Category Archives: #writetip

5 Key Steps to Develop a Story from Scratch

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Purchased from Shutterstock by Jordan Dane

Purchased from Shutterstock by Jordan Dane

 

A story has been niggling my brain for the past week. It tickles, in a good way. It started out as a vague melange of unconnected notions (like walking down a dark tunnel) until I started to define a premise and narrow the focus as if I had a light to guide me. Through online research of headline type tragedies, I searched for something with punch that would push me into the almost uncomfortable zone. I developed a loose character profile, playing with gender for the main character, but I needed more.

Over the last two days, I’ve refined my ideas about the story and “fleshed it out” in a way that excites me the most. I can’t share my book idea yet, but I’ve made notes of my process to share here at TKZ. Here are my steps going forward.

1.) Imagine basic ‘what ifs” about a potential character (a storyteller) and a problem–an unfathomable tragedy, an emotionally charged story concept, or a compelling situation–to create a list of “what if” scenarios. One story idea can have many “what ifs.” In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, another “what if” could center on Hannibal or Crawford who risks his career and reputation on an FBI trainee. Brainstorm a list before you narrow it down to the one you want to develop as the foundation starting point to your story.

2.) Next, whose story will it be? Let’s talk character. Who has the most to lose? Pick the best character(s) to tell the story. Then decide how you want to “punish” them to test their worthiness for a starring role in your book.

3.) What is the external conflict between the main players (villain or adversary included)? But a good story is not only about the obvious conflict. Flawed characters have double the challenges. How will their internal crutches (their inherent weaknesses) keep them from getting what they want & add to the stress of the conflict? Make the story a personal and intimate journey.

4.) What’s at stake & how will the stakes escalate and play out? Maximize the emotional impact by ramping up the conflict between two main players at odds with each other. Yes, they could be on the same side, but pit them against each other to make things progressively worse and see how they’ll make it through.

5.) Now draft your “pitch” or a premise. You have your basic story ideas – your cast of characters, the conflict, the escalating stakes and a general sense of how things will play out, so you’re ready to draft a “pitch” or develop a premise that best fits your story. Something that would make an agent, editor, or reader say, “Wow, I have to read that.”

Here’s a basic premise example for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS:

A young female FBI trainee must barter her intimate secrets with an infamous psychopath held in solitary confinement to gain his help in catching a serial killer who’s killing women for their skins.

Notice there’s a well-defined protagonist, a formidable antagonist, a sense of the setting, conflict and stakes, and a notion of how the action will play out. The protagonist is up against forces that seem much bigger than she is. The stakes are high. If she fails, more women die. A premise works best when it’s about a vulnerable character with a formidable problem that would seem compelling to the reader.

A good premise should:

  • Be concise
  • Be evocative
  • Be framed from a “what if” question
  • Be written in present tense with an easily understood sentence structure that makes the story seem familiar yet with a hook or difference to stand out from other books.
  • It should contain a character, a conflict, and a hook.
  • It should have universal appeal
  • Be limited in word count (maybe up to 35 words or less, or 2-3 concise sentences)
  • The core story should be centered on an idea that jumps out at anyone.

A word of caution:
Do not overload the story with too many focal points or subplots that take away or distract from the main character(s) plight. Keep a laser focus. If the premise is compelling enough, the story won’t need embellishment.

From this point forward: Now that I’ve developed a more focused idea for a new book, I will draft a general plot using a method that’s worked for me and one that I’ve blogged about before at TKZ: The Author’s Bucket List on Plotting Structure. Using the shape of a “W” to remind me, I’ll create the inciting incident, the point of no return, turning points, the black moment, and the twisty wrap up in 7 points that will get me started. A high level outline. Since I’m an impatient writer, I usually start to write the beginning to play with what will work best. If I’m writing on proposal, I will draft a 5-7 page synopsis to go along with the writing sample to a publisher. I like having a fuller synopsis, than merely my 7 point “W’ outline, to develop the story line in a way that guides me as I write. I can incorporate character motivation and ramp up the conflict in such a synopsis so I don’t forget any necessary plot points. At this point, I am on my way and writing in the zone.

