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Beginning a novel is difficult: often we, as writers, will get hit with a brilliantly shiny new idea that just can't wait. Then one of two things happen. Either it truly was a magical idea and the story simply pours out. Most of the time, however, we founder, sputter, and eventually the shiny new idea will be doomed to sit forever in the depths of our hard drive.

If you're in the planning stages of a new project, or you've just been hit by a shiny new idea, the posts below are for you. They're a collection of the best advice we've featured over the years aimed at making sure our story idea is ready to go, so we can see it all the way to the end.

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I was reading an interview with NYT Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen over on Novel Rocket, yesterday, and she mentioned that her favorite piece of writing advice is to focus on the character's predicament. I love, love, love that, because it actually addresses four different aspects of your WIP.

In one fell swoop, you can nail the core of your character, the movement of your story, the place you start it, and how you tell it.

Here's how.

1. Start by putting yourself in your character's head. What's her problem? What no-win predicament does she find herself in? Journal this, just as a rough paragraph or two or three, writing as if she is screaming at someone for putting her in that situation. Let it all loose. Imagine the confrontation, all the emotion, the frustration, the desire to move forward and fix something.
2. Examine that thing that she has to fix and establish the consequences if she fails. Brainstorm why she wants to fix it and jot it down your on one page in a notebook, note software program, or on a Scrivener entry. Why does she need to fix the problem? Why does she have no choice to act to change that situation? 
3. What is your character willing or forced to give up to fix her predicament? Add a second page to your notes. Write down what is most important to your character. Explore what defines her view of herself, and how this predicament effects that. What wound from her past or weakness of character is going to make it harder for her to repair the problem? What unexpected strengths can she find along the way that will help her?
4. Now build your plot like dominos. Once you have a pretty good grasp on the predicament itself, it's relatively easy to make a timeline of how the problem, the person who created that problem (or personifies it) and your character intersect. You can build your plot as if it's inevitable: this happened, your character reacted, because your character reacted, this other thing happened, and so on. One thing leads directly to another.
5. Next, taking into consideration who your character is, find the place in the timeline, or right before what you've jotted down, where the problem first rears its head. This could be something that your character did that set the problem in motion, or something coming in from outside to shake things up, but there has to be a change. This is where you're going to begin your story, on the day that is different, with the first domino. Write down what that incident is.
6. Finally, put everything together to set up the story. Your opening has to show the inciting incident, suggest the story problem, and jump start the action, but you also want to foreshadow your character's strength and the weakness that is going to hold her back. You want to give us a hint of the personal lesson she will have to learn in order to get out of the predicament she's facing.

This Week's Giveaway

An Ember in the Ashes

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I haven't read Corey Ann Haydu's first book, OCD LOVE STORY, but if it is nearly half as brilliant as LIFE BY COMMITTEE is, I know that i'll devour it. The book hit shelves on May 13th and is so worth a trip to the bookstore for it!

Use An Emotionally Charged Moment to Start by Corey Ann Haydu

I’m into opening chapters. And opening lines. And the decision a reader makes to continue on with a book, and how we as authors can help them make that decision.

LIFE BY COMMITTEE has two openings.

The first few opening pages are secrets. Little hints of other people’s lives. Tiny moments of raw, uncensored truth that we’re reading without any context. I wanted the reader to get a sense of what kind of world they’d be entering into and what I was interested in writing about.

I’m interested in the parts of ourselves that we choose to keep hidden, that we struggle to keep to ourselves. I’m also interested in how unbelievably good it feels to find someone that you DO want to share the most vulnerable, awful parts of yourself with.

So I guess in some ways what I was interested in with this book was intimacy. And all the forms it takes.

So that first opening—the anonymous, out of context secrets—is about one kind of intimacy. And the second opening is about the other. The thrill of finding someone you can maybe share yourself with. The intensity of that feeling. The desperation of it. I wanted readers to remember their own secrets, and how badly they want to hide them. And how very, very badly they also want to share them.

Books are about push—pull. Desires and fears. And the opening of LIFE BY COMMITTEE is an attempt to capture that push-pull. We want to know whose secrets these are in the first few pages. I also wanted to challenge the reader, and start somewhere uncomfortable and unsettling and non-linear.

As for the second beginning—Tabitha in her mother’s office chatting online with Joe—that’s more of a classic beginning. Starting at a high point, an emotionally charged moment. Hoping that that moment sets the stage for the rest of the book. Giving the reader a taste of what’s to come. My first chapters are always emotionally heightened moments. That’s what’s most interesting to me, and that’s the relationship I want to have with the reader. I want to go beyond what we’re all comfortable with and do something else.

About The Author

Corey Ann Haydu is a young adult novelist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Her first novel, OCD LOVE STORY, is coming out July 2013 from Simon Pulse. Her second novel, LIFE BY COMMITTEE will be out in Summer 2014 from Katherine Tegen Books at Harper Collins.

Corey grew up outside Boston, Massachusetts where she learned a deep love for books, cheese, cobblestone streets, cold weather and The Gilmore Girls. She has been living in New York City since 2001, where she has now developed new affections for New Yorky things like downtown bookstores, Brooklyn brownstones, writing in coffee shops, the Modern Love column in the Sunday Times, pilates, leggings, and even fancier cheeses.

Corey graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she got her BFA in Theatre. After college, Corey worked as an actress and playwright (and waitress and telemarketer and real estate broker and nanny and personal assistant) She also spent a lot of time in Starbucks writing short stories.

After working in children’s publishing for a few years, and falling in love with YA literature, Corey received her MFA from The New School in Writing for Children. During graduate school Corey rounded out her list of interests with mochas, evening writing workshops, post-it notes, bi-weekly cheeseburgers, blazers, and board games.

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About The Book

Some secrets are too good to keep.

Tabitha might be the only girl in the history of the world who actually gets less popular when she gets hot. But her so-called friends say she’s changed, and they’ve dropped her flat.

Now Tab has no one to tell about the best and worst thing that has ever happened to her: Joe, who spills his most intimate secrets to her in their nightly online chats. Joe, whose touch is so electric, it makes Tab wonder if she could survive an actual kiss. Joe, who has Tabitha brimming with the restless energy of falling in love. Joe, who is someone else’s boyfriend.

Just when Tab is afraid she’ll burst from keeping the secret of Joe inside, she finds Life by Committee. The rules of LBC are simple: tell a secret, receive an assignment. Complete the assignment to keep your secret safe.

Tab likes it that the assignments push her to her limits, empowering her to live boldly and go further than she’d ever go on her own.

But in the name of truth and bravery, how far is too far to go?

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Niall Leonard is the YA author of the thriller CRUSHER, whose sequel, INCINERATOR just arrived on North American shelves on April 8th! Niall has some really wonderful opening lines to share as well as his experiences writing his own!

Have A Crusher Of An Opening Line by Niall Leonard

'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

'It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced the archbishop had come to see me.'

These are three of my favourite opening lines; the ones that have stuck in my head, anyway, the ones that come up when anyone asks me for my favourites. More people know the first two – by George Orwell and L P Hartley respectively – than the last, which is by Anthony Burgess from his novel Earthly Powers. The hero is an author narrating his own tale, who goes on to assert that he has “lost none of my old cunning in the contrivance of what is known as an arresting opening."

How can any ordinary writer hope to match such zingers? My answer would be, don't try – because for us mere mortals there's no such thing as an inspired opening. I know this sounds like heresy, and this blog is about inspired openings, but let me explain.

I’ve worked for years as a TV screenwriter and came to novel-writing late in my career, partly because of the ridiculously high expectations I had of my own writing. The ideas I had for novels were sublime when they were floating around in my head, but somehow when I put them on the page they seemed to lose their brilliance, like fish going stale on a slab, and I became discouraged. I convinced myself that either the ideas weren’t as good as I'd originally thought or I wasn't a good enough writer to convey them. I'd put the piece aside unfinished, hoping that when I came back to it I'd somehow have acquired the necessary skill.

Of course I hardly ever came back -- I'd come up with another idea instead, sit down to write it, and fall into the same trap all over again. I wasted years that way.

I hadn't grasped that you acquire the necessary skill by working at it – by writing down your ideas and exploring them. Maybe you will never do them justice, but better to fail trying than never to try. Don't wait for inspiration – do the work and let the inspiration look after itself. If you want to write – as other authors here have said – you have to have faith in yourself, to trust yourself enough to get the words down on the page. I would discourage anyone who wants to write a novel from worrying about creating an inspired opening, or about being brilliant, or even about being good. Instead I would urge them to dive into their tale wherever the fancy takes them and keep going.

There's no law that says you have to start a novel at the beginning. Some writers start with one scene that they can't get out of their head, with no idea where it might fit into a story. They write their way forwards and backwards from there, until they get a sense of the whole tale and what it's about and where it should begin and where it should end. The opening scene might be the very last thing they write; by the time they get there, they will have a much better idea of what their story is about, and a much better chance of coming up with that arresting opening. Their readers, of course, will have no concept of the months of torment that led to that 'inspiration'.

I make no claims for brilliance in the opening lines of my first novel, Crusher. I'm just glad there are opening lines, and closing lines, and some good lines in between.

In the first chapter my hero Finn goes out to work at a fast-food restaurant and returns in the evening to find that his father, an out-of-work actor trying to write a screenplay, has been murdered. I wrote the first chapter some years before the rest of the book, pretty much for reasons explained above – somehow I convinced myself that the story would write itself. When I finally found the impetus to finish the book (thank you, Nanowrimo 2011) rather than going back to revise the first chapter, I sat down and figured out what would happen next: Finn would call the cops, who'd immediately suspect that he was the killer, because that's what cops do.

