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.
Plus, a good first line is quotable.
Today, we're opening the doors of WITS to our readers. We like hearing what you're writing, and April, the first full month of Spring, is a great time for this.
Our own Laura Drake has offered some great advice on writing a winning first line here.
But today, it's your turn 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 when you share the post so they can pop over and share theirs!
We'll get you started.
Ellen
I rarely read horror, but Swan Song, by Robert R. McCammon drew me in and wouldn't let go.
"He watched with dreadful fascination as the flame crawled up the match, and he realized that there, on a tiny scale, was the power of both creation and destruction; it could cook food, illuminate the darkness, melt iron and sear human flesh. Something that resembled a small, unblinking scarlet eye opened in the center of the flame, and he wanted to scream."
~ Swan Song
Jenny
If she didn’t have sex this year, her girly bits were going to stage a revolt. –Unnamed Book 2, "Rx for Love" series
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.
Listen, my children, I've a tale to tell Of wishing on pennies in deep wishing wells, Of sticks and stones and ice cream cones And tolling Cathedral bells. -- From An Ode to Childhood, Annalise Phenix
Now it's your turn. Share your opening lines (or a favorite from another author) below!
Kris
This novel begins in a decades-old support group of women who have counseled each other as they try to move past their significant tragedies. Friction ensues and the group plans to split up, until they discover that one of them has been murdered. They soon realize their worst nightmare is a reality and there is someone after them all.
What I like about this book is the author's subtle questioning of why we are entertained by these tragic events, the gore and violence that is often inflicted on a young woman. Here is the beginning of the story through the eyes of the protagonist who has been a paranoid recluse ever since escaping her would-be murderer. She lives with her best friend, a plant named "Fine", short for Final Plant, the closest thing to structure in her life.
I wake up, get out of bed, say good morning to my plant, unwrap a protein bar, and drink a liter of bottled water. I'm awake for five full minutes before remembering I might die today. When you get old, you get soft.
Writers are the Great Oz for each of their stories.
You know all.
You see everything in your mind-video of every scene.
Sometimes you don’t realize that the reader doesn’t know and see everything too. Or you think you’ve shared enough that the reader would get it. But way too often that’s not the case. And if the reader doesn’t get it, they’re no longer immersed in your fictional world.
Aack! You’ve lost them.
That’s what I call the Great Oz Effect.
Three things that always need to be included in opening pages.
1. Setting – Where is your POV character?
2. Age or Implied Age Range -- For your POV character, and maybe another character too.
3. Character’s Physical Descriptions – Every time a new character is introduced.
The fourth and fifth points apply to every page of your book.
4. Your POV character’s reactions to everything.
5. Specific-to-your-story points that may be veiled by the Great Oz Effect.
I’ll dive deeper into each of those points and more.
1. Setting – Where is your POV character?
I strongly recommend placing them in the setting in the first paragraph. Could just be a hint. A boy’s locker room. A hansom carriage. A rollercoaster. The deck of a ship.
Whoops. The deck of a cruise ship? A spaceship? The Titanic?
No one is to blame for my decision. Not the husband missing from my bed. Not my unborn baby. Not even my grief. Lying on my back, with a pillow behind my head, I catch a glimpse of my slightly rounded belly. And I know. I am leaving Jackson.
Compelling opening. And Denny Bryce provided a clear visual.
2. Age or Implied Age Range
For your POV character, and maybe another character too.
You’ll want to slip in a hint about the age as soon as you can, or the reader may think your POV character is significantly younger or older than they are. And when the reader realizes they’re wrong, it’s not good. They’re jerked out of your story.
Cathy Lawrence is a Virtual Immersion Grad.
I’m working with her in one-on-one Zoom editing sessions. She’s given me permission to share.
In her WIP, Nessa and the Calculus of Love, we needed to slip in the age range of the male POV character. The reader could think he was old enough to be our female POV character’s father or grandfather.
The age slip-in is on the same page when they met.
The BEFORE Paragraph:
“Whoever’s bought your passage south…or whatever else your benefactor may have purchased, I’ll take no part in it,” the man slurred, alcohol wending through his breath.