Here is a visual idea of the “W” plotting I use: It a visual summary of my blog post.

SAWG YA Presentation - 3-Act Screenplay Structure Diagram 091612

 

DISCUSSION EXERCISE: Write a brief yet effective premise for any of these 5 well- known movies:
1.) Silence of the Lambs (Can you do one from Hannibal’s perspective?}
2.) Jaws
3.) It’s a Wonderful Life
4.) Hunger Games
5.) Wizard of Oz

tmp_4087-TheLastVictim_highres-1601584079The Last Victim coming Oct 30, 2015 in print and ebook. Available for ebook preorder through Amazon Kindle at a discounted price.

Enter Goodreads GIVEAWAY at this LINK. Win one of 15 signed print copies See rules and enter.

A Secret Formula for Creating a Short Synopsis

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I came across this post recently and found it exceptional advice for all those struggling to construct a synopsis. So I contacted the author, Mike Wells, and invited him to guest blog today and share his insight into what some writers feel is one of the hardest tasks an author must address. Join me in welcoming Mike. Read on, learn and enjoy. Joe Moore

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If you’re like most authors, summarizing your book in a couple of sentences is a daunting task.  However, if you’re going to sell your book, it’s simply something you have to do. If you choose to go the traditional route, agents and editors alike are bombarded wells3with so many queries that if they find themselves having to do much mental work to understand the gist of your book, they will simply pass on to the next one. The same goes for self-publishing–all the retailers and distributors require short descriptions of your book. For example, Smashwords requires a description that can be no more than 400 characters, including spaces!  That’s short, folks!

To help you do this, I want to share a formula I learned a long time ago, one that was created in Hollywood. I can tell you from my dealings with the people in the movie industry that when it comes to stories and story structure, they really know their stuff.

Each and every story is composed of the same five basic elements. If you can identify them in their purest, simplest forms, you will be well on your way to writing a good two-sentence synopsis of your book, regardless of its length or complexity.

The five elements are: a (1) hero who finds himself stuck in a (2) situation from which he wants to free himself by achieving a (3) goal. However, there is a (4) villain who wants to stop him from this, and if he’s successful, will cause the hero to experience a (5) disaster.

Actually, what I’ve just written above IS the two sentence synopsis which will work for any story, no matter how complex the plot or characters may seem.

Before I go further, I want to stop for a moment and address the “Is this a formula?” question that will undoubtedly come up in many writers’ minds. Anyone with any experience in writing (or painting or composing music, etc.) knows that formulas do not work when creating a new piece of art, that the most you can hope for is a cookie-cutter type result that will be mediocre, at best.

However, what we are doing here is summarizing a piece of art that has already been created. Because we know that each and every story must contain these five elements, if we can step back from our own story and identify them, it makes the job of summarizing the story much easier.

The only thing formulaic about this approach is the order in which the information is presented, and the structure of the sentences. You can change this around later and make the synopsis appear as original and unique as you desire.

So, back to the method. Another way to write this compressed synopsis is to move the goal into the second sentence into the form of a question, as follows:

Hero finds herself stuck in situation from which she wants to free herself. Can she achieve goal, or will villain stop her and cause her to experience disaster?

All you have to do is identify the elements and plug them in to create the most basic two sentence synopsis for your own story. By the way, you don’t have to put the second sentence in the form of a question–you could write, She must achieve goal, or villain will stop her and cause her to experience disaster. I posed it as a question only because it emphasizes the main narrative question in the story–discovering the answer to that sticky issue is what keeps readers turning the pages until (hopefully) they reach the very end of your book.

