Writers in the Storm

Janice Hardy

Readers may not judge a book by its cover, but they will judge it by its opening scene.

An opening scene has but one job—to establish the story and convince readers to read the next scene. That’s a lot to ask of a single scene, but it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Readers aren’t expecting the entire book in that opening, just enough to capture their attention and let them know the story is going to worth their time.

Here are three things you can do to ensure those readers stick around.

1. Pose a Question Readers Want to See Answered

No matter what kind of book it is, there’s a story question that needs to be answered by the end. In a romance, it’s “How will these two people fall in love?”. In a mystery, it’s “Whodunnit?” Thrillers make you wonder “How will the heroes save the day?”

If a reader got as far as reading the opening scene, the general question of the genre or story type already intrigues them, so all you need to do is capitalize on that. Why should a reader want to see your couple fall in love? What makes this mystery a better read than someone else’s? What’s going to thrill in this thriller? Essentially, “Where is this story going?”

Many opening scenes that fail to grab readers don’t offer a question to suggest where the plot is going to go. They explain the situation, describe the characters, dump a lot of backstory, or show them existing in their world without anything really going on.

No questions. Nothing to wonder about. No sense of a plot or story unfolding.

A strong opening scene creates an interesting situation where something is left unanswered. It lets readers know the plot is moving forward and there’s something to pursue. They want to know what comes next, because you’ve clearly shown that there is indeed a “next,” and so far, it looks pretty cool.

A good example here is Jay Asher’s, 13 Reasons Why. A box of cassette tapes is delivered to Clay. On the first tape is Hannah, a girl at school (and Clay’s crush) who just killed herself. She says the reason why is on the tapes, and if you’re listening, you’re one of the reasons.

“Why did Hannah kill herself?” makes readers want to know, same as the boy who received the tapes. You know the story will answer that, and other questions as well.

Show readers the story is going somewhere, and that it’ll be worth their time to find out where.

2. Catch Readers Off Guard with Something Unexpected

I’ve bought books based on an unusual opening line or page alone, so don’t underestimate the power of the unexpected.

Defying expectations from the start lets readers know this won’t be the same old story they’ve read before (even if they love those stories). This one offers something new, a different view or angle, or even a fresh twist to a classic plot.

Things unexpected also suggests that the book will be full of surprises to keep readers guessing, and have a plot that isn’t predictable. They’ll pay more attention to what’s happening in every scene, because they’ll never know what twist or unusual detail might come next.

Even unexpected language or turns of phrase can catch a reader’s attention. Unusual pairings of words, an odd comment made at the right time, a wry way of viewing the world can all create a sense that this story isn’t relying on clichés or tropes, but offers a unique voice and perspective.

A fun example here is Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s Natural Born Charmer. It opens with a woman in a beaver costume on the side of the road, and the man who stops to see if she needs help. “You got a gun?” the woman asks. “Not with me.” “Then I got no use for you.”

It’s quirky, it’s unexpected, and it makes you want to know exactly how this situation came to be. But it also lets you know that this is a romance that won’t be boring.

Predictable is boring, so piquing curiosity right from the start promises readers this novel will surprise them.

3. Give Readers a Reason to Care

Not caring is a major reason for putting down a book, and it’s easy to lose readers in an opening scene. They haven’t read enough of the book yet to know why these characters are wonderful, or why this problem is fascinating, or how this puzzle is a brain bender.

All they know, is they read a bunch of “stuff” they didn’t give a hoot about.

Which is both harsh and hard, I know. This is the aspect most difficult for writers to pull off, because it’s ambiguous what “a reason to care” is. Every reader is different, and what appeals to one won’t to another.

In most cases, showing a character with likable or compelling traits makes them care. We like nice people, or people in situations we know are hard, or those in trouble we can relate to.

Maybe show the protagonist caring about or helping others, or have them display a likable trait, such as a clever wit or self-deprecating manner. Make readers laugh and you can hook them every time.

If the character isn’t likable (and not every protagonist is), show what makes them fascinating, or fearsome, or downright creepy. 

It doesn’t matter what readers care about, as long as something in the opening scene makes them decide this book is worth reading.

In Jennifer Crusie’s Anyone But You, the story opens with the recently divorced Nina at the pound looking for a puppy. What she finds, is Fred, an old, morose basset hound on his final day. He’s the last thing she needs, but she can’t leave him to die, so she adopts and brings him home.

Saving a depressed dog on his last day is enough to make anyone likable, but Nina’s wit and charm and her instant love for Fred make her a character to root for.

Once readers make an emotional investment in the story, they’ll stay to see how it turns out.

How you open that novel determines whether or not your reader keeps reading. Any one of these can hook a reader and pull them into the book, but if you can do all three, you’ll increase your odds of hitting opening scene jackpot.

