by Jenn Windrow

The last thing any writer wants their book to be is forgettable. And that starts with an attention-grabbing, first line.

There’s a lot riding on your novel’s first line. It’s not just the opening act — it’s the handshake, the hook, and the dare. Your first line tells your reader: this is the kind of story you’re in for, and you’re going to want to sit down for it.

When I am editing, whether it be for myself, a client, or my critique partners, I am probably the toughest on the first line. I will work for hours crafting the most perfect first line for all my stories, it might be my very favorite thing about writing! And I know I’ve annoyed more than one client and critique partner by hyper focusing on theirs.

For example, this one might be my favorite that I've written right now.

"Leave it to a fanghole to interrupt a perfectly good retirement." - Evil’s Lethal Addiction

My urban fantasy series was supposed to be complete after book 4, but thanks to a simple question asked, I was prompted to write another book in the series. At the end of book four, my heroine decided to retire from her vampire hunting night job, so I needed something fun, full of my voice, that matched the rest of the series, but also explained why I decided to add more to my series. It's a few simple words, but it does the job I need it to do.

So how do you write a first line that grabs your reader by the collar and whispers, you’re not going anywhere?

Let’s break it down.

What Makes a First Line Work

The best first lines do one or more of the following:

• Introduce tension or mystery
• Deliver a distinct voice
• Establish a mood or tone
• Drop us into motion
• Offer a surprise, a promise, or a provocation

Forget weather reports. Forget waking up from dreams. You want your reader to feel off-balance in the best way — intrigued, unsettled, curious. You want them asking a question you’re not going to answer just yet.

First Line Archetypes That Slap

Here are five approaches that never go out of style with some examples and a prompt.

1. The Startling Truth

Drop a bomb. Then let your reader scramble to understand what just happened.

Here's an example...

“All this happened, more or less.” — Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Try: I buried the wrong body.

2. The Irresistible Voice

Hit the page with so much personality the reader can’t look away.

Here's an example...

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born…” — The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

Try: I never meant to set the nun on fire.

3. The Mystery in Motion

Something’s already happening — and we want to catch up.

Here's an example...

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

Try: By the time I reached the hill, the house was already burning.

4. The Shocking Contradiction

Use irony, contradiction, or dark humor to knock the reader sideways.

Here's an example...

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” — The Crow Road, Iain Banks

Try: He was the nicest serial killer I’d ever met.

5. The Weight of a Voice Untold

Sometimes quiet tension speaks loudest.

Here's an example...

“They shoot the white girl first.” — Paradise, Toni Morrison

Try: No one noticed she was missing until dinner was served.

There is a reason the books listed above are considered classics and have stood the test of time.

First Lines to Avoid Like a Cliché Storm

• “It was a dark and stormy night…”
• “My name is X, and I’m just a normal [insert trope]…”
• “Everything changed the day…”
• “If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead.”

You can twist these into something fresh — but if you don’t, they’ll send your reader straight to the next book in their TBR pile.

Writing Tips for Line One

• Write it last: Your best opening line might not show up until draft three. (This one doens't work for me, but I know several writers who need to write it last to make it perfect.)
•  Test it out loud: It should sound good in your mouth. Rhythm matters.
•  Be bold, not confusing: Intrigue is good. Bewilderment? Not so much.
•  Don’t overwrite: Punch hits harder than prose that’s trying too hard to be profound.

Final Thought: Give Them No Choice but to Read On

An unforgettable first line is a promise. It says, I know exactly what I’m doing, and you’re going to love where I take you. So don’t be afraid to lead with your sharpest blade.

If it excites you, if it makes you smirk, if it makes you proud — that’s the one.

Next month, I will be discussing how to craft a hooky chapter ending.

Let's make today an interactive day. Drop your favorite first line in the comment section! If you want help shaping them into something that will hook your reader, let me know and I will be happy to help you play!

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About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kickass heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash

by Miffie Seideman

Ready to try an approach to writing that can help avoid burn-out and stress? I may have just the thing. On my long bike ride last weekend, I had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of time to ruminate about complaints bandied about at my monthly writing critique group. Manuscript writing, I was informed, is very stressful and grueling. It was so sad to hear. Because, while the pathway to a finished manuscript can be challenging, both physically and mentally, it should be a place of creation, adventure, and excitement.

I’ve previously shared how my involvement in the world of endurance triathlon has helped inform my writing. But on that recent bike ride, I had an epiphany, of sorts. I realized the process of manuscript writing could be made more enjoyable if it was approached the way athletes train for an endurance race.