The best way to demonstrate the process of creating a two-sentence synopsis is with a real example. As virtually everyone knows the story of The Wizard of Oz, let’s use that.  The five elements are:

HERO Dorothy, a Kansas farm girl

SITUATION Finds herself transported to faraway land called Oz.

GOAL To find her way back to Kansas

VILLAIN The witch

DISASTER To be stuck in Oz forever

Plugging the elements into the two-sentence structure, we have:

Dorothy, a farm girl, finds herself transported to a faraway land called Oz. Will the witch kill her before she can find her way back to Kansas?

Now, before you begin to think that this sounds too simplistic for your story, or if you don’t believe your book contains one on more of these elements, or that they seem too melodramatic, etc.–you’re wrong. Your story has all five elements, or it would not be a story.

Your story must have a hero, even if that hero happens to be a cat. And your hero must be stuck in an untenable situation and develop a goal to escape that situation, or you have nothing but a character study, not a story. The untenable situation could be something as mundane as boredom or as abstract as a blocked unconscious need to act out rebelliousness. But that untenable situation is there, and the hero must have a goal to escape it. Furthermore, if there is nothing to stop the hero from achieving her goal (i.e., a villain), then you have no conflict. No conflict, no story.

Granted, some of your story elements may require some thought to identify. For example, your villain might be society as a whole, Mother Nature, or even your hero’s self-doubt.  Similarly, your disaster could be little more than your hero having to live with an unbearable self-concept or overwhelming guilt. It’s also important to remember that the “disaster” is  seen through the eyes of the hero. This is usually the worst possible scenario he or she can envision at the beginning of the story, but may in fact be the just outcome, or the outcome that does the hero the most good in the long run.

Back to The Wizard of Oz. While the two sentence synopsis we wrote is accurate, it is also painfully dull. This because we started with the five story elements distilled into their absolute minimal forms (done intentionally by me for the purpose of this exercise). To jazz it up, let’s go through the list and expand each element:

HERO – Dorothy isn’t just a farm girl, she’s a lonely, wistful farm girl

SITUATION – Dorothy isn’t merely transported to Oz, but is whisked away by a tornado and dropped there. Also, Oz is far more than a faraway land, it’s a magical but frightening place, full of strange characters, little people call Munchkins and witches, both “good” and “bad.”

GOAL – Dorothy’s main goal is to get back to Kansas, but she soon learns that only the  great and powerful Wizard of Oz can help her do that, and he lives in Emerald City, a long and dangerous journey from her starting point (You’ll note that in any story, the hero’s main goal breaks down into a series of sub-goals).

VILLAIN – The witch is more than “just a witch”–she is the Wicked Witch of the West.

DISASTER – Dorothy’s possible fate is actually worse than being stuck in Oz forever–the Wicked Witch of the West is determined to kill her.

So, let’s plug these expanded elements into the original formula.

Dorothy, a lonely, wistful farm girl, is whisked away by a tornado and dropped into in a faraway land called Oz,  a magical but frightening place, filled with strange and wonderful characters–little people called Munchkins, and witches that are both good and bad. Can Dorothy make the long and dangerous journey to Emerald City to see the Wizard, the only one who can help her return to Kansas, or will the Wicked Witch of the West kill her first?

Note that we still have exactly the same structure as before which does make the synopsis read a bit clumsily. But you have to admit it’s a lot more colorful and engaging.  For better reading flow, the first sentence can be rearranged as follows:

When a tornado strikes her home in Kansas, a lonely, wistful farm girl named Dorothy finds herself transported to a faraway land called Oz, a magical but frightening place, filled with strange and wonderful characters–little people called Munchkins, and witches that are both good and bad. Can Dorothy make the long and dangerous journey to Emerald City to see the Wizard, the only one who can help her return to Kansas, or will the Wicked Witch of the West kill her first?