I roughly sketched out the rest of the plot, then I started writing, and kept writing until I got to the end. When all that was done I revisited the first chapter – and by that point I could see what to cut there and what needed to go in its place. Essentially the first chapter was the last thing I wrote.

By the time I sat down to write Crusher’s sequel, Incinerator, I understood better the old saying that 'writing is re-writing.' Don't expect to start your story brilliantly – just start. Get writing, and keep writing, and get to the end. That's the time to go back and be hard on yourself, to ruthlessly revise and edit and polish. That's a good time to look hard at the opening.

Because, to brazenly restate my opening heresy, there is no such thing as an inspired opening. There are openings that inspire the reader, but they are the result of months, if not years, of solid grind. It may suit the author to pretend it was effortless, and the reader to believe it, but as writers we can't afford to fool ourselves. Write your story, then revise it and revise it, and find the best opening you can. And if any of your readers tell you it's inspired, shrug modestly, accept the compliment, and keep it to yourself that you know better – it wasn’t born of inspiration, but an awful lot of *&^%ing hard work.

About The Author

.Niall Leonard grew up in Newry, Northern Ireland.In 1977 he attended the University of York to study English, and from there went on to The UK National Film and Television School where he trained as a screenwriter and director. Recently Niall completed screenplays for two big-budget two-part thrillers for US cable TV, loosely adapted from novels by Alastair Maclean. Air Force One is Down started shooting on location in Luxembourg in May 2012, with Puppet On A Chain slated to go into production later the same year.

As part of the 2011 Nanowrimo novel-writing event Niall wrote Crusher, a gritty crime thriller set in London featuring Finn Maguire, a dyslexic young offender investigating the murder of his father. The novel was picked up by Random House for publication in October 2012, and Niall is currently working on its sequel.

Niall has led seminars and workshops on screenwriting and script editing for the BBC, the Northern Ireland Film Council and the Irish Screenwriters’ Guild, and lectured on the creative process at the University of Reading.

He is married with two kids and a rather smelly dog and lives in West London.

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About The Book

Incinerator is the sequel to Niall Leonard's debut YA novel, Crusher.

London ganglord The Guvnor is in hiding, and Finn Maguire has begun a new life running a boxing gym with his old friend and coach Delroy. But when Finn's lawyer Nicky Hale vanishes overnight with all his money, Finn finds himself in hock to a loan shark with a vicious gang of enforcers. Desperate to track down Nicky and repay his debts, Finn investigates her other clients and soon finds himself engulfed in a web of lies, betrayal, malice and madness.

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Today we have our very own Clara Kensie who does the Question of The Week on Sunday's and has been helping out with our contests recently! Clara is the first ever seriealized author for Harlequin and her YA Romantic Thriller series RUN TO YOU has been blowing up the blogoshphere. Keep your eye out for Book 2 coming in July!

Publishing Success: On Thick Skin, Perseverance, and Vacuuming Alligators

By Clara Kensie

This is my mascot:



Yep. My mascot an alligator with a vacuum cleaner. My Vacuuming Alligator is the screen saver on my computer, so I see him several times a day. Every time I see him, he motivates me and gives me strength.

You are probably wondering why the Vacuuming Alligator is my mascot. What do I find so motivating about an alligator and a vacuum cleaner?

Let’s talk about the alligator part first.

Writers are sensitive people. Our emotions run deep. That’s a good thing: we are better writers because of it. But the problem is, our writing is examined, critiqued, judged, and much of the time, it is rejected. An early piece of advice most aspiring authors receive is to develop a thick skin. Protecting our fragile emotions against criticism and rejection is vital to succeed in this field. When you hear the phrase “thick skin,” you may picture a rhinoceros, or maybe a suit of armor. Me? I picture an alligator.

I conjure that alligator in my mind every time I get feedback from my critique partners. Every time I get revision notes back from my editor. Every time I read a review of my books. When I picture that alligator with its thick skin, it gives me courage to read the feedback, the revision notes, the reviews (I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten only excellent reviews so far, but I still have to picture that alligator in my mind before I have enough courage to read them). A thick skin allows me to read the feedback/notes/reviews objectively and not take criticism personally. If I were to slide down a spiral of discouragement and despair every time I received criticism, I would have quit writing a long time ago. I certainly would never have been published.

Now let’s discuss why my alligator has a vacuum cleaner.

Did you know the guy who invented the Dyson vacuum cleaner made 5126 prototypes before he finally made one that worked? That really resonated with me, for two reasons: perseverance and distance.

My first draft of RUN TO YOU was awful. I had no idea what I was doing. That Dyson guy inspired me to persevere and do whatever it took to fix it, including seeking out the toughest critique partners I could find, and welcoming their harsh feedback (which I was able to accept because of my thick skin). I looked at it this way: What if I wasn’t a writer—what if I invented vacuum cleaners? If I designed a vacuum cleaner that didn’t work, I would learn why it wasn’t working, so I could go back in and fix it. Same thing with writing. I kept that Dyson prototype number in my head: 5126. Even if it took 5126 revisions, I would persevere until I got RUN TO YOU right. Note: it did not take me 5126 revisions (although sometimes it felt like it).

While I write each draft of my manuscripts, I open myself up to all the feels. But when I send my manuscripts for feedback from beta readers or revision notes from my editor, I adjust my way of thinking. My manuscripts are now products that I’m sending out to be analyzed, so I can find out what’s not working, and then I can go back in and fix it. Thinking of my manuscripts as products helps me distance myself from them, so I can figure out how to perfect them. Once I absorb the feedback, I open myself up again to all the feels, and go back in to fix the manuscript.

So there you have it: my personal mascot, the Vacuuming Alligator. I’m happy to share him, so whenever you need to thicken your skin to accept critique, or need motivation for perseverance, or need to distance yourself from your manuscript so you can analyze it, feel free to use the Vacuuming Alligator as your own mascot.

About The Author

Clara Kensie grew up near Chicago, reading every book she could find and using her diary to write stories about a girl with psychic powers who solved mysteries. She purposely did not hide her diary, hoping someone would read it and assume she was writing about herself. Since then, she's swapped her diary for a computer and admits her characters are fictional, but otherwise she hasn't changed one bit.

Today Clara is the author of dark fiction for young adults. Her super-romantic psychic thriller RUN TO YOU is the first serialized novel from Harlequin Teen.

Her favorite foods are guacamole and cookie dough. But not together. That would be gross.

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About The Books

The first serialized novel from Harlequin Teen
All three parts of Book One are available NOW



RUN TO YOU Part One: First Sight
Part One in the riveting romantic thriller about a family on the run from a deadly past and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger…
Sarah Spencer has a secret: her real name is Tessa Carson, and to stay alive, she can tell no one the truth about her psychically gifted family and the danger they are running from. As the new girl in the latest of countless schools, she also runs from her attraction to Tristan Walker—after all, she can’t even tell him her real name. But Tristan won’t be put off by a few secrets. Not even dangerous ones that might rip Tessa from his arms before they even kiss…



RUN TO YOU Part Two: Second Glance
Part Two in the riveting romantic thriller about a family on the run from a deadly past and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger…
Tessa Carson has unlocked her heart and her secrets to Tristan Walker—but Tristan has secrets of his own, and his might just mean the end of Tessa’s family. Unaware, Tessa embraces falling in love and being herself for the first time since she was attacked when she was only eight years old. But secrets can’t be run from forever, and sometimes love is too good to be true…




RUN TO YOU Part Three: Third Charm
Part Three in the riveting romantic thriller about a family on the run from a deadly past and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger…
Betrayed, heartbroken, and determined to save her family, Tessa Carson refuses to give in to Tristan Walker’s pleas for forgiveness. But her own awakening psychic gift won’t let her rest until she uncovers the truth about her family and her past. And Tristan is the only one who can help her sift through the secrets to find the truth hidden in all the lies











Tessa and Tristan’s story continues in the heart-pounding sequel:

RUN TO YOU Book 2
Part Four: Fourth Shadow
Part Five: Fifth Touch
Part Six: Sixth Sense
(available for pre-order now; releasing July 2014)

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Award-winning writer Martyn Bedford reveals the inspiration behind Never Ending, his second novel for teenagers and young adults. Martyn’s previous teen novel, Flip, won four prizes in the UK and has been translated into seven languages.

How One Moment Can Inspire You by Martyn Bedford

If I hadn’t almost wiped out my family in a car crash I might never have written Never Ending.

About three years ago, we were heading out on a daytrip – me at the wheel, my wife beside me, navigating, and our two daughters in the back, in iPod-land. We’d been stuck behind a truck for a while and I was itching to overtake.
So I did. Only I shouldn’t have done. Not on that stretch of road, anyway.

I’m still not sure how the car coming in the opposite direction didn’t hit us head-on. In the nanosecond before impact, I swerved, the other driver swerved, and – by half a hair’s breadth – we avoided a collision. At the speed we were travelling, it’s unlikely that anyone in either car would have been pulled from the wreckage alive.
For the rest of the day, two versions of events unfolded: the real one, in which we continued our daytrip (the walk in the hills, the picnic, the ice creams) . . . and the one in my head (the ambulance, the hospital, the morgue).

But I also had the beginnings of an idea for a novel.

Of course, I don’t mean I had the idea right there and then in the car. It wasn’t as if my wife, white-faced and trembling, turned to me and gasped, “Oh my God, you nearly killed us!”, only for me to reply, “Yes but never mind that, darling, I’ve just had a brilliant idea for my next book!”

