{"id":3663,"date":"2014-08-26T06:16:10","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T10:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3663"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:31:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:31:16","slug":"off-to-a-good-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3663","title":{"rendered":"Off to a Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cake,<\/a>

(photo: c1.staticflickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

The delicious aspect of reading Chuck Sambuchino\u2019s article in The Write Life<\/a> article on the worst ways to begin your novel, is that you know these Outrageous Openings have been tried many times. You know that, because the opinions come from literary agents, who every month read hundreds of \u201cfirst pages,\u201d or maybe only first paragraphs, sentences, or words submitted by hopeful authors. Some of their advice is right up there with one literary agency\u2019s strict warning to writers not to accompany their query letter with baked goods or anything hand-knit. (Your desperation is showing!)<\/p>\n

Since, they say, everyone has a book in them, and since nearly everyone who finds out I\u2019m a writer says, \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to write a book,\u201d there should be a ready audience for this advice.<\/p>\n

1. Avoid prologues and lengthy first-chapter descriptions (\u201cscene-setting\u201d) and jump right into the action. (Thankfully, this wasn\u2019t the preference in Dickens\u2019s time, or we would have lost \u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .\u201d) Get right to the plot, they say, characters\u2019 backstory \u201cis in their DNA.\u201d It stays with them.<\/p>\n

2. Agent Dan Lazar puts it a different way. He dislikes openers where characters are doing \u201cessentially nothing. Washing dishes and thinking, staring out the window and thinking, tying shoes, thinking.\u201d Perhaps such openers are meant to contrast with the many thrillers in which not much thinking is done.<\/p>\n

3. Love this one: \u201cThe [adjective] [adjective] sun rose in the [adjective] [adjective] sky, shedding its [adjective] light across the [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] land.\u201d Fail.<\/p>\n

4. Similarly, \u201claundry list\u201d character descriptions. I recently read one so long its parts had to be separated with semi-colons, including this bit: \u201cporcelain skin, white as china; pale green eyes.\u201d If only they\u2019d been Wedgwood blue eyes, we\u2019d have a whole place-setting. As writing coach Lauren Davis says, description should tell who your characters are<\/em>, not just what they look like.<\/p>\n

5. Clich\u00e9 openers. In crime novels, a really bad hangover. In fantasy, a battle or (apparently this is common) herb-gathering. The battle thing seems to go against the advice to start with action, but this agent says the problem is, \u201cI don\u2019t know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle?\u201d In romance, waking to find a stranger in the bed. More ill-conceived action.<\/p>\n

Finally, one of the agents reveals what she actually likes in an opener\u2014one that makes her curious about your characters and fills her with questions. You have the rest of the book for the who, where, when, and how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The delicious aspect of reading Chuck Sambuchino\u2019s article in The Write Life article on the worst ways to begin your novel, is that you know these Outrageous Openings have been tried many times. You know that, because the opinions come … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Off to a Good Start","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[104,29],"tags":[271],"class_list":["post-3663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-morgue","category-writing","tag-openings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-X5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3664,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions\/3664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}