Once you have this much, you can keep expanding, rearranging, and enriching the synopsis to make it as long and original-sounding as you like. You can pull in more information–for example, that Dorothy’s house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East (which sets up the motivation of why the Wicked which of the West loathes Dorothy, as the two witches were sisters), and you can break the main goal down into sub-goals (for example, that Dorothy is only told that she must “follow the Yellow Brick Road” to reach Emerald City, and that once she does manage to see the Wizard, he tells her she must bring him the Wicked Witch’s broom in order to prove her worthiness, and so on)

In my query letters, I always include a two sentence synopsis similar to that above in terms of detail, then usually expand on it in another paragraph and introduce more subtle elements. In this second paragraph, I always try to point out the villain’s motivation to stop the hero (as above) and also the most important character conflict. Although I did not do this above for The Wizard of Oz, the most important character conflict in that story might be between Dorothy and the wizard–after she does manage to return with the witch’s broom, he gives her the runaround, and she must find the courage within herself to stand up to him and demand that he deliver on his promise.

The two-sentence synopsis method takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, you will find the task of writing synopses–of any length–much easier. In fact, now I often write this type of two-sentence synopsis as soon as my story idea has jelled, because the “top down” approach helps me stay focused as I begin the actual process of putting it into words.

One word of caution: if you are having trouble generating interest in your book, resist the urge to “reposition” the story to make it more appealing to agents who represent other genres. For example, if you had written The Wizard of Oz and could not get any fantasy genre agents to read it, you could compose the following short synopsis to make it into an edgy thriller:

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets, then teams up with three total strangers to kill again.

I’m joking, of course, but you get the idea. Such repositioning misleads agents and wastes their time.

To see the two-sentence synopsis method applied to ten different well-known stories from literature and film, go to Story Synopsis Quiz. All ten of these synopses are written in exactly the same form as I have outlined here. To practice, you might try writing up a few from your favorite books, plays and films.

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With 30 years experience as an author. I strive to create the most engaging, entertaining, well-written novels that I can. My goal is to take you to places you have never been, and to keep you anxiously turning the pages, always asking for more. I hope you enjoy my books! Be sure to visit my blog at http://mikewellsblog.blogspot.com/

Reader Friday: Happy 7th, TKZ!

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Shutterstock photo purchased by TKZ

The month of August marks the seventh year since the launch of the Kill Zone blog, so we’re pausing to celebrate. We’d like to thank you, our readers, for helping us grow and thrive as a community over the years. Your comments and participation add tremendous value to the daily discussions here. We take pride in the fact that TKZ has been named by Writer’s Digest three years running to its list of “100 Best Websites for Writers.”  We’d also like to give a shoutout to our Emeritus bloggers, the folks who helped us find our identity and develop as a writer’s community over the years: John Ramsey Miller; John Gilstrap; Kathleen Pickering; Michelle Gagnon; Boyd Morrison; and Jodie Renner. Huge thanks, also, to our current crew of excellent writers: Joe Moore; PJ Parrish/Kris Montee; Elaine Viets; James Scott Bell; Clare Langley-Hawthorne; Larry Brooks; Nancy Cohen; Jordan Dane; Joe Hartlaub; and Mark Alpert.

Happy 7th Anniversary, TKZ!

— Kathryn Lilley

 

 

Dress for Success

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By Joe Moore

Can the introverted writer succeed? I think the answer is yes. Just about any writer can succeed given the right set of circumstances including big doses of talent and luck. Of course we could say the same holds true for winning the lottery; given the right set of numbers, anyone can be a winner.

But whether you’re introverted and shy or known as the life of the party, I believe the first step to becoming a successful writer is to adapt a successful attitude. By that I mean, if you act like a success, there’s a good chance the world around you will treat you in like manner.

We could get into a heavy discussion of what success means, but that’s for another day. In general, for some, success means big money and a slot on the bestseller list. Others feel successful in just completing a manuscript. Certainly it’s important that each of us determine what we consider to be a success and then work toward it. Not defining success for yourself could mean you might not know if you’ve achieved it. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. I believe that success is just a state of mind.