The AFTER Paragraph:
Whoever’s bought your passage south…or whatever else your benefactor may have purchased, I’ll take no part in it,.” The man’s words were slurred, alcohol wending through his breath, reminding her of her brother James in habits and age.
YELLOW -- Added. We used the female POV character’s brother. It took less than a minute to think of it and slip it in.
Cassandra L Shaw’s Blood Ring, Book 1, Vampire King’s Daughter
The BEFORE Sentence:
Stirling bit into a slice of pizza slice with gusto.
The AFTER Sentence:
Stirling bit into a slice of pizza slice with teenage boy gusto.
Adding teenage boy – so easy!
3. Character’s Physical Descriptions
Every time a character is introduced, the reader imagines them. Share a couple of interesting details RIGHT THEN, so the reader won’t be jarred when their image doesn’t match yours later. No need to share much. But make what you share carry deepen characterization.
Diana’s voice is soft and soothing, every syllable rounded with a velvety mountain cadence. Not a coarse twang like mine and Chet’s. She sounds like she comes from money, and she looks it, too, in styled hair and an oversized cream sweater that hangs artfully off one shoulder. Her boots are low and Western-inspired, chunky heels and pointy toes. She looks like a million bucks.
Quick Analysis:
1. Kimberly Belle used an amplified dialogue cue to segue into describing this character.
2. She shared dialogue cues for three characters, deepening characterization for all of them.
3. She chose two things to spotlight, the oversized sweater and the Western-inspired boots. We don’t know the character’s height or build or hair color. We don’t need to know those details now. We may learn more later.
Second Example:
Somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, a door swung open and a woman tumbled out, shooting across the dirt in a tank top and red bikini underwear. Her bare legs were scary skinny and her hair wild, like she’d been sleeping in a wind tunnel. She marched right up to him and smacked him in the chest.
Wow. Did you see her shooting across the dirt? In a tank top and red bikini underwear?
I did.
That’s so much more than a description. Which is exactly what you want to do!
Study that example. Really study it. You’ll learn, learn. learn.
From Demonseer by Becky Rawnsley
I spin round to find my Bestie Number One has emerged from the biology lab. Connie—small, flame-haired, irrepressible—waves at Josh and shoulder-bumps me. ‘Hiya, you two.’
Two physical descriptors and one personality hit shared in an em dash/No And, construction. Works beautifully.
4. Your POV character’s reactions to everything.
This point applies to every page of your book. Needing subtext and more.
It may be a visceral response.
It may be what they’re feeling.
It may be what they’re thinking.
It may be what they’re planning to do.
See what I did there? Got your attention, I hope.
You may not want character’s thinking about what they’re planning to do. If it’s happening right away, have them do it.
You know the reactions from your POV character. The reader only knows those reactions if you show or tell them.
There are tons of these types of webinars on my website.
Two more examples from Cathy Lawrence.
She knew the male POV character was becoming intrigued by the female sitting across from him in the carriage, but there weren’t any hints on the page.
We scrolled up and found two places where we could slip in a few words that shared his interest.
The BEFORE Sentence:
Her speech was measured, impossibly calm, her body serene, unmoving.
Beautiful dialogue cue followed by a thought about her body.
The AFTER Sentence
Her speech was measured, impossibly calm, somehow annoyingly alluring. Her body serene, unmoving.
YELLOW – We added to the dialogue cue and put his interest on the page.
RED – We nixed it so we’d backload and spotlight annoyingly alluring.
The second example also plays off a dialogue cue, but this time we added the whole dialogue cue.
Now her voice was playful, mocking, making him want toHe ached to reach across and draw her hood away, pull back the bonnet that was probably beneath it, and see precisely what kind of daring-fool she was.
The RED and the rest of that sentence was there. But it needed a stimulus.
We nixed the RED, added the YELLOW, and used the YELLOW dialogue cue as a stimulus for him wanting to see her face.
Another missing-attraction example.
Two paragraphs from Zara Keane's Ambushed in the Alps. She has to dig a bullet out of his upper thigh.
The BEFORE Paragraphs:
“It’s time to put my First Aid skills to the test.”