Over the next few weeks, though, our near-miss preyed on my mind. I began to ask the question that, for many writers, is the starting point of a story: What if? What if we’d all died? Or, worse, what if my wife and daughters had died and I’d survived? What if I had to live with that loss and grief . . . and the guilt of having killed the people I love most?

From this last question, the story of Never Ending evolved.

It’s about a 15-year-old girl, Siobhan – or Shiv, as she calls herself – who is traumatised by the death of her younger brother Declan on a family vacation in Greece. He died because of her and she can’t live with what she did. Off the rails and unable to put her life – or her head – back together again, Shiv is sent away to a clinic that claims to ‘cure’ teenagers like her. But this is no ordinary psychiatric institution and she discovers that her release from her demons – if it comes at all – will come at a bizarre and terrible cost.
I should say that I’m not spoiling the plot, here – you can gather this much from the book-jacket blurb and the first chapter.

The novel is told in alternating storylines – the ‘before’ story (the family vacation, leading up to Declan’s death) and the ‘after’ story (Shiv’s subjection to the treatment regime at the clinic). I’m not going to give away how Declan dies, or Shiv’s part in it, but I can say that it’s not a car crash. As always happens when I turn personal experience into fiction, the made-up events end up bearing little resemblance to the original.

However, the underpinning idea – the ‘what if?’ – remains the same. In using Shiv to explore what it would be like to live with appalling, unbearable guilt, I was venturing into a place I’d been lucky to avoid visiting at first hand. And, perhaps, in putting her through that ordeal – immersing myself in her story while I wrote it – I was unconsciously punishing myself for the deadly mistake I almost made three years ago.

As well as writing novels for teenagers and young adults, Martyn Bedford teaches creative writing at Leeds Trinity University, in the north of England. Here is a set of notes on the openings of novels, which he prepared for his students on the MA in Creative Writing.

How should a novel start?

The opening of a novel is a threshold, separating the real world the reader inhabits from the world the novelist has imagined. It should therefore draw or invite the reader into this imagined world.

As writers, we need to be aware that readers begin a novel hesitantly. They are not yet familiar with the author’s tone of voice, range of vocabulary or writing style. They also have a lot of information to absorb and remember: characters’ names, their relationship to other characters, their situation, the context of time and place, and so on, without which the story cannot be followed.

Most readers will give the author the benefit of the doubt for at least a few pages before deciding to back out over the threshold and read something else instead. So the writer needs to “hook” the reader in those early pages – better still, in the early sentences, if not the opening sentence itself.

There are many ways to open a novel, ranging from those which subtly coax the readers into the story to those which drag them into it by the scruff of the neck. Here are some common examples:

a description of the story’s primary setting (the mise-en-scene);
a conversation between characters;
a self-introduction by the narrator;
a philosophical reflection which establishes the novel’s central theme;
a “frame” narrative which explains or sets up the context of the main story;
a dramatised scene, incident, event or episode;
the (descriptive, dramatised or discursive) introduction of the main character;
the establishment of the main character’s circumstances or situation;
an inciting or triggering incident which gets the plot up and running;
a prologue that flashes forward to a point which the story then builds towards.

In broad terms, the writer must consider whether to start with story, with character, with place and/or time (i.e. period), or with theme. These essential building blocks of a fictional narrative are integral to one another, and one (or more) of them will almost certainly provide your opening.

If your novel does not follow a linear chronology, you also need to consider where in the story’s timeline it should begin. If it has more than one narrative viewpoint, which one do you use at the start? Do you open with a wide or narrow focus? What tone do you wish to strike? It is also useful to consider what comes next – i.e. the narrative possibilities and limitations your opening creates.

In essence, the start of a novel should seek to answer – or give a strong hint towards – the two key issues which are on most readers’ minds when beginning a book:
What sort of story is this?
What is this story about?
The blurb on the back of the book also addresses these points, of course, but it’s the opening of the narrative itself which makes up the readers’ minds as to whether they wish to read on.

About The Author

Martyn Bedford is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. His first YA novel, Flip (Wendy Lamb Books, 2011), won four prizes in the UK and ten books-of-the-year nominations and selections in the U.S., including the School Library Journal, the American Library Association, and a readers' choice from the Young Adult Library Services Association. His second YA novel, Never Ending, has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist. Between them, Martyn's novels have been translated into 13 languages. He lives in the north of England with his wife and two daughters and teaches creative writing at Leeds Trinity University.


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About The Book

When a family holiday ends in tragedy, the grieving parents’ marriage is left in ruins and, Shiv, their 15-year-old daughter, is tormented by what happened … and her part in it. Off the rails and unable to live with her guilt, Shiv is sent away to an exclusive clinic that claims to “cure” people like her.

But this is no ordinary psychiatric institution and Shiv discovers that her release – from her demons, and from the clinic itself – will come, if it comes at all, at a bizarre and terrible price.

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Shannon Greenland is sure to know what she's talking about when she says start with the action. Her debut thriller KILLER INSTINCT sounds deliciously creepy and full of the unexpected. It's not due out till May but it'll be worth the wait!

Start With the Action!

There are some things I’ve had to learn the hard way. Writing Chapter One is one of those things. The advice I’m offering today is primarily the “learn from my mistake” type. When I first started writing, my critique partner would inevitably cross through the first three chapters of anything I wrote. “Too much backstory!” she’d say.

Eventually that became the first two chapters. “Start with the action!” she’d remind me. Ugh. I wanted to poke her eyes out. BUT she was completely correct. The books that I’ve enjoyed, that have pulled me in from the beginning, start with the action.

Look at the beginning of The Hunger Games. The first chapter includes the reaping. Bam that’s what I’m talking about!

Meg Cabot is another author that does a great job with beginnings. Have you read Abandon? “Once, I died.” What? Tell me more!

That’s exactly the reaction I want readers to have when they start Killer Instinct. “I study serial killers…”
As a writer, do I think this means that the amazing, exciting, completely gripping action that starts your first chapter with a bang is the first thing you need to write? Heck no. That’s what I’ve learned the hard way. The first things I write definitely won’t end up in the first chapter and may not end up in the book at all.

When I write I purposefully write a first chapter that I know I’m going to toss out. This helps me with backstory and preparation that I need as the writer but I know my readers do not necessarily need.

Many authors outline, others are seat-of-the-pants writers. I am a first-chapter-warm-up-to-be-deleted writer. :-)

Of course all first chapters come with that initial spark of an idea. For me it was my love of the show Dexter. I used to watch it and think, what would Dexter have been like as a teen and also a girl? Hence was born, Killer Instinct.

About The Author

S. E. Green or Shannon Greenland is the author of the award winning Middle Grade spy series, The Specialists, which was an ALA top pick and a National Reader’s Choice Recipient. Killer Instinct marks her debut into the world of thrillers. It’s due out in hardcover 5.6.14 under her pseudonym, S. E. Green. Shannon is an adjunct professor and an avid adventurer. She can be found mostly in Florida where she’s outside enjoying all the Sunshine State has to offer.

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About The Book

“A zippy, gripping psychological drama.” ~Kirkus Reviews

She’s not evil, but she has certain... urges.

Lane is a typical teenager. Loving family. Good grades. Afterschool job at the local animal hospital. Martial arts enthusiast. But her secret obsession is studying serial killers. She understands them, knows what makes them tick.

Why?

Because she might be one herself.

Lane channels her dark impulses by hunting criminals—delivering justice when the law fails. The vigilantism stops shy of murder. But with each visceral rush the line of self-control blurs.
And then a young preschool teacher goes missing. Only to return... in parts.
When Lane excitedly gets involved in the hunt for “the Decapitator,” the vicious serial murderer that has come to her hometown, she gets dangerously caught up in a web of lies about her birth dad and her own dark past. And once the Decapitator contacts Lane directly, Lane knows she is no longer invisible or safe. Now she needs to use her unique talents to find the true killer’s identity before she—or someone she loves—becomes the next victim..

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And now, Shannon has very graciously offered up and AMAZING giveaway for all of you lucky followers! Fill out the rafflecopter below for your chance to win!

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Beginning a book is tricky because there are so many possible ways into a story. It doesn't help that we writers hear all the time how important it is to get that beginning right. If we don't hook an editor immediately, she won't read past the first few pages.

The sad truth is that a teen reader probably won't read past the first few sentences.

But you can't worry about these potentially paralyzing thoughts when you start to write a book. With any luck, you've got a cool idea or two. You've got a couple of interesting characters. Maybe (if you are not me) you've prepared a nice, detailed, organized outline. Then there's nothing to do but plunk down in a chair and begin.

When I started the first draft of my novel Thin Space, I thought I was writing about a girl named Maddie who moved into a haunted house. I'd heard about the Celtic belief in thin spaces--places where the veil between our world and the world of the dead is thinner, and I toyed with the idea of sticking one of these thin spaces in Maddie's house.

I don't know if this is totally true, but there's a saying that all stories break down into these two plots:

A stranger comes to town

Or

The hero takes a journey

Maddie's story was clearly "the hero takes a journey" plot. She was moving to a new town, and she would have creepy adventures figuring out if there was a thin space in her house.

My brilliant plan went awry three or four days into the draft when Maddie walked to the bus stop for her first day at her new school and there was a weird, barefoot guy named Marsh waiting for her.

From this point on Marsh basically hijacked the story. Every day I'd try to wrest it away from him and back to Maddie and her haunted house, and every day he'd torment Maddie (and me) with his bizarre walking-around-barefoot quest.