If you don’t feel that you’ve achieved success in your writing yet, it shouldn’t stop you from limo1taking on a successful attitude. My advice is to act successful now in anticipation of becoming successful later. No, I don’t mean spending thousands on fancy clothes or showing up at a book signing in a Lincoln stretch limo. Nor do I suggest lying about your success or attempting to deceive anyone.

Having a positive attitude is not deceit. In fact, it’s addictive and usually produces successful results.

Someone once said, “You are what you eat.” I think that concept goes way beyond nutrition. For example, if you complain about rejection from traditional publishers and agents, or constantly bad mouth the state of the publishing industry, chances are you will develop a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those things that you find negative will continue to come your way. Your writing will suffer, your head will become clouded, and at some point, you will consider yourself a failure because you just might be.

Have you ever said, “Those New York publishers only want books from bestselling authors and famous people. I haven’t got a chance.” Or, “I’ve read about someone who self-published and sold millions of copies. The big publishers came begging. That’s my plan.” My advice: go buy a lottery ticket. The odds of success are about the same.

Successful writers (or any profession) become so because they believe in themselves and their ability to succeed. And the more they believe, the more they attract success. Act the part, walk the walk, think as a successful writer would think, and before you know it, your writing improves, you get that first contract, your advances grow, your sales increase, and your publisher pays for the Lincoln stretch limo.
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tomb-cover-smallGoodreads Giveaway!
Register to win one of 10 copies of THE TOMB, book 3 in the Maxine Decker series. Giveaway ends September 14, 2015.

Too Fast, Too Slow, Just Right

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By Joe Moore
@JoeMoore_writer

The story in most novels takes place over a period of time. Some are condensed to a few hours while many epic tales span generations and perhaps hundreds of years. But no matter what the timeframe is in your story, you control the pacing. You can construct a scene that contains a great amount of detail with time broken down into each minute or even second. The next scene might be used to move the story forward days, weeks or months in a single pass. If you choose to change-up your pacing for a particular scene, make sure you’re doing it for a solid reason such as to slow the story down or speed it up. Remember that as the author, you’re in charge of the pacing. And the way to do it is in a transparent fashion that maintains the reader’s interest. Here are a couple of methods and reasons for changing the pace of your story.

Slow things down when you want to place emphasis on a particular event. In doing so, the reader naturally senses that the slower pace means there’s a great deal of importance in the information being imparted. And in many respects, the character(s) should sense it, too.

Another reason to slow the pacing is to give your readers a chance to catch their breath after an action or dramatic chapter or scene. Even on a real rollercoaster ride, there are moments when the car must climb to a higher level in order to take the thrill seeker back down the next exciting portion of the attraction. You may want to slow the pacing after a dramatic event so the reader has a break and the plot can start the process of building to the next peak of excitement or emotion. After all, an amusement ride that only goes up or down, or worse, stays level, would be boring. The same goes for your story.

Another reason to slow the pace is to deal with emotions. Perhaps it’s a romantic love scene or one of deep internal reflection. Neither one would be appropriate if written with the same rapid-fire pacing of a car chase or shootout.

You might also want to slow the pacing during scenes of extreme drama. In real life, we often hear of a witness or victim of an accident describing it as if time slowed to a crawl and everything seemed to move in slow motion. The same technique can be used to describe a dramatic event in your book. Slow down and concentrate on each detail to enhance the drama.

What you want to avoid is to slow the scene beyond reason. One mistake new writers make is to slow the pacing of a dramatic scene, then somewhere in the middle throw in a flashback or a recalling of a previous event in the character’s life. In the middle of a head-on collision, no one stops to ponder a memory from childhood. Slow things down for a reason. The best reason is to enhance the drama.

A big element in controlling pacing is narration. Narrative can slow the pace. It can be used quite effectively to do so or it can become boring and cumbersome. The former is always the choice.