After Sidney went upstairs, and I plumped Luc’s cushions.
Zara knew that Angel is attracted to Luc. But the reader’s only read one thought about it in a previous chapter. It’s not developed for a long time, but that attraction is still happening. And Angel is going to be close to him and touch his skin. It’s a perfect place to slip in her attraction.
The AFTER Paragraphs:
“Okaaaay. It’s time to put my First Aid skills to the test.”
Sidney went upstairs, and I turned to Luc. I’ve never been this close to him. Never touched his skin. And considering that I shot him a scant few inches from his… The reaction deep in my belly redefined the butterfly effect. And heat torched my face. Great. I was a hot mess when I needed to be a cool surgeon.
Quick Analysis:
1. Zara wrote what I call a Visual Dialogue Cue: “Okaaaay.”
Adding the extra vowels cues the reader how she said that word and that she’s not really okay.
2. This is a clean book, so Zara implied where she’d accidentally shot him -- a scant few inches from his…
3. She shared two visceral responses.
4. Her last sentence carries a Humor Hit with structural and content parallelism. And, she really had considered going to med school to be a surgeon. It all fits.
The next paragraph from Ambushed in the Alps by Zara Keane was missing two important things: a visual and pain. Our POV character has bruised, maybe broken, ribs.
The BEFORE Paragraph:
I had to drag him up the steps, pausing between efforts. I’m not sure how, but we made it.
The AFTER Paragraph:
I had to dragturn around and pull him up theeach steps, pausing to pant and moan. My poor battered ribs. between efforts. I’m not sure how, but we made it.
Now we can see how she’d help him up the steps. "Pant and moan" share her pain. And the 4-word sentence that follows adds more clarity. Now we know it’s her ribs that hurt.
Missing Scenes
Sometimes the Great Oz Effect contributes to missing scenes. I asked my friend/writer/editor extraordinaire Lori Freeland to share an example too.
Our heroine, Penelope, is desperate for money to save her brother and has to figure out a way to get it. That chapter ends with her solution.
She was going to become a highwayman.
What a great hook. And something the reader can’t wait to experience along with Penelope. Only, that didn’t happen. The next place we pick up our heroine, we jump here:
So far, she had ridden out thrice and coaxed five purses, totaling almost one hundred pounds, out of their owners. She frowned as she thought back to her first quarry.
We missed her first robbery and got only a partial retelling. And because of that, the scene lost its power and the reader is disappointed. Once that was pointed out, Deborah went back and wrote the scene in detail, and the difference it made was amazing!
5. Specific-to-your-story points that may be veiled by the Great Oz Effect.
There are soooo many of those points in every book. It could be a squillion missing anythings.
Here are a few random examples.
Sounds
Cathy Lawrence had this sound: Bang. Bang.
It could be someone pounding on a carriage door. But the reader could think it’s gunshots. Yikes!
Words
Sometimes there’s a perfect word you want to use, but it’s not one most readers would know. Like the word below I learned from Cathy Lawrence.
The BEFORE Sentence:
She lifted her gaze enough to limn his features.
The AFTER Sentence:
She lifted her gaze enough to limn his features like an artist sketches an outline.
Now everyone gets it. And the sentence is perfectly cadenced too.
You’d limit yourself to very few words in your book that are rarely known like limn. Or am I the rare one? Let me know in the comments if you knew the word limn.
The Set Up: The POV character is trying to rescue a friend who was buried in an avalanche.
The reader gets what’s meant in the BEFORE sentence:
We dug at a frantic pace, clearing snow, searching for any sign of life.
But if you put yourself in the POV character’s skin, or watch your mind-video of this scene, you’d know what you’re looking for.
We dug at a frantic pace, clearing snow, searching for a hand, a foot, an elbow, an ear.
Ambushed in the Alps is make-you-snicker-snort funny. Hence elbow and ear.
The last example:
This is also from Ambushed in the Alps by Zara Keane. What the POV character has to do is not not not a funny part of the story. But Zara stays true to her genre and her POV character and slips in three Humor Hits.
Set Up: The 19 year-old female POV character has to dig a bullet out of someone’s thigh. She doesn’t have any medical training. The dialogue is from the guy she accidentally shot.
