{"id":7909,"date":"2019-04-24T06:38:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T10:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7909"},"modified":"2019-05-03T16:27:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T20:27:24","slug":"first-line-mondays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7909","title":{"rendered":"First Line Mondays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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First Line Mondays is an interesting Facebook group for authors. (Mostly) on Mondays, group members post the first sentence or two of the story they are currently reading. These posts are greeted with enthusiasm if other members have read the book and liked it, regardless of the power of those first words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But your prospective publisher\/agent\/gatekeeper has not<\/em> read the whole book, and its first line, page, chapter may be make-or-break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ridiculous though it seems that the first 20 words might affect the fate of a 95,000-word manuscript, that first line matters a lot. First Line Mondays gives you an easy way to compare a lot of them and see for yourself what you think works. Those first lines help ease the reader into the fictional dream, says Donald Maass<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, many of the first lines come from books in\ngenres and subgenres I don\u2019t read in, and it seems different genres have\ndifferent unwritten rules about how to launch a story. In the cozy genre, weather\nfeatures prominently, Elmore Leonard notwithstanding. Having read quite a few\nof them now, I see why they are weak. Some stories attempt to plunge you into\nthe scene with a line of excited dialog. \u201cOh, my god!\u201d Georgianna exclaimed. \u201cI\nnever thought it would come to this!\u201d But since you don\u2019t know anything about\nGeorgianna or the this it has come to, these fake-exciting beginnings may fall\nflat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some recent first lines I\u2019ve posted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n