In The Beginning...

Way back in the Precambrian, I wrote about opening lines and what they mean about the novel that follows. Well, I'm at a point in my work in progress that I think I've got all the bases covered regarding plotting and length (that's not true, but I'm sticking to my timeline, and my timeline says I should be done with all that stuff, so I am). So now I am carefully going over my opening pages and looking for ways to improve.

My belief that opening portions of a book are vitally important not only has anecdotal proof - in this case, me, because I use them as an indicator of the book as a whole - but of late I've been reading from an industry professional that insists that a great opening is necessary to avoid being rejected out of hand.

It gave me an opportunity to look at recent iterations of my opening moments of my work and see how it flows. Here is a look from my second draft:

“Mommy?” I called, sticking my head around the corner, I couldn’t have been more than six. She was standing over our kitchen sink, washing dishes and humming to herself.

Right off the bat I must note that almost every piece of fiction I ever write starts off with dialog. I think it's to fight my desire to lay out fifteen pages of backstory before I let anything interesting happen. Now, I like my opening scene a lot. I think it's pretty strong. But I'm not sure if a description of someone washing dishes is as powerful as I want. Oh, and I think the prose is a bit awkward there too. Could use some cleaning up anyway.

So I scrapped that opening in my third draft of this chapter and it went like this:

I tip-toed through the hallway towards the kitchen, stifling my laughter as well as any six-year old could. I snorted and hiccuped my way into the room as I fought down my desire to shout in excitement. 

Sigh. Did I actually use the word "hiccuped"? I "hiccuped my way into the room."? Geez. I was trying to inject at least a hint of excitement. I figure that if I'm going to have the scene about the mother washing dishes a few paragraphs down then some sort of movement was necessary. But after looking at it several times I think its not really an improvement over my previous version.

So I tried again:

The mind of a child is a curious thing. That my six year old mind was entirely abnormal was a fact unknown to me at the time. Such is the blissfulness of youth. Knowing this then however, would have saved me a great deal of pain.

Ugh. was I high? I like the concept, introducing a speculative element to the story, however vague, at least hints that something is atypical in what is to follow. I'm not quite sold on the execution though. I mean, I use 'mind' twice in the first two sentences and the phrase "knowing this then however" is about as nonsensical as they come. That's okay for me though, if I had decided to stay with this line of thinking I would have made it read much better. I decided to abandon it pretty quickly after I wrote it though.

Attempt# 4:

The mind of any child is a curious thing. My mind however, was abnormal even among the young. Being ignorant of this fact did little to make it less painful when I hurt those I loved the most.

Is that better? I used 'mind' again twice in the first two sentences again, I may be writing in circles here. I decided a different tact might work better, so here is #5:

Joan of Arc claimed to speak with God. At the age of six I had her beat. Because God not only spoke to me, but I could prove it. I sure hoped Momma would be surprised.

That is my latest attempt at an opening. I waffled a bit on this one, as it gives something away that was previously only revealed at the end of the scene. They mystery that I hoped was inherent in the earlier versions is gone. Replaced, I hope, with the tension that comes from knowing that this naive child is going to do something that will not go over well.

Is it a better opening? Did I make anything better, or only different? I don't know. I'll keep on working to make it as good as I can. I'll read it again tomorrow after I had a night to reflect and see how it looks then.

Until then, happy days my friends.

Boom. I Shot You.

"Frank Lester stared at the hyper-influx emulsifiers and knew the cobalt infused preon compressors wouldn't work."

Is that drama? I've been thinking about opening lines lately and have wondered about how important they really are. I mean, if I were to work my tail off comprising the greatest story told in the last fifty years and it had a so-so first line does that mean it's a lost cause.

Maybe.

I recall being told once from a friend that when an agent was critiquing work in public that they took the first page from someone's work, put it on a projector (for the crowd, it was a conference) and said that they knew from the first sentence that they wouldn't want to represent that author. Ouch.

I've read often about how important it is to have a great first sentence. So I thought I would thumb through my library and pick a few at random and see how they look. Kind of a top 10 list of first sentences from novels I've found lying around the house.

Now, I'm of the opinion that one's first sentence is irrelevant. The first paragraph is a bit relevant, the first page is damned relevant. And it all culminates with the first four or five pages - which better be masterful.

So my personal opinion on the topic is something I came up with more or less off the top of my head. But I think it makes enough sense without thinking too much about it. I know when I'm browsing a the bookstore I won't make any real judgement on the quality of a book at least until I've read the first several paragraphs, a lone sentence means nothing.

However, I'm not going to reproduce several paragraphs of prose from several books on this blog. So I'll just do that with the first sentences. Why? To see if any sort of theme begins to emerge.

Now, the breakdown of books I chose looks like this:

Sci-fi - 3
Fantasy - 2
Horror - 1
Chic lit - 1
Literary/Mainstream - 2
Thriller - 1

I lied about them being random, but I did try to select from a good mix of different styles of writing and see what happened. I'll withhold the names of the books and authors for the sake of my precious little experiment, although I would think some will be pretty recognizable. Some will be pretty obscure (I'll post the author and title info in the comments section.)

1. Before she became the Girl from Nowhere - the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years - she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.
2. " No, I don't want the mangosteen."
3. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privit Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
4. In the beginning was a graph, more like diamond than graphite.
5. Even at the moment she was born she knew something was wrong.
6. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
7. Sophie Dempsey didn't like Temptation even before the Garveys smashed into her '86 Civic, broke her sister's sunglasses, and confirmed all her worst suspicions about people from small towns who drove beige Cadillacs.
8. IT WAS A KNOCKOUT BLOW - a punch so overwhelming that I didn't get back on my feet for fourteen years.
9. ON A GRAY, FOGGY MORNING, THEY CAME, rising on the cold north winds from the icy peaks, sweeping across the timberland into the gray, misty valleys of the Black Forest... baby sounds!
10. The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

What did I learn? I learned that sometimes a single sentence tells you nothing, like when it was dialogue (#2). I've learned that some folks decide to go all caps for the first several words of the opening sentence. I learned that at least in a few of the examples above, the book as a whole had its tone nicely indicated by the opening line (#'s 3,4 & 10). And I learned that at least in one particular case, a great first line leads to a rather shitty novel (#6).

I have a suspicion that the more established the writer, the less emphasis they put into their opening moments of the novel. I'm sure there are numerous examples of new and established authors that show both types of openings so I doubt anything will ever be concrete. Which of course is great, because that means I can't be proven wrong.

Regardless, I do like powerful beginnings.