The BEFORE, 2 paragraphs.
The first paragraph is dialogue from the guy who’s been shot.
“The bullet’s still in there. And there’s no exit wound. You’re going to have to dig it out.”
I searched for the tweezers in the First Aid kit.
Sometimes deep editing is seeing what’s not on the page.
What’s not there?
TWO BIG REACTIONS! One from him and one from her.
I know what I’d be feeling and thinking, but I’m not Angel. Her backstory is insane, as it should be.
Zara Keane added the YELLOW in less than a minute.
“The bullet’s still in there. And there’s no exit wound. You’re going to have to dig it out.” Luc’s bravado shoved out the words, but I could hear the fear in his tone.
An image popped into my mind. My dad slumped on the sofa. My godfather, Jimmy the Rat, digging a bullet out of dad’s shoulder.
If Jimmy could do it, so could I. Another life lesson courtesy of jailbird Jimmy.
I swallowed past the boulder in my throat and searched for the tweezers in the First Aid kit.
We’ll analyze what Zara Keane accomplished.
1. She added a dialogue cue that contrasted his two incongruent feelings. Always smart to share two opposite feeling states. Pretending to be brave as well as his fear. Brilliant.
Read the dialogue cue out loud:
Luc’s bravado shoved out the words, but I could hear the fear in his tone.
What did you hear? Structural parallelism. Compelling cadence. And another rhetorical device – assonance. Rhyming vowel sounds: hear, fear.
2. She used Angel’s backstory to let the reader know she’d seen her godfather dig a bullet out of her dad.
3. She included oh-so-fun Jimmy the Rat to lighten the scene. And amplified with the if-Jimmy-could-do-it line.
4. She amplified again with the next sentence: Another life lesson courtesy of jailbird Jimmy.
Notice her double alliteration: life, lesson, jailbird, Jimmy.
Wrapping Up, a Goodie for You, and Good News Too!
You know the full everything behind what something means, but your reader may only know the broad-brush something.
How’s that for vague?
That’s how your reader may feel.
You don’t feel that way…
Wait for it…
…
…
… because you know everything.
But if you don’t know what’s not clear for the reader, how can you fix it?
You may need a clarity reader. Someone who doesn’t know your story, or an editing partner or friend who has the gift of separating what they know from what the reader learns on each page.
Yep. Some people have that gift.
A Goodie for You!
You could write down what the reader learns at the bottom of each page. A bullet-point list.
I call that my Page-by-Page Check Pacing List. It’s good for checking pacing as well as tracking what the reader knows. But it’s more for facts. Not for those all-important reactions that often need to be shared.
The Good News!
None of these examples took more than a couple of minutes to find a spot and slip them in. Quick, easy, fun deep editing that adds just what’s needed to keep the reader clued in.
There’s always a cool way to get what you want on the page.
A big heartfelt THANK YOU to the talented Immersion Grads for giving me permission to use their examples. Love you, love your writing!
What are some of your Great Oz Effect issues? What types of things have you needed to go back and clarify for the reader?
Please chime in.I’d love to hear from you!
Can you tell I love teaching?
If you’d like to learn more about Lawson Writer’s Academy, drop by my website, www.margielawson.com .
Can’t wait to hear from you all. If you have questions, ask!
ONE MORE THING: My next GET HAPPY Virtual Open House is April 12th!
Mark your calendar! Drop by my website between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 12th.
Click on the GET HAPPY meme, and you’ll be in my Zoom room.
It’s a chance to hang out with writers. No agenda. Just chatting and laughing and getting to know each other. Hope to see you there!
About Margie
Margie Lawson left a career in psychology to focus on another passion—helping writers make their stories, characters, and words strong. Using a psychologically-based, deep-editing approach, Margie teaches writers how to bring emotion to the page. Emotion equals power. Power grabs readers and holds onto them until the end. Hundreds of Margie grads have gone on to win awards, find agents, sign with publishers, and hit bestseller lists.
An international presenter, Margie has taught over 150 full-day master classes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France, as well as multi-day intensives on cruise ships in the Caribbean. Pre-COVID, she taught 5-day Immersion Master Classes across the U.S. and Canada and in seven cities in Australia too.
