Lines
A brief note before today’s post to honour Frank Frazetta, who died today. It’s the end of an era for fantasy and sci fi. Hopefully we’ve evolved beyond the chauvinism and clichés his work depicted, but I can’t help feeling we’ve lost also his bad-ass muscle and sexuality and adventure. If there’s anything wrong with these things no one told me. Maybe they’re just in hiding. Maybe they’re learning how to detach from cliché and become legitimate again. Maybe I’m just not a patient enough reader to wade through the tropes. What Would Conan Do?
On to business.
How appropriate were last week’s thoughts about give and take in relationships. One of the relationships that inspired that post was the one between my boss and I. Alas, I stand corrected: my former boss. I got canned. I’ll spare you the gory details. Needless to say I’m launching into this freelance web design thing harder and quicker than I thought I would last week but after just a few prototype designs I’m feeling good about it. I put the samples up for your perusal over on my design page. I also started a facebook page so you can all become fans : B
As I am devoting my newly freed up hours to a renewed job search and freelance set-up, I’m just going to post a short one today. The following exercise I picked up from Phill over at Tooth Soup. Phill I assume got it from Mehujael, who got it from Irad, who got it from Enoch. The idea is to list the opening lines to one’s works of fiction. Not only the good ones, not only the likeable ones, but an impartial selection. I’ve produced only a modest number of stories and novels (novel, really) anyway, so instead of selecting I’ll just list what I’ve got, in what might be chronological order:
- The gambler rode into town hitched by his belt to the underside of a missionary’s wagon.
- He sits astride a backward-turned chair over a cup and notebook.
- She looks for herself.
- I don’t have time before work to wash off the blood.
- Where are his toys?
- I was approached today on the street by two young gentlemen who introduced themselves as brothers from [CONTINENT] come to start a business here in [CITY].
- The first thing I remember is the taste of vomit.
- I followed an old man today, all day, as he walked.
- Sick.
- His gut told him to stop and his head was heavy.
- Love.
- “Ruth,” he says.
- Of course, he wasn’t at all graceful or majestic like other tigers.
- The girl was born to a blacksmith’s wife and named for a false star, the boy to a hunter’s wife.
The idea of this exercise is to weigh the hook in your openings. In publishing before you ever get a chance to hook readers you have to hook an agent, then that agent has to hook an editor. Agents and editors both have stacks upon stacks of manuscripts to read day in and day out. So many they hire readers to help them. They don’t wait around until chapter thirteen to get interested. The general rule is if they’re not hooked in the first five pages, they’ll pass on your work. I’ve read articles and interviews in which certain agents have said they don’t even give you five pages. They advise the aspiring writer to put the hook smack dab at the beginning.
I happen to be just as picky a reader myself. When I pick up a book in the store, usually if it doesn’t grab my attention in the first paragraph I’ll put it back.
As for hooks, I’m not sure how my openers rate. A few I know are pretty strong. Others, maybe it depends on the reader. I’ve always had a solid idea what I want in an opening line. I want them punchy and whole, grammatically and figuratively. I want them simple, telling but also mysterious, like what they’ve told is plain but it’s also plain they haven’t told all. I want them to make twice as much sense when the reader finishes the story. You know that feeling when you finish a story and you skip back to see how it started, and you go “huh!” because something previously hidden has become visible to you? I adore that feeling as a reader, so it’s what I strive to produce as a writer.
More on this later. I’m putting together a post of all my writing advice, i.e. all the advice I’ve inherited from others which is my duty to pass on.
~J
Tags: fiction, frazetta, tooth soup, web design