Why?

Because these athletes have figured out how to manage adding a potentially exhaustive, time-consuming project into overscheduled lives to achieve a big goal. Doesn’t that sound familiar? A proper approach to endurance training leaves athletes more refreshed, mentally and physically—another benefit for writers trying to remain creative.

3 Main Concepts to Embrace

While entire books have been devoted to endurance training theories, these three core approaches are the most relevant for writers:

The Big Picture 

Most writers I’ve met jump into a new manuscript idea and start typing madly toward the finish line. Some plot, some don’t. Either way, they’re faced with months (and sometimes years) of efforts to reach that goal. Similarly, endurance triathletes must train for many months to get to a single race. Yet few of them would consider just swimming, running, and cycling as much as possible until race day.

Successful athletes (and by that I mean not burned-out, not injured, and still loving their sport!) know there is a lot of planning that goes into reaching their goal without wreaking havoc on their lives. Without proper planning, those hours of training squeezed into a full life eventually lead to burn-out, injury, exhaustion (mental and physical), and a surprisingly high divorce rate. Exhausted writers can face writer’s block, imposter syndrome, and depression. Some even quit writing.

So, how can you wrestle a big project into your life in a way that’s positive? By considering these big picture variables:   

How Much, How Often

The most popular question at my writing group revolves around the number of words that should be written daily. The consensus? There isn’t one. At least not a number that can be generalized to everyone. One person may be able to write thousands of words a day. Another only 500.

When I wrote The Grim Reader, I was a full-time pharmacist with a full family life of obligations. On most days, I was exhausted. Still, my passion to develop a drug guide for writers drove me to begin the project. As a relatively new writer, I tried to sustain writing every day, as recommended by various writers. I failed. Then, falling behind in my word count became an additional stressor. Sound familiar?

What I should have done from the beginning was step back and look at my big picture. If I really wanted to add that project into my life, I should have made a game plan for success. When I did, I realized that focusing on a daily word count wasn’t possible for me. Many days I was too busy. And word count targets stressed me. Ultimately, I identified several days a week I could realistically write and switched my goal to working on a single scene each session. I changed my metric from word count to consistent progress toward a finished manuscript. The process became much more manageable and enjoyable.

This big picture approach is exactly how I learned to train for Ironman triathlons. It simply wasn’t possible to just add hours of training into my daily obligations. Instead, I had to find what was possible. For me, it became high-value, shorter workouts on specific days, leaving me time for family and those pesky chores.

Rest Days

Believe it or not, when training for an endurance race, such as an Ironman triathlon, it’s crucial to schedule rest days. In fact, rest days are now considered an integral part of training. On these days, there is no training. None. In addition, every few weeks of hard training, a full “recovery week” is scheduled, with drastically reduced training volume.

Without these rest periods, endurance athletes not only risk physical injury and mental burn-out, but also a syndrome called overtraining. Overtraining causes a decrease in performance, an increased heart rate even during sleep, physical exhaustion, mental fatigue, depression, and insomnia.

Even so, taking rest days is a very hard concept for many. Resting is often categorized as lazy, leaving us feeling guilty. I see this with athletes and writers alike.

The really bad thing about overtraining syndrome is that it can take much longer than a single rest day to recover. For athletes, it can take a week or more. Even then the mental burn-out can remain. For writers, this can impact imagination, the desire to write, create writer’s block, and bolster self-doubt.

Connections

As you can imagine, cycling 60-80 miles every Saturday, in addition to hours (and hours) of running and swimming each week can become very lonely. Yet many triathletes choose to train alone, since coordinating schedules with others can be so challenging. And group workouts sometimes include more chatting than training, setting the time-starved athlete’s efforts back further. Group write-ins can be like this, as well. I’ve ended up leaving some write-ins with little writing done.

But isolation isn’t the answer. Cultivating relationships with like-minded people will make your journey much better. Not only can you learn valuable insight to help you write (or train) better, but you’ll also know people that understand your language and interests. People whose eyes won’t gloss over when you discuss methods for penning a good synopsis. People that can actively contribute to a conversation about the merits of various POVs (or the newest aerodynamic racing wheels!). These are the people that can cheer as you begin to query and comfort your heart if your inbox fills with rejections.

The Grace to Fail

I know writers that have quit after a few rejections, certain they are terrible story tellers. And one professional triathlete became unfortunately famous for throwing his very expensive bike across the road when his race didn’t go as planned.