I finished the draft, put it away for a few months, and read it again, with growing nausea and fear about how much work there was still left to do on it. Maddie's story was blah and meandering. The only time I liked her was when she was interacting with Marsh. I lamented about this to anyone who would listen. What was I going to do? How was I going to fix this mess of a first draft? It took my eleven year old daughter to point out the obvious: why not write the book from Marsh's point of view?

"No," I told her. Because that is always my first response to criticism.

But I couldn't help considering that solution. Maybe Thin Space wasn't the hero takes a journey plot after all. Maybe it was a stranger comes to town. Maybe Maddie was the stranger, the catalyst who moves into Marsh's life and sets his story in motion.

I wrote the first line: "Every morning, I walk by Mrs. Hansel's house and plan my break-in."

The story took off from there and I never looked back.

Some writers write outlines before they begin. I, apparently, had to write an entire book.



Favorite first lines

For me, it all comes down to a compelling narrative voice. Right from the very first line that voice draws me in and urges me to follow.

Examples:

The brilliant dystopian novel Feed by M.T. Anderson:
“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”

My favorite YA author Meg Rosoff's novel What I Was: "Rule number one: Trust no one."

You could do a study of kick butt first lines by studying Maggie Stiefvater.

The Raven Boys: "Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she'd been told that she would kill her true love."

The Scorpio Races: "It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die."




About the Author

Jody Casella has been writing stories since the age of seven. She majored in creative writing at Rhodes College and started an MFA at the University of Memphis. Then in a moment of fear at the sheer impracticality of being a poet, she quit writing, earned an MA, and started teaching. After a stint working and raising children, she’s grateful to be back writing full-time. Over the past few years she’s amused her neighbors in Ohio by walking around the block barefoot in the snow to research her first YA paranormal mystery, Thin Space.

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About the Book

There’s a fine line between the living and the dead, and Marshall is determined to cross it in this gut-wrenching debut novel.

Ever since the car accident that killed his identical twin brother, Marshall Windsor has been consumed with guilt and crippled by the secrets of that fateful night. He has only one chance to make amends and set things right. He must find a thin space—a mythical point where the barrier between this world and the next is thin enough for a person to step through to the other side.

But when a new girl moves into the neighborhood, into the same house Marsh is sure holds a thin space, she may be the key—or the unraveling of all his secrets.

As they get closer to finding a thin space—and closer to each other—March must decide once and for all how far he’s willing to go to right the wrongs of the living…and the dead.

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I received a wonderful compliment the other day.

Someone posted a photo of the first page of Time Between Us on Instagram and said, “I can tell this will be a good book!”

I can tell this will be a good book.

As a reader, don’t you love that feeling? It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s a little bit magical, isn’t it?

As writers, we’re all told about the importance of that first line, first paragraph, first page, first chapter. Good openings are how we hook an agent. They’re what make an editor pay attention.

But when it’s all said and done, we work so hard on those first lines, because we want to give readers what they want: That this-is-going-to-be-good feeling.

Want to know a secret? No one would have said that about the original draft of Time Between Us. I worked on it for over a year and refined those first pages so many times I’ve lost count. But I know exactly where I began.

The Original
I had a crystal clear picture in my head of Anna Greene, my main character. I wanted readers to know herright away, so I began like this:

When I was nine years old, my dad and I spent the day at the Adler Planetarium in downtown Chicago. Against his better judgment, he let me wander through the gift shop, where I proceeded to talk him into buying me a box of plastic, glow-in-the-dark stars and planets. When we got home, we worked together to transform my room.

Are you there? Hey, wake up!

Don’t worry... I’m not offended that you dozed off. I’m pretty sure no agent or editor would have kept going either.

But here’s the thing: I loved this chapter. Writing this scene helped me get to know my protagonist and it did a lot of heavy lifting to set up the story. I clung to it for a long time. But deep down, I knew that if I wanted to give people that magical “good book” feeling, this opening wasn’t good enough. I needed less exposition, more dialogue, more questions than answers, and action.


The Final
Good openings make you question what’s going on and force you to keep reading, madly turning pages to find out what happens next. But here’s the fun part for us authors: They give you an opportunity to play with your readers’ heads.

Everything changed when I let myself have some fun with the beginning. Rather showing you Anna’s totally normal life, I started at a point far off in her future, on a day when everything in her life might change forever.

This is how Time Between Us begins now:

Even from this distance I can see how young he looks. Younger than the first time I saw him.

He looks younger? People don’t usually look younger than the first time you saw them. Something strange is happening.

He and his friends have been skating around Lafayette Park for the last couple of hours, and now they’re sprawled across the grass, downing Gatorades and passing around a bag of Doritos.

Wait, that seems totally normal. A park setting. Recognizable drinks and snacks. Wait... maybe things aren’t so strange.

Everything about him is so similar, so familiar, that I almost scoot over to close the distance, like I would have done so naturally when I was younger. But sixteen years have come between us, and that’s enough to keep me on my side of the bench.

Nope. Wait a minute. Not normal again. Sixteen years have come between the two of them? What’s going on here?

The first chapter is designed to ping-pong between the normal and the strange, keeping you reading and questioning and wondering—letting me play with your head—until very end, when you get to these lines:

What I just did could change everything, or it could change nothing. But I have to try. I’ve got nothing to lose. If my plan doesn’t work, my life will remain the same: Safe. Comfortable. Perfectly average.

But that wasn’t the life I originally chose.

Does that make you want to keep reading to find out what happens next? Is that better than a trip to the planetarium? I sure hope so.

Have some fun with your opening. Take your reader on a ride. Keep them guessing. Make them say, “I can tell this will be a good book.”


Here are a few openings that hooked me right away:

“First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. Here is a small fact. You are going to die.”—The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

“He’d stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it, in dreams and lies and broken-down déjà vu.”—Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

“Day 5994. I wake up. Immediately, I have to figure out who I am.”—Every Day by David Levithan





About the Author

Blissfully married. Occasional superhero in the eyes of two remarkable small people. Animal lover. Avid reader. Gadget freak. Music addict. Dreadful cook. Happily stuck in the mid-90s. She writes young adult fiction about fun stuff like travel, music, romance, and normal people with extraordinary talents.

Her debut novel, Time Between Us, was published in sixteen languages and has been optioned for film. The sequel, Time After Time,  will be available from Hyperion on October 8, 2013.

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About the Book

Calling Anna and Bennett’s romance long distance is an understatement: she’s from 1995 Chicago and he’s a time traveler from 2012 San Francisco. The two of them never should have met, but they did. They fell in love, even though they knew they shouldn’t. And they found a way to stay together, against all odds.

It’s not a perfect arrangement, though, with Bennett unable to stay in the past for more than brief visits, skipping out on big chunks of his present in order to be with Anna in hers. They each are confident that they’ll find a way to make things work…until Bennett witnesses a single event he never should have seen (and certainly never expected to). Will the decisions he makes from that point on cement a future he doesn’t want?

Told from Bennett’s point of view, Time After Time will satisfy readers looking for a fresh, exciting, and beautifully-written love story, both those who are eager to find out what’s next for Time Between Us’s Anna and Bennett and those discovering their story for the first time.

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Somewhere along my writing journey, this maxim got tattooed on my brain: “Start a story as close to the action as possible.” No dilly-dallying allowed in children’s literature. Step lively! A reader has their pick of ponies on this merry-go-round of published books; do what you can to make sure they choose yours.

Because this advice was shared by experienced writers, it never occurred to me to question it. And, honestly, it is good advice.

Except when it’s not.

Some years ago, during a dark period in my professional life, I received a gift in the form of a family story. Actually, a story fragment: one tiny rung on a ladder that would lead out of the dark and into a manuscript called Hattie Big Sky. Unbelievably, one of the first editors to see it signed it on. But she suggested some changes to the draft she’d seen (number thirteen!) and one of them gob-smacked me: “I want to know more about Hattie’s ordinary life,” she wrote in her editorial letter, “before she launches into her adventure.”

What? Slow things down? Set up a hurdle between the story and the chomping-at-the-bit reader? I groused and grumbled. And then I got a grip. I could always try her suggestion; if I didn’t like it, well, I could leave things as is.

As I dove back init hit me that, while I fully understood what my 16-year-old orphaned main character had to gain by leaving Iowa, my reader might not. I began to see an opportunity. Rather than telling the reader that Aunt Ivy resented Hattie, I could now show Ivy’s scheme to hire Hattie out as a chambermaid.

Now I found I had space to introduce Hattie’s school chum, Charlie: “Dear Charlie, Miss Simpson starts every day with a reminder to pray for you—and all the other boys who enlisted. Well, I say we should pray for the Kaiser—he’s going to need those prayers once he meets you.” This letter from Hattie allowed me to clarify the story’s timing – WWI – and set up her relationship with Charlie.

I soon found myself thinking that this stroll to the story’s starting line was not such a bad idea after all.

The story’s inciting incident (Hattie’s “scoundrel” uncle’s surprising letter) is still found in the first chapter, but on page eight instead of page two, as it was originally. By taking a few thoughtful steps back from her impulsive response to that letter, I gave myself the room to underline Hattie’s motivation, and bolster the story’s dramatic question.

I’ve noticed this technique elsewhere. In the Newbery honor book, Catherine Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman, we are introduced to Birdy’s ordinary world through the first ten diary entries. It’s not until the eleventh entry that we learn that “something is astir” in Birdy’s life. David Patneaude employs the first pages of his thought-provoking novel, Epitaph Road, to reel us into Charlie’s world. We hike a ways through the forest with Charlie, his sister and mother before Patneaude startles us with the reason they are hurrying away from the rest of humanity. And Barbara O’Connor uses the first pages of On the Road to Mr. Mineo’s like a camera, panning in on Stella and her predictable life in Meadville, South Carolina --before a one-legged pigeon changes everything.