COVID Update: Immersion Master Classes are now virtual, taught through Zoom. Virtual Immersion classes are limited to six writers. They're two full days or four half-days—and as always, writers get one-on-one deep editing with Margie.
She also founded Lawson Writer's Academy, where you’ll find over 30 instructors teaching online courses through her website. To learn more, and sign up for Margie’s newsletter, visit www.margielawson.com.
Writer’s Block can strike us all in the most inconvenient times, but today I want to offer seven tips to authors prone to procrastination. Some of us are like the tortoise and the hare—racing to the WIP finish line just to get side-tracked by the comforts or distractions of life, like the fabled rabbit’s nap.
Sitting in front of a blank screen can be painful and can make absolutely anything else feel more urgent. But what is more important than finishing your project and completing your writing goals?
Procrastination is a natural response to an uncomfortable situation when we don’t want to complete work. We may choose to catch up on emails, watch a TV show instead, or alphabetize our bookshelf by color. These are not terrible things to do, just hurdles in the way of completing your next great novel. Whether you relate more to the rabbit or the tortoise, read on for tips to keep procrastination away.
1. Get into the habit.
One way to stay on track with your novel is to write each day or on a set schedule. There are many science-based reasons why writing daily can ease procrastination. Having a regular schedule can reduce Decision Making Fatigue, because your routine automates this part of your thinking. This streamlining declutters our mind and allows us to focus more on our writing task.
Not sure what Decision Making Fatigue is? It’s the result of the tens of thousands of decisions we make daily that wear down our ability to make more. This could be about what socks to wear or skipping them all together for flip-flops, but after making a constant stream of choices all day, the mind goes into overload and even simple choices become too hard.
Another way to reinforce this daily routine is with visual cues. Most people are wired to respond to visual cues, which may explain why we may be attracted to decorative signs that say things like ‘LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE’ (Guilty, by the way!) If you want to start a writing habit (or freshen up an old one) try leaving notes for yourself around the house.
Put reminder sticky notes in the places that are most likely to distract you and keep you from writing.
Add encouraging messages to your white board as you record your progress daily.
Tape a favorite writing quote to your monitor for inspiration.
Let your inner encourager cheer on your writing and you will want to show up and write more.
Keeping a writing habit is essential for productive writers because it has many benefits. It frees up creative energy because of less decision making. It gets writing minds into crafting their novels faster because it trains their minds to work at that time. It makes their writing stronger as they flex their writing muscles more often. Take that, procrastination!
2. Plan your time.
Writing on a regular basis takes planning. Here are some tips for planning your writing sessions that may make them more productive. Use what works and skip what doesn’t, because everyone has a unique writing process.
Using this time-honored method, writers can free up their mental energy and prioritize their to-do list daily.
This system requires a person to reflect at the end of their day. They write what they want to accomplish the next day, stopping at a maximum of six items. This forces the writer to decide which things are most important. If you have a doctor’s appointment or need to grocery shop, add it to the list. Be certain you write-a-page or 500-words type goal is also on your list. Items that did not happen go on the list the next day.
Keeping track of the daily tasks and minimizing them to only the six most important has been used in major corporations for over 100 years. It prioritizes the most important tasks and takes the takes away stress. We can use these productivity ideas for our writing as well.
Minimize Interruptions.
Honor your writing time.
Turn off notifications.
Wear noise cancelling headphones.
Do whatever you need to do for your optimal writing time.
Build in wiggle time.
It make take a few minutes to settle in and get into your writing mode. Structure your time so you can spend most of it writing. The goal is to get more words on the page, right? Find a simple ritual that works for you and stick to it. Do you prefer any of these methods to begin writing?
Many authors begin their writing sessions by reviewing a page or two of what they wrote the day before.
Some leave their work on a cliff hanger, one that they are excited about crafting the next day.
Other writers dive right in, knowing their first paragraph or two will probably get scrapped.
Pantsers play with their characters and listen to what they say should happen next.
Plotters find the next scene and build it from their notes.