We are all too hard on ourselves. The least we can do is give ourselves just a bit of kindness along these challenging roads we’ve chosen to follow. But it can be very hard when those tough days hit. The day I got a rejection from a dream agent on my very first manuscript was one of those hard days. The excitement of having a full manuscript requested plummeted into despair when I read the rejection. Evidently, I made her cry in one scene and my voice was great, but the cavernous plot hole…not so much.

I easily could have thrown in the towel, blaming myself for not understanding story structure better. As much as that day stung, once my writing group helped scoop my heart back into place (and I took a few rest days), I rolled up my sleeves and dove into learning more about the craft of writing.

Putting It All Together-

Planning ahead is not a new concept. But if you’re a writer diving into the excitement of a new story idea amidst a very full life, this approach may help you more realistically reach your goal.  I hope this glimpse into the world of endurance training has helped offer some tips for making writing a more manageable part of your life.

Do you already plan your big picture? I’d love to hear about your process in the comments.

About Miffie

Miffie Seideman has been a pharmacist for over 30 years, with a passion for helping others. Her research articles have appeared in professional pharmacy journals. Miffie blended her passion for pharmacy and her love of writing into THE GRIM READER: Putting Your Characters in Peril (A Pharmacist’s Guide For Authors),(Red Lightening Books, Indiana University Press). She’s represented by Amy Collins with Talcott Notch Literary Services.  

An avid triathlete, Miffie spends countless hours training in the arid deserts of Arizona, devising new plots for her upcoming fantasy love story. She can be found hanging around her website https://GrimReaders.com offering tips to writers and on X @MiffieSeideman. Contact her at info@grimreaders.com/

Featured image by hbieser, via Pixabay.

by Daniel Ottalini

Alternate History is one of the most interesting genres available to writers today. Yet, building a believable alternate history timeline to integrate into your own novel or novel series can be a chore in both research and delivery. If you’re not sure what alternate history is, you’re not alone! Alternate history is a branch of historical fiction & fantasy / science fiction writing. It explores what might have happened had certain specific historical events, figures or situations had existed or happened differently. 

Alternate history incorporates real history while also integrating a point of divergence. This key part is a specific place where the original timeline (OTL - also referred to as Our Time Line) has changed. Some popular current examples include Man in the High Castle, the Fallout Universe and the Last Of Us.

You’ll often find several common tropes linked into alternate history, such as the South winning the Civil War, a change in victor for WWI, WWII, the Cold War, etc.. But others exist as well. The assassination (or non assassination) of famous individuals such as Elvis or Abraham Lincoln, or a change in exploration or discovery by certain individuals (What if all our cars had been electric from their earliest invention?). This is how alternate history can be a wonderful introduction and change to a story.

For clarity’s sake, just retelling a story from a different person’s point of view (such as the Killer Angels series about the Civil War, or Band of Brothers) is simply historical fiction, even if the character is an author creation. To get true alternate history, you have to have a different outcome that impacts the timeline.

A Point of Divergence

So what about that point of divergence? All too often, authors feel like it has to be big. Big changes are easy to identify for the reader. But I would argue that smaller changes leading to bigger changes provide the reader with more to dig into. It also is much more believable.

In the universe of my series, the Steam Empire Chronicles, the Roman Empire still exists. The divergent point centers around the non-assassination of Julius Caesar, but like a branch on a tree growing in a different direction, that isn’t the primary focus of the series. The series focuses on the challenges to the empire in OTL around the 1850s. But that original change led to many others. Brutus turns in the conspirators rather than join them, as he was Caesar’s best friend. This allows Julius Caesar to avoid a civil war, triggering additional changes down the line. 

So if you’re planning on writing an alternate history novel or short story, you’ll have to decide on your point of divergence, but also on your novel’s focus. Is it on the ‘grand new historical narrative’ as it happens, or are your characters looking back on it in bits and pieces? This gives you more freedom as a writer.

You don’t have to explain every bit and piece of history that has happened since your point of divergence if you don’t want to. Sometimes, it’s just enough to live in that world later on and deal with the repercussions. Harry Turtledove & S.M. Stirling have written a multitude of alternate history series, some dealing with the immediate timeline around a point of divergence (What if all technology failed at this particular point & time) and afterward (How would Europe look if Charlemagne had been defeated some three hundred years ago?).

Including Real People

Another serious question to ask yourself is how will you incorporate OTL personalities? Are they major parts of the novel? Side players, or not included at all? Generally, the farther you get from a point of divergence, the fewer major players from our own timeline will be involved. The wonderful thing is they don’t have to be major parts. This is where doing your research really comes into play.