My editor’s advice might work for you, too. Consider starting a few feet back from your original starting line.

Give it a shot. You never know, it might take you and your readers on one heck of a ride.

About the Author

Kirby Larson is the acclaimed author of the 2007 Newbery Honor Book, Hattie Big Sky, a young adult historical novel she wrote inspired by her great-grandmother, Hattie Inez Brooks Wright, who homesteaded by herself in eastern Montana as a young woman. Just released—due to popular demand by her readers—is Hattie Ever After, the final installment in Hattie’s adventures. Her passion for historical fiction is evident in The Fences Between Us and The Friendship Doll, as well as a fall 2013 title, Duke. She is at work on a companion novel to Duke as well as a novel set in 1910.

In 2006, Kirby began a collaboration with her good friend, Mary Nethery, which has resulted in two award-winning nonfiction picture books: Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship and Survival (illustrated by Jean Cassels) and Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine and a Miracle. They think three’s a lucky number so have their eyes peeled for another project to tackle together.

A frequent speaker, Kirby enjoys sharing her passion for research, reading and writing. She has presented at more than 200 schools, workshops, and seminars in nearly twenty states and as far away as Qatar and Lebanon.

Kirby lives in Kenmore, Washington with her husband, Neil. When she’s not reading, writing, or walking Winston the Wonder Dog, Kirby enjoys gardening, bird watching, traveling, or drinking lattés with friends.

Check out Kirby’s website
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About the Book

Great Falls, Montana, 1919

When Hattie mails off her last check to Mr. Nefzger, her uncle’s debt is paid in full. Now she is free to go anywhere, away from Mrs. Brown’s boardinghouse and the less-than-glamorous life of a chambermaid. Hattie’s dear friend Perilee urges her to do the sensible thing and join her family in Seattle. But Hattie is not prone to the sensible. What sensible girl would say yes to spending a year under Montana’s big sky trying to make a go of a long-lost uncle’s homestead claim? And what sensible girl would say no to Charlie, who is convinced he and Hattie are meant to grow old together?

For all its challenges and sorrows, Hattie’s time on the homestead gave her a taste of what if might be like to stake her own claim on life. She hasn’t yet confessed it to anyone, not even to Perilee, but Hattie has thrown a lasso around a dream even bigger than a Montana farm.

She wants to be a big-city reporter.

And thanks to a vaudeville vanishing act, a mysterious love token, an opera star and her unique ability to throw a snake ball, it looks like Hattie just might have a chance.

With Hattie Ever After, Kirby Larson has created another lovingly written novel about the remarkable and resilient young orphan Hattie Inez Brooks.

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Where to begin? Well … I’m someone who thinks about the beginning of a story all the time. Every day, in fact. One of my New Year’s Resolutions – the only one I can remember, actually – was to read a short story every day this year. A new story and a new writer, to keep widening the circle.

A lot of these stories I’m finding in books like Best European Fiction 2013, or Everyman’s Bedtime Stories. When I flick through the pages of a collection or anthology, looking for that day’s story, what I’m really doing is reading beginnings. Here’s a great example: “My father lost me to The Beast at cards.” (Angela Carter, The Tiger’s Bride). That’s the kind of first line that makes me want to keep reading.

But another lesson from all these stories – seventy-six and counting – is that there are principles of good writing, but not really any rules. One of the most gripping, brilliant stories I’ve read so far this year is The Night Face Up by the late Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar. The story begins in a deceptively ordinary way:

“Halfway down the long hotel vestibule, he thought that probably he was going to be late, and hurried on into the street to get out his motorcycle from the corner where the next-door superintendent let him keep it. On the jewelry store at the corner he read that it was ten to nine; he had time to spare. The sun filtered through the tall downtown buildings, and he – because for himself, for just going along thinking, he did not have a name – he swung onto the machine, savoring the idea of a ride. The motor whirred between his legs, and a cool wind whipped his pantslegs.”

Now, as anyone reading this story will discover, that little throw-away detail of not having a name will be crucial. And the modern-life ordinariness of this episode will also be relevant in ways only the worst possible spoiler could reveal. Beginnings may not grab you by the throat, like the first line of the Angela Carter story, but they have to be there for a reason – for both the art and craft of the story.

The thing is with writing fiction: you can get away with anything, as long as you can get away with it. The problem for lots of writers starting out is that they read a published novel or a short story and try the same thing, to much lesser effect. When they’re told something isn’t working in their draft manuscripts, they grow instantly indignant. “But Tolstoy did it! But J.K. Rowling did it! But Neil Gaiman did it!”

Of course they did. But writing good fiction is hard, and not everyone can pull the same things off. That’s why so many people who teach writing, or edit books, or sell books for a living, try to give apprentice writers useful advice. We urge you not to begin with a dream, even though we know that Haruki Murakami did it in The Dancing Dwarf: “A dwarf came into my dream and asked me to dance.” We urge you not to begin in dialogue, even though we know that Louisa May Alcott did it in Little Women: “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”

Chekhov contended that when you write a story, you have to get rid of both the beginning AND the ending. He thought writers “do most of our lying” in these sections. Certainly, I often try to persuade my own students to cut their beginnings, which read like dull on-ramps to the exciting highways of the real stories.

On my editor’s advice, I lopped off the first chapter of my first YA novel, Ruined. I did exactly the same thing with my second YA novel, Dark Souls. They were on-ramps. They weren’t necessary to the story. The prologue of Dark Souls, however, was barely changed at all. I wrote it quickly, and I like it more than almost anything I’ve written. The first line – “At night, cornfields looked like the ocean” – had been simmering in my head for years, waiting for the right story.

My favorite first line from a novel, by the way, is from The Trial by Kafka: “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” This is the kind of line that could begin a comedy or a tragedy, or something that’s a mixture of both. Now that’s a beginning.

About the Author

Paula Morris is a fiction writer from Auckland, New Zealand. She's studied and worked in a number of places – London, New York, Iowa City, New Orleans – and is currently Fiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

She has published a number of novels and stories for adults, and in 2012 her most recent adult novel, RANGATIRA, won the fiction categories of the New Zealand Post Book Awards and the Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards. It was published in German by Walde+Graf.

She is the author of three YA novels, all ‘haunted city’ mysteries published by Scholastic: Ruined (2009) and its sequel Unbroken (2013); and Dark Souls (2011). She’s working on another YA mystery, set in Rome.

Find Paula on her website
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About the Book

Welcome back to New Orleans.
Where the streets swirl with jazz and beauty.
Where the houses breathe with ghosts.

A year ago, Rebecca Brown escaped death in a New Orleans cemetery. Now she has returned to this haunting city. She is looking forward to seeing Anton Grey, the boy who may or may not have her heart.

But she also meets a ghost: a troubled boy who insists only she can help him. Soon Rebecca finds herself embroiled in another murder mystery from more than a century ago. But as she tries to right wrongs, she finds more questions than answers: Is she putting her friends, and herself, in danger? Can she trust this new ghost? And has she stumbled into something much bigger and more serious than she understands?

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DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF YOUR OPENING
- by Sophie Littlefield

I used to think a novel’s opening lines just had to hook the reader – something so intriguing, contradictory or seemingly impossible, or shocking that she would simply have to keep reading to find out what it portended.

Unfortunately, that’s not all that’s required to craft an effective opening. I can’t emphasize enough that we writers must always honor our unspoken contract with the reader, the set of promises we make when we enter into the relationship of providing a story in exchange for a reader’s time. Of course, there are many exceptions and many reasons you may color outside these particular lines, but think carefully about the expectations you are setting with your opening.

In other words, take care not to suggest, in your first few lines or paragraphs, that you’re telling a tale that the remainder of the book doesn’t deliver. This may take several forms:

Implying a character or relationship is primary when it is not – I made this mistake on my most recent novel. I began with a scene between sisters when it is one sister’s relationship with her husband that drives the arc.
Implying a theme that is not borne out- same book, same mistake: I implied that the central conflict had to do with regret, because I chose a scene from the sisters’ shared past.
Establishing a pace you don’t maintain – the most common example is an action prolog followed by languorous scene setting or backstory. But it would be just as misleading to open an action novel with measured, flowing prose.

Try this exercise: write down the key relationship, conflict, and theme of your book, then ask yourself if your opening is consistent with them. You may believe that the inciting incident (call to action, whatever you want to call it) is the place to start, and that’s often the case, but you must cast it so it is consistent with the story that follows.

Let’s do an example:
Girl mourning her parents’ death trains stray dogs to provide pet therapy for incarcerated juveniles, finds love with boy serving life sentence. (Hey! Not bad, right? I might have to write that!)

Relationship: girl + boy
Conflict: she believes she can’t love again; he’s, uh, in prison
Theme: redemption, tenacity of hope, etc. (it’s okay not to know precisely at start of book)

Possible opening #1: parent’s final moments, as their car goes off the cliff. On the plus side, it’s action-rich. Problem: main characters aren’t present; this isn’t an action novel.

Possible opening #2: Girl receives word that her parents are dead: better, because we have at least one of the main characters on scene. But the book is about her new relationships, not her grief.

Possible opening #3: Girl finds stray dog while skipping grief group. This is the one I’d pick: introduces significant characters (yes, the dog is a character!), provides action and sensory detail around which to suggest theme (trying to establish trust with snarling dog provokes her own trust issues), and reflects tone to follow (edgy yet introspective).