What are some of your favorite openings? What about them grabbed you?

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 Ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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by Fae Rowen

Not often, but sometimes I return to my teen experiences to help connect with a past emotion. It helps me get into a deep point of view by remembering something that happened. Since Young Adult Science Fiction is one of the genres I write in, this is a cool trick. But I also use it for my adult science fiction.

I vaguely remember my mother's words when she tried to soothe my first teenage love-gone-wrong.

Puppy love. He didn't deserve you. He lives too far away. 

There were a lot more comments ranging from sympathy to aggravation on her part. For my part, I was just miserable.

How did it happen?

I was accepted to a National Science Foundation math program at State Diego State University. The six-week summer course included fifty math students and fifty chemistry students from around the U.S. It was an exciting way to spend the summer between my junior and senior year in high school.

I was in the math program, taking the equivalent of sixteen lower division units and nine upper division units of math and computer science classes from specially selected professors for the program. The female math and chemistry students were housed on the top floor of a dorm at the far end of campus.

The male students were housed in a dorm on the other end of the huge campus. You had to walk past fraternity row to get to the classroom buildings and the guys' dorm. Since the female curfew was 7 p.m., the chem guys, who had no curfew, visited our dorm. Every night. (I'm sorry to say that the math guys stayed in their dorm and did homework.)

Now, I was supposed to be doing tons of homework every night. But the chemistry guys were all so cute, and I didn't ever get to talk to them unless I hung out downstairs in the rec room, which I was happy to do since there was a pingpong table.

We set it up in our unfinished living room. Every night I'd lose to my father, who never believed in letting me win at any game.

But I got better. Unfortunately he did, too. Finally, I started winning. Sometimes. By that summer, I was unstoppable. In the dorm, the word spread, and every night there was a line of guys waiting to try to defeat me. That's how I met John.

John was not only a gifted chemistry student, he was on his school's debate team and football team. And he was cute. After a week, he'd be waiting outside my math classroom to walk hand-in-hand with me to lunch and dinner in the cafeteria. When a food fight broke out the third night we were served "mystery meatballs," he shoved me under the table and threw volleys of food across the room until security broke up the fight. Nothing happened to the high school students, but we all got a lecture in our classes the next day.

On week-ends the program took both groups to local points of interest, including the beach. Even though my studies were suffering, I finally got my first kiss. It was so amazing. I don't think it was John's…

We promised to write, and we did. That summer, my family vacation came within a hundred miles of John's hometown. I went on a hunger strike for four days, and my father finally caved and agreed to drop me off at John's house and wait for an hour. I was so excited.

John's mother opened the door and told me John was at football practice. He wouldn't be home for two more hours. When she found out my dad was outside, she invited him in, and gave us something from the kitchen. I don't remember what it was. I was in shock. I don't remember what they talked about, either. It probably wasn't anything good for John and me.

After an hour, my dad and I left. He didn't lecture or tease me.

John's letter arrived in two days. Full of apologies. In a month he'd be traveling five hundred miles to a college two hours away from me for a debate tournament. Could I meet him there?

I talked my dad into letting me take the car there. Alone.

I watched John debate. He was good. He won the tournament. And it was football season. He looked great. But we didn't have that much time to talk and I drove home, feeling sad. I knew my long-distance romance wasn't going to last.

With the wisdom of age and experience now, I recognize the bittersweet feeling of loss. I understand that first blush of love—innocent and laced with boundless hope and excitement.

And that's what I relive when writing in my YA voice. I become that girl on the roof of my three-story dorm throwing water balloons at the guys arriving at the dorm. I become the wishful, dewy-eyed innocent wishing for that first kiss—afraid to make the first move because I had no idea what that move should be and, heck, I was a mathematician-in-training. I needed to be able to prove everything was correct before I committed.

Young Adult stories are all about the new emotions, the conflicted yearnings, the fears—if you get what you want AND if you don't get what you want. Yes, it's not easy going back to those times and reliving your own feelings, but that's where your own YA voice is. Reminisce. Dust off your teen voice. Your adult WIP will thank you.

Have you used your own YA experiences in your writing? A riff on them?

About Fae

  P.R.I.S.M., Fae's debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Fae's second book in the series will be available for pre-order October 1, 2019.

by Chris Lentz

Every “book baby” presents challenges. But when I was honored to be asked to write the biography of an incredible entrepreneur and philanthropist—who’d just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which briskly became a death sentence—my latest book baby became a unique challenge altogether.

As if the project wasn’t daunting enough, the subject was my father-in-law.

