Every so often, we open the doors of WITS to our readers. It's our version of Open Mic Night. We like hearing what you're up to in your writing and back-to-school time, with Fall around the corner, is a great time for this.
Today, we'd love to hear your first lines for a new manuscript or short story. If that sounds daunting, give us the first line of your new chapter, or the first line of a favorite book. We want to make it easy!
The Power of First Lines
Fabulous first lines tend to stick with all of us. We ponder them, agonize over them, rewrite them, and rewrite them again. And more than once, we've actually purchased a book based on a breathtaking first line or paragraph.
Our own Laura Drake has offered some great advice on writing a winning first line here.
Let's Hear Yours!
Today, it's yourturn to entertain or wow us with your opening lines. If you can't think of anything, share a favorite from someone else. Give us the title and genre, then your opening line(s).
Feel free to comment on others' as well, and tag your writing friends on the post so they can share theirs!
We'll get you started.
Ellen
Black Irish Blues by Andrew Cotto (Mystery). The first line from the prologue:
The trouble with Dinny Tuite began with the two-martini rule.
Kris
These are from the first chapter of Sylvie's Summer of Scary Sh*t, a short horror story under the pen name Krissy Knoxx:
At that moment, a big praying mantis whipped by her head, swooped down, and landed on her marker-doodled Vans. She shook her foot, nearly dropping her phone, and yelled, "Get-it-off, get-it-off, get-it-off!"
"Just a carnivorous manteodea on my shoe. A harmless bug. It can't hurt me. It can't hurt me." She squeezed her eyes shut, tightened her shoulders, fists, knees. But she had to peek.
Lisa
Nian hated climbing this mountain. The old wizard pulled his flowing cape closer against the cold and tied his horse to a tree. He cursed the Shadows for choosing such a remote spot for his wife's tomb. --Dominion of Darkness - Deleyna Marr
Marie knew the willow-green dress was wrong the moment she saw the blood-red bridge. -- Sisterhood - Deleyna Marr
Lynette
"As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file."
Four years ago, when I shared the results of a writing experiment with my Wednesday night writer’s support group, one of the members (Jenny Hansen, “High Priestess of WITS”) asked if I would write a blog post about my findings. I had no idea what I was in for when I said yes.
Over these last four years, I have gone from an occasional blogger on the WITS calendar to a regular contributor. Guest posting on Writers in the Storm has provided more than a platform to share my writing journey. It’s also taught me some valuable lessons.
Blogging is Different
The first lesson WITS taught me is that blogging is a different animal compared to other disciplines, especially when you’re writing to educate rather than entertain. I tend to write in a narrative style. That works out fine for personal essays and fiction, but not so much when you’re trying to educate.
Jenny would never blab about it, but my first effort was rough. It took several rounds of edits to forge my words into something more coherent and easily digested.
She taught me to organize my thoughts into a logical outline and make sure my points are clear by using examples to drive them home. A little exposition is fine for context, but don’t go overboard.
This leads me to my next lesson.
Keep it Focused
In the beginning, I had a tendency to pick a broad topic and include far too many details. The reality is you can’t cover everything in 800 to 1200 words. A better idea is to break broader subjects up into a series of posts.
People are drawn to WITS because the knowledge is served up in bite-sized pieces that are easily processed and incorporated into their writing life. Actionable advice is the very best kind.
I’ve also learned it’s okay to distill things down to the basics and leave some questions for the reader to research on their own.
Proper Formatting
Formatting is everything in a blog. How information is presented is just as important as the information itself.
Most important formatting lessons:
A proper layout will make the subject matter pop.
Using subheadings to break a post into sections makes it more digestible.
Bolding, italicizing, and coloring text adds punch to important terms and concepts.
The use of white space makes the information stand out and makes it easier on the eyes.
Break up long sentences and paragraphs or use bullet points to help maintain focus.
Well-placed pictures and illustrations not only compliment the information but also serve to further break up large blocks of text.
Embedding links to definitions and related blog posts allows you to provide more information without crowding the page, making it more comfortable to read.
Best of all, doing all these things raises the SEO (search engine optimization) which means many more eyes on your post.
Know Your Audience
It’s extremely important to know who you’re writing for when you sit down at the keyboard, particularly for blogging.
A travel blog is going to read differently than a cooking blog, which will differ widely from a writing blog. Are you writing to entertain or educate? Knowing what your readers expect to get out of the blog helps you to focus on what’s important.
WITS readers like nice meaty posts with lots of takeaways. It’s a blog for both new and experienced writers where contributors share their knowledge and experiences related to both writing craft and the writer’s life.
My favorite part of being a contributor is that we learn too when readers share their experiences in the comments. I look forward to learning what has and hasn’t worked in your writer’s life. WITS readers give great advice too.
You Don’t Have to Be an Expert
Although there are many writing experts who contribute to WITS, I am not one of them. I have a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things and a never-ending curiosity about everything. Many of my posts here have begun while I’m looking for answers to my own questions. I do the research and then share what I’ve learned with all of you!
Remember, you are the expert on your own experiences. My father used to tell me “Mistake is just another word for experience, and experience is the best teacher.” I like to share those mistakes, so you don’t have to make the same ones I did.