If you do your preparation, you’ll be enhancing a solid premise with the clever language, wordplay, and/or dialog that are characteristic of great openings, rather than attempting to shoehorn the clever bit of prose you’ve written into a story that doesn’t effectively accommodate it. Trust me – it’s worth the effort to ensure that your reader enjoys a seamless transition to the body of the story, rather than feeling misled.

In HANGING BY A THREAD, I tried several openings before settling on a brief scene where Clair, my main character, looks at a family photo with her mother. The photo is of her great-great-grandmother, a dressmaker, fitting a bridal dress on a woman one day before they are both murdered.

Now it may seem as if I have violated my own advice, because the great-great-grandmother (and her murder) have no further role in the story, other than to be responsible for Clair’s home’s reputation for being haunted. However, my opening accomplished the following:

Introduced two key characters (Clair and her mom)
Foreshadowed the story arc, which concerns murder and danger
Introduced the theme of romantic love being dangerous, since a bride was also killed, wearing a wedding dress, no less
Introduced sewing, which is important to the story

This certainly wasn’t the only “right” opening for the book, but I’m pleased with it. You can read the entire scene HERE.

Here are a couple of openings that I admire:

“You’d think imminent arrest for a forty-million-dollar fraud might slow a guy down, but nope, there he was, wandering out of Bazookas at midnight.” - CLAWBACK, Mike Cooper
This is the opening line of my brother’s recent novel. It gives you a sense of the tone (humorous, irreverent), the fast pace that will be maintained throughout the book, and gives you insight into a key character - all in a single sentence.

“Do you remember the day you and I were lunching a couple of years before your death?” - “Ultima Thule,” Vladimir Nabokov
Okay, so it’s actually from a short story - or more precisely, a fragment of an unfinished work - but don’t you just covet this opening line?


About the Author

Sophie's first novel, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY (Minotaur, 2009) has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Barry, and Crimespree awards, and won the Anthony Award and the RTBookReviews Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Mystery. Her novel AFTERTIME was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Horror award.

Sophie is also the author of:
A BAD DAY FOR PRETTY (Minotaur, 2010)
A BAD DAY FOR SCANDAL (Minotaur, 2011)
A BAD DAY FOR MERCY (Minotaur, June 2012)
BANISHED (Delacorte, 2010)
UNFORSAKEN (Delacorte, 2011)
HANGING BY A THREAD (Delacorte, October, 2012)
AFTERTIME (Harlequin Luna, 2011)
REBIRTH (Harlequin Luna, 2011)
HORIZON (Harlequin Luna, 2012)
BLOOD BOND (Pocket, November 2012)


Upcoming titles include:
GARDEN OF STONES (Harlequin MIRA, March 2013)
A BAD DAY FOR ROMANCE (Pocket, September 2013)

Sophie grew up in Missouri, attended Indiana University, and worked in technology before becoming a stay-at-home mom. She lives in Northern California.

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We asked the Agent Judges for the Pitch+250 Contest, plus additional select agents, to tell us what they love and hate to see in a novel opening. Thank you to all the agents who generously took the time to give us quotes for the post.




Sarah LaPolla, Curtis Brown Ltd.

To me, a good opening is one that takes me by surprise. First lines are important to me. I particularly like when they’re quirky in nature or just beautifully written. Something about the beginning of a novel needs to draw me in, whether the writing style, the main character’s voice, or an interesting hint at the plot to come. Beyond the clichés of “don’t begin the main character waking up,” there are beginnings to novels that make me bored or hesitant to continue. The first is dialogue. It would need to be pretty special dialogue for your reader to trust this opening. Beginning with dialogue, to me, asks a lot from your reader. It’s forcing them to hear from a character they don’t know yet. The other pet peeve of mine is beginning a novel with the weather or setting. These introductions can be very well-written, but they essentially say nothing. Unless the storm that’s brewing eventually leads to the main character’s death, I don’t need to hear about it first. Beginnings of novels should be about making a reader feel something before the story even begins. Being excited about where a book will lead me or who I’m about to meet is one of my favorite things about being an agent, and being a reader.





Jordy Albert, The Booker Albert Literary Agency


What I don't like seeing in an opening: Too many times I've come across an opening that describes the sky. and they were all described very similarly.

What I love to see: A strong hook, and opening lines that do a fantastic job at setting up the setting and introducing the characters. I look for openings that draw me into the story and keep me reading.







Pooja Menon, Kimberley Cameron & Associates

NEVER open your scene with:
1) The mundane. In a YA novel, that would be our main character waking up in the morning, noon, or night, either because she or he could not sleep, or because of some sort of a nightmare. I think it's a waste of time to begin with such a scene, which eventually leads to the character contemplating some strand of her/her life. Anything that is mundane bogs the manuscript down, and definitely should not be the first thing an agent or editor sees. Sets the tone for the rest of the story.
2) With a dream. I've seen so many of these openings, and I don't see the point in it. Not unless the dream has a major role to play in the story. Even then, I would rather it came later.

What I love:
1) Quirky first lines that startles me and introduces me to the character at the same time.

2) The character thrown right into a scene of action (mind you, not a monumental scene of action, but an important one that leads up to the monumental one at some point- this requires a certain amount of build-up, so I can be invested when it happens). Such an introduction sets the tone of the story and gives us the lowdown of the character's immediate problem with the least amount of exposition.



Jennifer Udden, Donald Maass Literary Agency

What I like: Openings that immediately bring me into the world of the protagonist--whether or not the protagonist is present yet.

What I hate: Cliched openings- the protagonist waking up, from a dream, then going into the bathroom and describing themselves in the mirror. This happens more often than you'd think!

What I get excited about: Opening lines that give me chills, that make me eager to read the rest of the book, even if it's only a five page sample!


 
Kent Wolf, Lippincott Massie McQuilken 

What I love most about a great YA/MG opening is the sense that I'm in very capable hands. When you write with assurance--capturing voice, creating atmosphere, crafting authentic dialogue--I'm more likely to turn the page. On average I receive over 50 YA/MG queries a week, so it's important to be submitting the most finely honed work possible, and that includes your query letter. The more well-crafted the query (I prefer queries that expertly mimic what you'd find in jacket copy), the more I'm prone to request a partial or full.






Natalie Lakosil, Bradford Literary

I love to see voice introduced with the first line; when I’m surprised, I sit up and take notice. I hate when first lines don’t set up anything at all – in other words, I hate wallpaper first lines (lines that just blend in to the surrounding narrative without any pizzazz).




 

Suzie Townsend, New Leaf Literary


In opening pages of a book, I love to see anything that is going to make me sit up and pay attention. For me that generally means the voice has to have something in it that stands out right from the start. One of my favorite openings is Josh Bazell's in Beat the Reaper. Just reading those first few lines told me who that character was, and underneath was an unwritten promise that if I followed him and his story, it would be interesting.

I would also say there's an art to opening a book. Getting into the middle of things so that even the first line is gripping, giving and withholding the right amounts of information so that the reader will be invested in the characters but wondering what is going to happen.

A great example of this is in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. When the cops are surveying the scene and asking Nick questions about Amy's disappearance, he answers a number of them and then says something to the affect of, "That was the fifth lie I'd told," and right there I was hooked. I had to know what the other lies were, what he wasn't telling us, and what that meant in terms of the plot.



 
Emily Keyes, L. Perkins Agency 

A strong opening shows me that I haven't read this book yet, and makes me want to keep reading further. It gets to the point, and doesn't take too long to introduce conflict and interesting characters. I love a sense of humor that gives a sense of the tone a voice of the main character. I hate an opening that begins at the wrong place, or takes too long to get to the meat of the story. I particularly dislike opening with a dream sequence or a character waking up and getting ready for the day.








Michelle Johnson, Inklings Literary 

What I love to see in a novel opening? - I love to be pulled into the main character immediately. Give me something to identify with and a character I feel for and love and I'll be hooked all the way through. Also, I love a good hook line that makes me laugh. Humor throughout a book, no matter how serious or dark the subject matter, always makes me sit up and take notice.

What I dread seeing in a novel opening? - The usual cliches - A character just waking up. A character waking up and looking in the mirror and using that to describe the character. A group of characters all introduced at the same time. A dream sequence.



John Cusick, Greenhouse Literary 

An opening should grab our attention, be shocking, intriguing— or preferably both! Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book kicks off with a life-and-death situation: “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” It sets a creepy, gothic tone, while drawing us into the action. An intriguing first line can juxtapose apparently contradictory ideas. Libba Bray’s Going Bovine opens, “The best day of my life happened when I was fine and I almost died at Disney World.” How could the best day of your life be the day you almost died, and how could that happen at Disney World, of all places? The question seizes our interest, and compels us to keep reading. In both examples, the reader wants to discover more, what happens next. Plain and simple: your opening should drive us to keep reading.



Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger, Inc. 

I know that openings cause a lot of anxiety for writers - how do you make an impression and get the essence of your novel across in just a few paragraphs?! Some things I look for/look out for: Cliches are a huge warning sign, as is too much telling within the first few paragraphs. Also, prologues are often problematic, so if it's possible to avoid one, definitely do! What is is that makes me sit up and take notice? The most important thing for me is narrative voice - is it engaging? Is it unique? Does it immediately draw me in? This is extremely important -- and if the writer is good, the narrative voice will remain consistent throughout the novel. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on how you look at it!), whether a narrative voice resonates is a highly subjective thing.