3. Set false deadlines (and phone reminders!)
One way to trick your mind into working on your WIP is to set up a fake timeline before the real deadlines. When planning for a project, I like to give myself extra time. If I get bogged down with other work or life happens—as it does—I don’t have to stress as much.
Set up reminders on your phone. Mine give me a nudge the week and the day before I need to have a written work completed. This can be done in advance and are helpful ways I keep myself accountable for my writing goals. Saving time and to make your schedule more flexible is important when trying to write more productively.
4. Train your elephant.
This is a reference to a very interesting book called The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he extrapolates truths from major world philosophies and finds commonalities in how each applies similar life lessons.
In his book, he illustrates the psychology behind motivation or why-we-do-the-things-we-do with an analogy. Haidt compares our brains to a rider on an elephant and he explains how our brains have two main functions, the fight or flight limbic system and the decision-making frontal cortex.
The elephant represents our more banal brain, full of powerful emotions. The second system is our frontal cortex in charge of sophisticated socially acceptable behaviors. The good and bad news is that creative folks tend to have very active elephants, which is great fodder for the exciting plot lines and romanticized characters, but without working with our rider our writing life can turn into a disastrous three-ring-circus on a bad day.
Making decisions helps train the elephant to work with you as you create your novel. The elephant has a tendency to go find peanut flavored cheese cake instead, so it’s takes time and repeated efforts to enable good teamwork. Training your elephant to work when you need to is an essential underpinning to defeating procrastination.
5. Make motivational tasks last, (and watch out for avoidance tasks!)
Have you ever heard of doing the harder thing first when you look over your to-do list? I may have to disagree with that conventional wisdom. Although accomplishing the harder task frees up the writer, by getting the dreaded task out of the way, there are some considerations.
Look over your to-do list first (Maybe you have your six item list in front of you? Perfect!) Are any of those tasks non-writing related? Don’t do them (yet.) Get the writing done first. The marketing and email responses can wait an hour or two most of the time.
Are some of the urgent tasks things you enjoy? If you like creating visuals for social media and need to feed your Twitter, do this as a reward after finishing your writing sprints.
Do you have a big, cumbersome project that would take you from writing? You could probably accomplish a writing session without cleaning the top drawer of your desk. This is an example of an avoidance task. It’s procrastination.
Find what motivates you and follow up your writing sessions with that. It is that simple and that frustrating. (And perhaps a little influenced by the elephant taking a joy ride through an interesting thread of posts!) Keep showing up for your writing, but don’t forget to keep the focus on getting the words on the page.
6. Break the project into bite-sized pieces
Writing a novel has many layers and having an easy-to-understand map of your process can help you manage the stages. It is overwhelming to think about marketing, editing, and social media when you are working on a first or second draft. Take time to pencil out a plan, then break down your goals into pieces. Maybe you have a daily word count, or a scene to complete, but however you break it down, it should contain these elements:
Can be measured
Can accomplish the mini goals in a day.
Can be put in a checklist, spreadsheet, or notebook.
Track your work in manageable chunks and that feeling of accomplishment will keep you from procrastinating as well.
7. Prioritize your health.
Taking care of oneself will improve your ability to choose to write over procrastination. It makes sense that feeling your best will lead you to better writing sessions. When we get enough sleep, eat a proper diet, and maintain at least a moderate exercise routine, we get many benefits.
Increased energy
Lowered anxiety
Improved outlook and mood
Take care of you and let the muse take care of the rest. Keep writing!
Has procrastination ever been a problem for you? Have you ever been in an interesting or tricky situation due to avoiding something you normally love to do? Do you relate more to the tortoise or the hare? Let us know in the comments, I look forward to hearing from you.
About Kris
Kris Maze is an author and Spanish teacher. She has worked in education for many years and writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and the award-winning blog Writers in the Stormwhere she is also a host. You can find her YA sci-fi and horror stories and keep up with her author events at her website which is currently getting some new fun features!
Pssst! And here is the newest news: Kris Maze also writes horror, thriller, and mystery under the pen name Krissy Knoxx. Krissy Knoxx.com is currently under construction, but check soon for fun updates and several new projects.
A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors with her family.