When you intentionally slow the pace of your story, it doesn’t mean that you want to stretch out every action in every scene. It means that you want to take the time to embrace each detail and make it move the story forward. This involves skill, instinct and craft. Leave in the important stuff and delete the rest.

There will always be stretches of long, desolate road in every story. By that I figuratively mean mundane stretches of time or distance where nothing really happens. Control your pacing by transitioning past these quickly. If there’s nothing there to build character or forward the plot, get past it with some sort of transition. Never bore the reader or cause them to skip over portions of the story. Remember that every word must mean something to the tale. The reader assumes that every word in your book must be important.

We’ve talked about slowing the pacing. How about when to speed it up?

Unlike narration, dialog can be used to speed things up. It gives the feeling that the pace is moving quickly. And the leaner the dialog is written, the quicker the pacing appears.

Action scenes usually call for a quicker pace. Short sentences and paragraphs with crisp clean prose will make the reader’s eyes fly across the page. That equates to fast pacing in the reader’s mind. Action verbs that have a hard edge help move the pace along. Also using sentence fragments will accelerate pacing.

Short chapters give the feeling of fast pacing whereas chapters filled with lengthy blocks of prose will slow the eye and the pace.

Just like the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 sets the pace for the start of the race and dramatic changes during the event such as yellow and red flags, you control the pace of your story. Tools such as dialog versus narration, short staccato sentences versus thick, wordy paragraphs, and the treatment of action versus emotion puts you in control of how fast or slow the reader moves through your story. And just like the colors on a painter’s pallet, you should make use of all your pacing pallet tools to transparently control how fast or slow the reader moves through your story.

What additional techniques do you use to control pacing?

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tomb-cover-smallMax is back! THE BLADE, book #3 in the Maxine Decker thriller Series is now available in print and e-book.

Let’s Discuss Book Promotion Resources

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Jordan Dane

@JordanDane

Teen Pic

Purchased Image by Jordan Dane: book cover

Off the top I will say that spending a great deal of time doing promotion, instead of writing, is probably not a good thing. Even if you’re an indie author, having inventory to sell is a key way (the best way) to keep your work in front of readers.

Writing new material should be a goal for every author. Having said that, book promotion is a necessary evil, even if you’re traditionally published with book tours and appearances, but even more so if you are an indie or hybrid author straddling business and creative lines.

So let’s talk about promo. It’s been awhile since I looked into this topic. Even if you are traditionally published, it can help to enhance your sales if you assist your publisher with your own marketing strategy – something that isn’t redundant with what they may be doing for you. The average author today can not escape promoting their own books, no matter how big their publisher might be.

Promotion Resources:
BookBub still is a popular option if you are lucky enough to get your book selected by them. It can be costly (depending on what genre you pick to promote your book in) but I’ve heard authors have good odds of making the expense pay off in sales because you get your book in front of readers of your genre. Always a good thing.

Other popular options are:
BookBuzz is a fee-based service company that will help you promote your book in various packages, including getting your book listed on NetGalley for reviews (which costs money). The fees are reasonable and you choose which package best fits your purposes and budget.

BookGorilla is a reader-based service that sends out emails daily, listing great books deals. If you’re offering your book at a discount upon release or for preorder, this might be a good place to reach a vast list of reader members.

Upload Service Question:
For those of you in “the know,” is there a service that will input a new release book into 50+ reader-based sites for a fee? I seem to recall there used to be one but I’ve had trouble locating it online. It would certainly be a cool feature for any author or publisher to find a service like this.

Facebook Parties:
Many authors add Facebook Parties to their launches. It could be part of a virtual tour offered by a service company. It helps to have more than one author of a genre to make the party more fun and generate interest. Has anyone had success with a Facebook Party for a crime fiction book? (Romance and Erotica authors do these quite a bit.)