Alyssa Henkin, Trident Media Group 

For me, the opening is about being drawn into the story. Strong openings establish an emotional connection to the character(s) and give the reader a reason to care without dumping tons of back-story or description. I can fall in love with an atmospheric setting, with good writing, or great characters, but voice is omnipotent.






Amy Boggs, Donald Maass Literary Agency 

At the most basic level, what I love in a opening is connecting with the main character in a meaningful way that also demonstrates the uniqueness of themselves or their situation. What I hate to see in openings is when that doesn't happen.
Not a very helpful answer, but the most honest I can give. I could say that I hate opening with prologues, dreams, waking up, traveling, or those openings that try to trick the reader (like opening with a big battle scene, but oh wait, turns out that battle was just a video game the protagonist is playing). All of this is true, except when someone very talented and savvy manages to do them right. I am a big believer in breaking rules, if you can pull it off. So stripping an opening to the most basic elements, it comes down to that connection and that uniqueness.

I tend to refer to this as the balance between the familiar and the unexpected. Think of Beethoven's fifth symphony. Those first four notes are strikingly recognizable, but the first three are the same. It's the fourth, that unexpected changeup, that catches your attention.

In a more literary example, consider these two opening sentences:
1. "I sat slumped on the sofa, my eyes glazed over from boredom as I watched real housewives yelling at each other on the TV."

2. "I sat slumped in the passenger seat, my eyes glazed over from boredom as I watched my mom set fire to the body."

Which makes you want to read the next sentence? My bet is on #2. Both have the same style, voice, and level of skill. Both have the same emotion, one most readers will be very familiar with. The difference is in the situation. The first sentence will make the reader think, "Yeah, I know those feels." The second, "Yeah, I know those fee--wait, what?"
This is not to say that all openings have to involve setting someone on fire. But no matter how ordinary your protagonist and their life is, there should be a little something out of the ordinary to pique the reader's interest. The reader opened your book because they were curious. Make them curiouser.



Jenny Goloboy, Red Sofa Literary 

When I request a manuscript, it's because the query letter indicates an appealingprotagonist facing a difficult challenge, and I want to know more. So how do I lose interest?

Some serious problems:

1. The story starts in the wrong place.
The protagonist's crisis is presented in the query letter—but the first chapter isn't really about that. And it's clear we're not going to get to the meat of the issue for some time. Ex: If the story starts with the protagonist waking up and going through his “normal” routine, you've lost my interest by the time he starts brushing his teeth.
2. The protagonist is interesting, but no one else is.
Lots of flat characters-- lots of characters who are exactly who they appear to be. For some reason, this is a problem I see a lot in YA submissions: schools populated by Prom Queens, Evil Jocks, and the rest of Matt Groening's 81 Types of High School Students.

Think: is your Brainy Girl as distinctive as Hermione Granger?

3. The transition from the real world to the fantasy world is ineffective.

Many YA novels have their heroes discover that there's a secret fantasy world, which is much more engaging than the "real" world. The problem with this type of transition is the lack of authenticity in the fantasy realm, let alone a well-thought-out setting that’s equally as plausible as the real world.

What traits in your sample chapters will result in the request of a full manuscript?
Some good signs:
1. I need to find out what happens to your hero, RIGHT NOW

Successfully make it possible for readers to identify with the book’s characters, in addition to structuring a story and ending chapters in a way that forces readers to keep moving forward. These are two separate, valuable skills.

2. It’s evident that the “world” is going to grow

There will be hints of back story that I want to see fleshed out, there will be characters who retain levels of mystery that I want to see resolved, or the overall sense that there is a whole society beyond the places we've all visited.
3. I like your sense of humor.


Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management

As a literary agent, I’ve had the opportunity to read my fair share of book openings. When an author queries me, I ask her to include the first ten pages of her manuscript. These ten pages are crucial territory, because they tell me, almost immediately, whether or not to pursue her work. Your book’s opening is its way of introducing itself. It’s the handshake at the beginning of an interview. You definitely want it to make a good first impression.
As you set about trying to write the kind of opening that will pique an agent’s interest, it’s important not to forget the basics. The opening pages should establish the basic premise of the story and introduce the major themes. Theyshould also be chock full of “establishing details”— the basic Who, What, Where, When, and Why of the book.
This may sound simple, but you’d be surprised how many writers neglect to ground their readers at the outset!
Once you’ve established these basic points, you want to make sure that you’ve written something engaging, an opening that will create an overwhelming desire in the agent to read more. I personally love novels that begin with an intriguing conflict or mystery that I can’t wait to see play out over the course of the book.
I’m also likely to want to keep reading a novel with a compelling narrative voice. It’s crucial to find the right storyteller for your story—think of the ultimate narrator as a captivating traveling companion. The reader must want to listen to this personfor the entire journey of the book.
I also love books that are set against the backdrop of another time, place, or culture – real or imagined.Whether realistic, speculative, or fantastical, it’s crucial to explain the “rules” or “logic” of thebook’s fictional universe in the opening. For instance, what is the hierarchy of a certain school, family, pack of wolves?
Finally, because publishing is also a business, I like to see an opening that gives me a sense of how the book plans to differentiate itself from others on the market. If it’s a book that deals with a popular subject matter or genre, the opening really needs to show me how the book will make a unique impact on editors.



Laura Biagi, Jean V. Naggar Literary
There are two qualities I love in novel openings: 1) something unexpected, 2) the establishment of voice. What I mean by unexpected doesn't necessarily have to do with the subject matter, though. No car crashes, sad clowns, or man-eating turtles will achieve what I mean if the unexpectedness isn't part of the writing itself and how the opening sentences are structured. One of our agency books I adore is the YA book Amber House by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed (Arthur A. Levine Books, October 2012). Chapter One opens, "I was almost sixteen the first time my grandmother died." Initially the sentence lured me into thinking I would be reading something rather normal, but then "first time" appeared, grabbing my attention. The structure creates the surprise. If the sentence had led with "first time," as in "The first time my grandmother died, I was almost sixteen," it wouldn't have been quite as effective. This sentence also successfully establishes voice. The main character directly addresses the reader with authority and honesty, confessing something to the reader that also raises the reader's curiosity: how exactly could this grandmother have died a first time?
Problematic openings often fail to show me within the first page why I as a reader should care about a character or scene. What makes this character or scene so intriguing, so stand-out that a whole novel can grow from its foundation? I also get tipped off that the writing may not be as strong as I'd like when there is an excessive number of adjectives and adverbs in the opening sentences. These words signal to me that the author is trying to force images onto the reader, but unfortunately excessive adjectives and adverbs often create too many images to focus on at once, preventing the reader from getting anything out of the scene. Verbs and nouns are stronger--they anchor a sentence--and so if you can find a way to describe a particular image, action, character, etc. by removing as many adjectives and adverbs as possible, you will likely create a more vivid opening.

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Trying to write the opening line of a blog post ABOUT OPENINGS sucks. I’m just sayin’. Openings need a hook - I think everyone knows that. If you didn’t, well, you do now. It can be hard to find that perfect action moment that will suck in a reader while also letting the rest of the story flow easily from it. A regular breakfast in a regular house on a regular day, where nothing more exciting is said than “Please pass the orange juice?” Not going to work. Last breakfast in a regular house on moving day where nothing more is said than “Please pass the orange juice?” and the table’s surrounded by boxes? Much more potential interest. The reader doesn’t need an actual explosion, they just need a reason to want to keep reading. There’s also a fine line between dropping the reader into the middle of the action and leaving them there to drown. If things are too confusing, it doesn’t matter how many exciting things are happening. A good beginning balances all of these elements, and leaves the reader anxious to know what happens next.

Of course, the opening also sets the tone for the rest of the book. So if you’re writing a historical romance, it’s probably a better idea to open with a ball rather than, say, the alien mothership landing in the yard. If the action you’re opening with doesn’t fit the rest of the story, it’s time to go another direction. I find that my beginnings often have to be rewritten once I’m finished with a manuscript because as the story has grown and developed over the course of the writing, the formerly perfect beginning becomes off-tone or off-topic.

That said, all too often I see writers get stymied by their opening scene, and it paralyzes their writing process. Though it is true of all drafting, it is perhaps MOST true of opening scenes that the important part is getting it written. Once you can move into the story, it becomes easier to look back and see whether your scene needs a change of venue, or a different bit of dialogue, or whether it needs to be a different scene altogether.

One of my all time favorite beginnings is from R.J. Anderson’s novel ULTRAVIOLET:

"Once upon a time there was a girl who was special. Her hair flowed like honey and her eyes were blue as music. She grew up bright and beautiful, with deft fingers, a quick mind and a charm that impressed everyone she met. Her parents adored her, her teachers praised her, and her schoolmates admired her many talents. Even the oddly-shaped birthmark on her upper arm seemed like a sign of some great destiny.
        This is not her story.
        Unless you count the part where I killed her."

Immediately, you understand the tone of the book, and the sudden shift at the end makes it absolutely perfect.

In my own work, the opening for THE GATHERING DARK was the one I struggled with the most. Never have I rewritten a scene so many times. At one point, it started with a car wreck. Then it started in the school cafeteria. Eventually, I realized that the reader needed to see Keira at her piano, and so I gave her a job playing IN A RETIREMENT HOME and opened with that. Seriously. It seemed like a good idea at the time. No, I don’t know what I was thinking, either. Anyway, after many, many false starts, I finally put Keira at the piano in the department store at the mall, and things finally started to click. It still took a number of drafts before I was able to get all the right characters interacting in the right ways. Now, I’m thrilled with the way the book opens, but it was the only part of the entire novel that really was a struggle to write. I’m glad, though, because it made me think so much more deeply about the structure of opening scenes, and I know my writing benefitted from it.