Make it Personal
As a kid, I tended to be drawn to teachers who tied a lesson to their own personal experiences. It made it real for me and showed how I could incorporate it into my own life. I learn better when there’s a human element to the lesson rather than just a list of dos and don’ts.
I also think that Including personal experience gives a blogger authority. A good “this is what happened to me” anecdote cements information in a way that nothing else can. Let your life be a shining example or a serious warning!
A Final Thought
I’ve learned far more from my experience here on WITS than I can list in a dozen posts, and I continue to learn with each new article. It’s made me a better researcher, writer, and educator. The same lessons learned from blogging also apply when I’m putting together a presentation for a group.
Blogging for WITS has also given me one more thing—credibility. And that’s something money can’t buy.
In short, blogging has made me an all-around better writer.
Do you blog? What have you learned from the process? What have you learned as a WITS reader? Educate us in the comments!
About Eldred
Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.
When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives).
His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. Find him on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.
I don't know about you, but I don't like to advertise my mess. I tend my wounds in private and try not to whine too much. My garage is a little bit insane, my junk drawer is...eclectic, and I keep both firmly closed against prying eyes the majority of the time. But when it comes to writing, my mess is where the magic happens.
Your Mess Is Your Message
When I talk about "my mess," I'm obviously talking about more than my garage.
I'm talking about the little girl who survived her parents' bloody battle of a divorce and grew up with a narcissist.
I'm talking about that dreamy kid who put on plays in her closet and dove into books to find a better place to live.
I'm talking about the friend/wife/mother-me who learned how to use humor and patience to solve problems.
I'm talking about the little girl with no voice who grew into a woman who used her voice wisely.
All of that is my real mess. It's what informs my writing voice and shines light into the shadowy corners of my characters' hearts.
Leaning into my mess and throwing open the doors of my own dark corners turned out to be my quickest hack to writing better stories. Bringing honesty and authenticity to my own life deepened my writing voice.
Your Unique Voice
The best description I heard for "writing voice" as a new writer was from Rebecca Forster:
"Imagine you are sitting across the table from your best friend, telling them about something that happened to you. The way you tell them that story is your writing voice. It is unique to you. No one else would tell your friend that same story in that exact way."
Your writing voice comes from your world view, your humor, your family, your friendships. Your writing voice comes from the lessons you've learned and the wisdom those lessons brought you.
In essence, your writing voice gets honed by understanding your mess.
If any of you read my post last month, Are Writers Born, or Are Writers Made?, you'll know I believe that many writers carry around some decent internal wounds. Perhaps we've healed them, or perhaps we're still a work in progress, but all that sometimes-painful life experience is what has given you that beautiful unique voice you bring to your writing.
All of this reminds me of a refrigerator magnet I used to have:
Ongoing Themes in Your Work
I heard the quote at the top during an interview with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. Dean said, "Your Mess is Your Message" when he was talking about skills you'd learned in your own life that you could teach others. The applications to writing fascinated me.
It's our job as writers to create something from nothing. But what we're really doing is creating something out of a piece of ourselves.
We are every character and no character, all at the same time.
Getting back to the title of this post, the reason why tuning into our mess is such a great writing hack is that it allows us to find our story's theme more quickly. Some people even have the same theme in almost every book.
For example, here are some common themes from authors I know:
My critique partners all know that one of my biggest pet peeves about my own work is my super-sneaky theme. It pops up every-damn-where, whether I'm planning for it or not.
I'll be writing away, thinking I'm writing a reconciliation-between-two-sisters story, when in reality I'm writing about the shame that prevented the reconciliation.
Or I'm happily scribbling about young love and then a plot twist will hit that causes one or both characters to feel shame, and it will keep the young lovers apart until they've worked through it.
One story was a humor-filled tale about the challenges of caregiving for older parents, but of course, it was really about shame. The caregiver had shame because she had a desperate yen to travel and see the world instead of being stuck at home, caring for Mom. Mom had shame because, for the first time in her life, she was putting her own needs before her child's.
See? Sneaky. I'll think I'm writing about some other Big Universal Idea, and all of a sudden I'll realize I'm writing about shame. Again. It doesn't seem to matter if the story is hilarious, sad, happy or sexy - shame will be lurking in the weeds somewhere.
Many children of divorce grow up feeling shame. I'm not remotely special there. But I'm a writer and, since shame was my mess to work through, now it's my message the majority of the time (whether I planned on it or not).
Plotting Hack: Writing to Theme
But what if I did plan for it? What if I started writing TO the theme that I know will be there anyway?
Let's use the example of that caregiving mother-daughter duo I mentioned above. What if the mother felt so much shame and guilt over her health because she hadn't taken care of herself and now she was terribly ill. And what if that mom decided the solution was to take on the role of matchmaker to "make it up" to her daughter? What if that mother decided she was going to find her cranky sleep-deprived daughter a man.
When I did that, the whole book opened up. The conflict went sky-high. The changes ratcheted up the humor and punched up the pathos. All I did was lean into my sneaky little theme, and into my own experience with my own mess.
Consider the theme(s) on your last several stories. Are they the same down in their underbelly, or very very different? Do you write to theme, or figure it out in the end? Do you have a favorite theme you love to read about?
I'd love to hear what came up when you did this exercise. Please share it with me down in the comments!
About Jenny
By day, Jenny Hansen provides LinkedIn coaching and copywriting for professional services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
