anymore (if we ever did!) and writers shouldn't make their readers wait 30 pages for something interesting.
The first line is the first impression an author makes.
As authors, you may not have control over the cover. You may not have control over the blurb on the back cover. You may not even have control over the pen name. (Some publishers have been known to assign pen names.) What you do have control over, however, is that first line. That line is all yours.
There are many opening lines we all know:
Once Upon a Time
It was a Dark and Stormy Night.
The Night was Humid (My personal favorite)
Unfortunately, while those are fun...and funny...unless you are writing an actual fairy tale or writing your story atop a dog house, you can't use them.
There's actually an award called the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest that hands out awards to the WORST opening line of the year. Check out the website, the 2018 winner is AWESOME in it's badness.
A number of things can contribute to a bad opening line: It's too long; it generates zero excitement; it's lazy ("It was a dark and stormy night") or it simply makes no sense.
As a writer, you know that your writing is an extension of you. Writing is every bit as personal as any other form of arm. If the writing isn't personal, believe me, the reader will know it. And if you, the author doesn't feel it, neither will the reader. That's not to say that we must "write what we know." (A topic I'll deal with at a later time.) Writing isn't about our own absolute life experiences. If that were true, there would be no science fiction, very little romance, no historical fiction, and oh yeah, probably no fiction at all. Writing is about telling a story that you know. It's about creating characters and a world that you see as clearly as you see your own hand in front of your face. Writing is...it should be...you.
As with anything in writing, what works and what doesn't is subjective to many things, including the ever-changing whims of society. A good line 10 years ago is no good now.
How can you know for sure if your first line works?
There is no hard and fast rule. You will know it when you know it. If you're not sure, talk to a trusted friend, a critique partner, a teacher, run it by them. Try to avoid going up to strangers on the street, however. Believe me, you don't get great feedback that way. LOL
So let's put this into a social construct we all understand:
Think of a book as an introduction of yourself to a stranger. The cover is your name tag. The body of the book is the conversation you have with that stranger so they can get to know you. Which means the opening line of that book is your handshake. You want a strong, firm handshake. You do NOT want some soft, creepy, dead fish handshake.
We will talk more about this on Monday for those of you who are in the SE Wisconsin area and can make it to Martha Merrell's Books and Toys at 6:30. For those of you who cannot, if you have questions, please contact me through our face book page. You can also hit me, Sarah the Author, up at my face book page.
Meanwhile, spend some time online looking for bad first lines, see if you can improve on them, or get a real feel for what's no good, and what works.