In my own novels, there are no famous historical figures at all, because the major point of divergence is nearly two thousand years before the events in the plot. Yet in Harry Harrison’s Stars & Stripes trilogy about an alternate history British involvement in the American civil war, all the major historical players take center stage for all three books. The biggest thing to consider here is simply ‘is what this famous person doing in this alternate timeline plausible?’. This depends on so many factors it's hard to list them all out, but consider this - what if Elvis had remained in the army rather than rejoin society? How would that have changed history? Seemingly minor, but potential, well, song changing!

So you’ve got your point of divergence, your main players, and your plot - now what? Well, you need to decide how three key areas may have changed (Or may be changing, if you’re writing about the point of divergence itself).

Geopolitical

First, geopolitical repercussions; do different leaders rise or fall? Do different countries exist because of this point of divergence? What if Montezuma’s young daughter and heir to the Aztec empire had converted but then led a revolution among his former subjects? Would we see an independent Mexico more quickly? How might a last minute series of stops in the rust belt have impacted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the 2016 presidential election? In the Steam Empire Chronicles, the current emperor can trace his lineage back to Julius Caesar himself (or claims to), and while the Empire still exists, there are major ‘new world’ empires facing off against their sparse colonies in OTL North & South America. 

Economy & Technology

The second thing to consider is economy & technology. Some technologies are born from conflict. A world with less conflict tends to develop different technologies. My Romans have trains & airships but no guns because their legion model and steam powered war machines don’t need additional them. Adding gunpowder explosives to their artillery was considered risky enough. Large empires tend to stagnate, but new technologies can also lead to new economic opportunities & costs. These provide so many wonderful story options. You don’t have to explain how everything works, but the reasoning behind them - ‘Airships make it easier to travel among the far flung components of the empire’ can give you ideas about what might be prioritized. 

Society & Culture

Finally, society & culture are additional cornerstones of in-depth alternate history. Especially considering the change (or lack of change) in the economy & technology above, how is your society handling the changes? Many people don’t like a lot of change very quickly, leading to strikes, riots, and generally anger among the populace. If they have a voice in government, you’ll have political disagreements as well. If not, you’ll likely have a rebellion on your hands soon enough. Religion(s) is included in this, and can be a cornerstone of your story. It all depends on what you focus on in your storyline. 

A warning and a reminder though - just because good alternate history should touch on all these areas doesn’t mean you have to explore each one in depth! Unless you’re writing a history book of your alternate world, you won’t have the time or reasoning to touch base on everything. Better to leave it as small snippets of the story worked into your writing.

For example, I waited three books to barely touch base on how religion has changed in the empire. It wasn’t important in earlier books, so it didn’t need to have a focus! Show, don’t tell with your writing. It’s always fine to save some ‘holes’ in the writing for later. Alternate history thrives on the what ifs, and making them believable makes your story one for a new age. 

What are the "What ifs" in your worldbuilding?

About Daniel

Daniel Ottalini is the author of The Steam Empire Series, a fantastical Roman-Steampunk Alternate History story brought to life in his award-winning debut novel, Brass Legionnaire. Daniel has been an avid reader all his life, starting at the grand old age of three. As a young boy, his room was overflowing with books, trains, airplanes, and toy soldiers. Since publishing his first novel, Daniel has gone on to publish four more, Copper Centurion, Iron Tribune, Steel Praetorian and Laurel Emperor. In addition, he has published several novellas. He’s also branched out into writing up his Dungeons and Dragons Campaign ideas, characters, and story write-ups.

When not writing in his minuscule free time, Daniel is a full-time teacher. He lives in Maryland with a large supply of writing paper, plastic toy soldiers, and resource books and his wife.

Modern Papyrus - www.danielottalini.com

If you like what you’ve read, I encourage you to check out my own award winning Alternate History Series. You can get Legion Rising (Books 1-3 of the Steam Empire Chronicles) though Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and D2D (as well as all other platforms) and Shattered Crown (Books 4-5, plus the prequel The Last Gladiator) through Amazon, B&N and D2D as well. I also encourage you to come visit my blog and check out my Roleplaying Game (RPG) projects as well. I’ll be at the Maryland Renaissance Festival for a book signing on Labor Day Weekend if you’re in the Mid-Atlantic. Thanks so much for reading, and I look forward to your comments!

Top image by Deleyna via Midjourney.