I write fiction, but I found that much of the strategy and craft authors use with a romance or a thriller applies to constructing a biography, like:

• Introducing
  the hero and his/her dreams and desires
• Enabling
  readers to experience the hero’s journey, with its many conflicts and conquests
• Presenting
  the hero’s transformation

After researching, compiling and writing Opening Doors: Jim Swenson’s Life of Grit, Gratitude and Giving, I came away with a list of top five lessons. They may work for you. They may not. All I know is this approach resulted in the book landing at #5 on an Amazon HOT NEW RELEASES list for biographies and a review that said, “I couldn’t put it down and I burned the corn on the stove.” Cool, huh?

Lesson #1. Do your homework

If the person is alive, your best source of information is that person. Before you start interviewing, make a list of questions that dig into:

• Events
  that shaped or changed the person’s life
• Obstacles
  the person overcame
• Risks
  that paid off and those that didn’t

Also, ask questions that go beyond the what the subject did to focus on the why.

It was clear that Jim was going to have to be vulnerable for this book to work. For a first-born, overachiever, Jim was not known for vulnerability. I had to strategically and creatively approach him with questions and prompts to get the stories behind his stories.

I also asked about the parts of his life that were more jagged than smooth. Like hunger. Like alcoholism. Like death. Those kinds of struggles often spark a significant change and accomplishment in life.

My advice: Surround yourself with mountains of information that you can mine later in the writing process.

Lesson #2. Think broadly

I suspect that many first drafts of biographies resemble history textbooks. But if you’re hoping to attract, enlighten and entertain readers, then a different approach is needed. With Opening Doors, I determined the best book I could write wouldn’t be Jim’s entire life story. Rather, it would be a story about his life and the impact he had—and continues to have—on others.

I needed to review and study the high points of his life so I could tell his story in a panorama with the broadest of strokes and unify it with a theme. The idea: opening doors…doors that had been opened for him and the many more he continues to open for others.

My advice: Identify a theme and connect as much as you can back to that theme.

Lesson #3. Write narrowly

The book needed a structure that met the needs of today’s readers: bite-size nuggets, easy to scan, lots of dialogue and some clear takeaways.

My decision was to work within a three-part structure:

• What
  he did
• What
  he learned
• What
  he’s remembered for

In the first section, the milestones of Jim’s life are laid out in decade-specific chunks. To help transport the reader back in time, I incorporated some headlines of the day. The goal here was to set the context for the next section.

In the middle of the book, the focus is on 13 tried-and-true tips for opening new doors that Jim wished he’d known back when he faced far too many closed doors. This is where his recollections and anecdotes support each of the 13 tips.

The final section is all about tributes. Readers will find eulogies, testimonials and various articles and posts about Jim and his accomplishments.

My advice: Let the subject of the book tell the story, but also allow other voices to tell their stories about the impact of the biography’s subject.

Lesson #4. Capture and connect moments

Jim was a storyteller. And, thankfully, he was a consistent storyteller. His stories were usually grand on their own telling. No fish-story treatment was needed or occurred over his lifetime.

What we did together during his final weeks was search for and capture the meaning of those stories…the feelings, the emotions and, most importantly, the lessons.

In researching ways to write a biography, I realized and shared with Jim that we needed to keep in mind that his stories are his, the events they’re about are not. Memories of those events also belong to friends, family members, co-workers…none of whom asked to be in the book.

After Jim’s passing, I scoured the manuscript to find any passages that might be problematic. And, I held back entire incidents and/or details to protect people who may not be ready to have that information shared about them.

My advice: Tell the truth.

Lesson #5. Write with your heart

You’re going to be devoting much time and energy to this project. You might as well care deeply for your subject, either positively or negatively. Your emotional connection to the subject will bleed through.

I worked hard to publish a book that creates an emotional journey…one that puts the reader in the subject’s shoes. I wanted readers to come away knowing what Jim dreamed about, struggled with and was successful with.

My advice: Devoting your energy and resources to a project like this should be for the joy of it.

Final thoughts

Some readers will need more than text, so the print version of Opening Doors features more than 130 photos. And, because of Jim’s love of reading, education and children, the purchase of Opening Doors supports Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library book-gifting program. 

Those are the top five lessons I learned writing my first biography. I suspect everyone’s encounters with projects like this one are different. Please take a moment to share your thoughts below.

Are there any tips you’d like to offer about writing a biography? What do you like most/least when you read a biography?

About Christopher:

Christopher Lentz is the acclaimed author of Opening Doors (biography, 2019), My Friend Marilyn (historical fiction, 2018) and The Blossom Trilogy (historical romance). His books are about hope, second chances and outcasts overcoming obstacles. But most of all, they’re about how love changes everything.

Lentz made his mark as a corporate-marketing executive before becoming a full-time storyteller. He resides in Southern California with his high-school-sweetheart wife and family. To learn more, please visit www.christopherlentz.org or www.blossomtrilogy.com.