Promo Question:
Does anyone have promo sites for either promotion service companies to generate buzz or reader-based sites to get new releases into readers’ hands that have paid off? It’s often hard to quantify whether a fee has paid off in book sales, but please share anything you’ve tried with success. I’m especially interested in services for crime fiction, mystery, suspense, and thrillers.

I hope you’ll share what has worked for you. Please join in the discussion. Below are links to promote free or discounted books. Hopefully some are new to you.

ENT (E-Reader News Today)
Pixel of Ink
The Reader Cafe
Free Booksy
Kindle Nation Daily
Digital Book Today
Free Digital Reads
http://ereaderutopia.com/
http://www.humanmade.net/submission-form
http://www.orangeberrybooktours.com/
http://www.bookblast.co/advertise/advertise.php
https://www.themidlist.com/
http://www.ebooksoda.com/
http://www.masqueradecrew.com/2014/10/advertising-options-from-masquerade-crew.html
http://newfreekindlebooks.com/authors
http://kindlemojo.com/
http://www.thekindlebookreview.net/advertise-here/
http://www.bookbear.info
http://www.totallyfreestuff.com/
http://www.icravefreebies.com/contact/
http://blog.booksontheknob.org/about-this-blog-and-contact-info
http://freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions
http://www.kindleboards.com/free-book-promo/
http://indiebookoftheday.com/authors/free-on-kindle-listing/
http://freekindlefiction.blogspot.co.uk/p/tell-us-about-free-books.html
http://www.freeebooksdaily.com/
http://www.freebookshub.com/authors/
http://www.ereaderiq.com/about/
http://ebookshabit.com/about-us/
http://www.blackcaviar-bookclub.com/free-book-promotion.html#.UXFB27XYeOc
http://www.kornerkonnection.com/index.html?fb=ebookkornerkafe

But first . . .

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By Joe Moore
@JoeMoore_writer

Yesterday, my friend, Kris Montee (PJ Parrish), wrote an excellent post called Finding the Right Door to Enter Your Story. If you haven’t read it, do so the moment you finish this. Kris covers the good, bad and ugly of opening lines and chapters.

We’ve often discussed the power (or lack of) that first lines have on the reader. It can’t be emphasized enough how much a first line plays into the scope of the book. For just like first impressions, there is only one shot at a first line. It can set the voice, tone, mood, and overall feel of what’s to come. It can turn you on or put you off—grab you by the throat or shove you away. It’s the fuse that lights the stick of dynamite.

Some first lines are short and to the point—built to create the most impact from a quick jab. Others seem to go on ad infinitum. And only when we arrive at the period at the end do we see how expertly crafted it was for maximum effect. Or not.

So in the spirit of sharing what I consider examples of pure genius, true literary craftsmanship, and genuine artistic excellence, I’d like to share what I think are some of the best first lines in literary history. Let’s start with two of the most famous:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

“To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.” —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. —Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Let’s finish with my personal all-time favorite:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

So which ones have I missed? If it’s not on this list, what’s your favorite first line?

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tomb-cover-small_thumbMax is back! THE BLADE, book #3 in the Maxine Decker thriller Series is now available in print and e-book.

The Writer’s It Factor

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Today I welcome my friend and fellow ITW member Brad Parks as our guest blogger. Brad takes on one of the most elusive yet essential elements in successful storytelling. Read on to find the answer.

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BY BRAD PARKS
@Brad_Parks

Once upon a writer’s conference, a friend of mine—who might or might not be Chantelle Aimee Osman, depending on how she feels about being described as my friend—was going around, asking folks a great question:

In Hollywood, people talk about certain actors or actresses having an “It Factor,” that special something that just draws in the eye and won’t let it go. Is there an It Factor with writing; and, if so, what is It?

I answered with one word: Voice.

Voice, I will posit, is the writing equivalent of a killer body, great hair and a mysteriously alluring smile.

And while I volunteered to take this guest blog spot from Joe because I have a new book to 2024657flog—it’s called THE FRAUD, and when I’m flattering myself I think it’s a fine example of a healthy narrative voice—I want to take a few minutes of your blog time to unpack this subject, because it strikes me as one that folks in the writeosphere don’t spend enough time discussing.

Which is strange. Ask any editor or agent what they’re looking for in a manuscript, and a strong, fresh, unique voice is inevitably at or near the top of that list. The same is true for readers, even if they might not be able to articulate it as such.

The proof can be found at the top of the bestseller list. I’m willing to bet I could kidnap you, drag you into the desert, beat you with sage brush and leave you to die in the brutal sun; but, if before I departed, I also left you with a stripped paperback that began…

I was arrest in Eno’s Diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town.

… you’d be like, “Oh, cool. Reacher.” (Or at least you would if you were a Lee Child fan, as I am).

Many of the writers whose book sales are counted in the millions have voices that are so distinct, you could wipe their names and all other identifying characteristics from their work, and yet most of us would still be able to identify their prose within a few paragraphs.

Think of Harlan Coben (where suburban suspense meets Borsht Belt shtick); or Sue Grafton (who couldn’t pick Kinsey’s chatter out of a crowd?); or James Lee Burke (you can hear Louisiana in everything that falls out of Robicheaux’s mouth); or Elmore Leonard, or Laura Lippman, or… or…

It starts with voice. And, yes, of course the writers I’ve listed do many other things well, whether it’s Coben’s great twists or Lippman’s great characters or what have you. But I would argue that voice also covers the things they don’t necessarily do well. Because when a writer has a strong voice? The reader is already buckled in, happy to be along for the ride.

This is great news for all of us who attempt to prod words into compliance. Because unlike Hollywood, where the It Factor is at least partially based on things you have to be born with—some marriage of facial symmetry, bone structure, and that certain crinkle around the eyes—voice is something that can be developed.

Let’s start from 30,000 feet up, with a simple definition of what it is we keyboard-ticklers do each day. Writing is nothing more than (and nothing less than) the task of transferring thoughts from your brain to paper.

It sounds simple enough, except when you start out, there’s this thick filter between your head and the page. And, depending on how tortured your formal education might have been—and how many misguided English teachers forced you to write keyhole-style essays or said you couldn’t end sentences in a preposition—the filter can stay thick for many years.

But if you keep working the writing muscle, the filter starts to thin out. The thoughts get to the page more readily than they did before. You start to notice little things that are dragging on your prose and you eliminate them. You read great writers and incorporate the things they do so well. You read your stuff out loud and develop an ear for what sounds clunky and what sounds cool.

Eventually, the filter disappears. Then it’s just you, in all your idiosyncratic genius. And if you accept that no two people’s thoughts are the same—yes, you really are that special snowflake—no two writers’ voices will be the same, either. Ergo, you will be that strong, fresh, unique voice that someone out there is looking for.

And, no, none of this happens particularly quickly. If you thought I was going to offer the equivalent of a miracle diet for writers—Lose 30 Pounds And Gain Your Voice In Two Easy Weeks, Guaranteed!—I’m sorry to report no such thing exists.

Personally? I started writing for my hometown newspaper when I was 14 years old and I didn’t start to develop a whimper of a voice until I was at least 19. Even then, it was probably just a subconscious imitation of the writers I admired. I didn’t start to have a voice of my own until I was probably 24. Well, okay, maybe 26.

Admittedly, I’m not the quickest study. I’m sure a brighter light could find their voice faster than I did. But, perhaps, only by a little. Writing is a journey without shortcuts, because the destination only becomes clear to you after you’ve arrived.

But at the end of this particular road, the voice—that It Factor—is waiting for you. Fact is, it’s been inside you all along, screaming to get out.

Brad Parks jacket picBrad Parks is the only author to have won the Shamus, Nero and Lefty Awards. His sixth thriller featuring investigative reporter Carter Ross released yesterday. For more, visit www.BradParksBooks.com.