Now. Go write a first line.

About the Author

I grew up in, moved away from, and finally came home to Indianapolis, Indiana. While I was in the “away” part of that adventure, I was living in Chicago, Illinois, where I went to DePaul University and met my husband. I majored in Political Science. For the record, Political Science is a totally useless degree. But it’s also totally fascinating and I loved studying it. I fall into that trap a lot. I graduated with about nine million extra credit hours because I was forever taking classes that seemed “interesting” instead of classes that I needed to fill requirements.

After college, I lived in Chicago for several more years with my husband. I had a string of jobs – some I liked, some I hated, but none of them ever stuck with me as a career. Writing is different. For this job, I could be a workaholic! Anyway, after several more years in Chicago, my husband and I moved back to Indianapolis. (We got tired of constantly looking for street parking in Lakeview.)

Now, I live in an old house in an old neighborhood with my husband and kids. I have too many books and a weakness for anything sweet. I love yoga and cooking, but I’m not much of a movie person. I like watching soccer, and always look forward to the first sweater-worthy days in the fall. But mostly, I like making things up and writing them down and having people read them. So, that’s what I do, and I’m very, very lucky to be doing it!

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About the Book

Keira’s hallucinating. First it’s a door hovering above the road; then it’s a tree in her living room. But with her parents fighting and her best friend not speaking to her, Keira can’t tell anyone about her breakdown. Until she meets Walker. They have an electric connection—and somehow it’s as if he can see the same shadowy images. The more Keira slowly confides in Walker, the more intense—and frightening—her visions become. Trusting him may be more dangerous than Keira could have ever imagined. Because Walker is not what he appears to be—and neither are her visions.

Keira’s hallucinating. First it’s a door hovering above the road; then it’s a tree in her living room. But with her parents fighting and her best friend not speaking to her, Keira can’t tell anyone about her breakdown. Until she meets Walker. They have an electric connection—and somehow it’s as if he can see the same shadowy images.The more Keira slowly confides in Walker, the more intense—and frightening—her visions become. Trusting him may be more dangerous than Keira could have ever imagined. Because Walker is not what he appears to be—and neither are her visions.

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Character & Voice in your Opening Pages

It’s safe to say I’ve seen more than my fair share of novel beginnings. Over several years ofhandling submissions for Nelson Literary Agency, I’ve read something like 3,000 partial manuscripts. And though we ask for 30 pages, the truth is I usually have a good idea of whether a story is going to work after just one or two. So what makes a beginning great? It takes a lot of ingredients—and a little alchemy—but if I had to boil it down to the two most important, I’d say character and voice. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how these two components work together to draw readers in.

The first example caught my eye in the slush pile and became Jennifer Shaw Wolf’s debut BREAKING BEAUTIFUL, about young love, physical abuse, and forgiveness. Here’s the opening:

The clock says 6:45, even though it’s really 6:25. If everything were normal, the alarm would ring in five minutes. I’d hit the snooze button, wrap Grandma’s quilt around me, and go back to sleep until Mom came in and forced me to get up. I used to stay in bed until the last possible minute and then dash around getting ready for school—looking for my shoes or a clean T-shirt, and finally running out the door to the sound of my boyfriend, Trip, laying on the horn of his black 1967 Chevy pickup.
                  Nothing is normal, and no one makes me go to school. 
                  Mom comes in and stands at the door to see if I’m awake. I’m always awake.

These emotionally charged opening lines give a hint of back story and introduce the mystery on which the entire story is based: what changed Allie’s “normal” life into the nightmare she is now living? That’s a feat in itself, but what really seals the deal is that in less than half a page I already know this girl. She sets her clock ahead twenty minutes to guard against habitual lateness but still ends up in a mad scramble (ahem, I can identify with that!). She’s close to her family (wrapped in her grandmother’s quilt) but we already sense a pulling away—this, too, has changed. She’s going through something very difficult (to the point of constant insomnia), but she’s not trying to make us feel sorry for her.

It’s the combination of a strong, unflinching voice and the information she chooses to give us that make this character instantly likeable and deserving of our concern. I had to know what happened to her and how she would overcome it. I had to read the rest of the novel.

Here’s another example, from Sherman Alexie’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN (obviously, not from our slush pile):

I was born with water on the brain. 
                   Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors’ fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded. 
                  My brain was drowning in grease. 
                  But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny, like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, “I was born with water on the brain.”

What do we know about this character, Junior, in less than half a page? That he’s smart and quirky, even when he’s trying to tell us about his brain being messed up. That he’s down to earth (brain=car engine) but he feels out of place—a first taste of one of the themes of the novel. We suspect he’s prone to exaggeration, but it’s good-natured, and what teenage boy doesn’t like to embellish a little now and then? These are the elements that create a unique voice and an unforgettable character—the foundation for the novel’s great success.

So what can you do to make readers fall for your characters from the very first page? Here are some ideas:

• Give your characters a quirk or two. Does he refuse to wear white because it’s a funeral color in Asia? Does she decide, for their own good, that her pet fish are vegans? By weaving in little eccentricities, you create a character that is both memorable and real. None of us have exactly the same quirks, but we all have ‘em. (I always pick the middle car on the light rail. It ought to be the safest, eh?)

• Let them see the world a bit differently than the rest of us. Had you ever heard someone compare his brain to a giant French fry? Could you possibly get bored with a guy like that? Without using heavy dialect, give a taste of speech patterns and vocabulary that let us glimpse your character’s identity. “Water on the brain,” “weirdo me.”

• Make us worry about your characters. Jennifer Shaw Wolf infuses her very first paragraph with tension: we like this girl (good), but something happened to her (bad) and we can’t sleep tonight if we don’t find out what it is. Sherman Alexie does it, too—there’s more humor, but we’re still concerned. How did this guy survive such an alarming birth defect? Were there lasting consequences? Can he fit in at school? Will he get a girlfriend?

Whether you’re looking to hook an agent, an editor, or a large audience of readers, the same rule applies: you have to do it from the first page. Teens have little patience for wordy stage-setting. Jump right into the story by showing them who your characters are, what makes them tick, and what they’re up against.

Best wishes for your writing!

About Anita Mumm

Anita Mumm joined Nelson Literary Agency in early 2010. As NLA’s talent scout, she screens all incoming submissions and presents and takes pitches at conferences across the country. Mumm has picked a number of exciting new authors for the company, including Stefan Bachmann, whose international bestseller The Peculiar (September 2012) sold in a major auction to Greenwillow/HarperCollins; Jennifer Shaw Wolf, author of the edgy YA novels Breaking Beautiful (Walker, 2012) and Shards of Glass (Walker, 2013); and Monica Trasandes, author of the debut literary novel Broken Like This (Thomas Dunne, November 2012). In addition to her role as submissions manager, Anita is NLA’s foreign rights manager for the Asian territories. She taught English and creative writing to international students in the U.S., China, and France before joining the publishing industry. She blogs at Word Café.

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On the Opening of Dancing in the Dark and Other Beginnings 

DANCING IN THE DARK begins with a scene that builds to the most climactic moment in the story. We meet a narrator who is feeling trapped, yet is afraid to leave her room, afraid of her father. The reader does not yet know why, and hopefully will want to find out.

The narrator, Ditty, tells us that she has a dance performance that evening, and is expected at rehearsal. But she is tired and troubled. “I want to close my eyes and make my problems disappear. I don’t want to deal with the consequences of the past five years.” At this point, hopefully the reader will wonder what these consequences are, and what has been going on for the past five years that has led to such consequences too dreadful to face.

Deciding, after all, that she can’t let herself or her teacher down, Ditty tries to sneak out of the house, but her father intercepts her and forbids her to leave. He issues an ultimatum: “If you leave now, you are not to come back. Do you understand, Yehudit? You are not to come back.” These words form the pivotal point around which the story revolves.

Ditty hesitates. “I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t want to leave here and never come back, either. I’m only seventeen.” If she disobeys her father now, she will never again be welcome in her home. So ends the prologue. The rest of the story, beginning with Chapter One, is a flashback that leads up to this point and beyond.

So, why did I begin with the climactic prologue? Why didn’t I tell the story strictly chronologically, beginning it with Chapter One?

Firstly, it’s important to establish the narrative voice early on. Given that the bulk of the story spans five years, and the entire story eight years, the reader might have wondered who was telling the story – the twelve-year-old Ditty from Chapter One? The twenty-year-old Ditty from the epilogue? By beginning the story with a prologue, I was able to establish the narrative voice as that of the seventeen-year-old Ditty at a defining moment.

Secondly, beginning with the point of climax is an almost guaranteed way to arouse the reader’s interest, as it provides a taste of the tension and conflict to come. It reveals the story’s central dilemma – even though it’s not until later that the reader is able to place it in context, to understand that Ditty’s parents have just found out that she has been deceiving them for the past five years; she has disobeyed them by attending dance classes when they’ve forbidden her to do so, and has violated the Sabbath and other religious commandments. Ditty realizes, once and for all, that her double life cannot continue. She can be part of her family – or she can live as a dancer. She cannot do both, and this is the dilemma that lies at the heart of the story. The opening foreshadows this dilemma, promising to explore it.

In hindsight, it’s easy to analyze why I began the way I did – and why it works. But the truth is, I experimented with many different beginnings, and it wasn’t until I knew my characters and had a strong idea of the where the story was headed that I was able to write the opening the story required.

Here are some other openings:

1. THE DECLARATION, by Gemma Malley:
“11 January, 2140
My name is Anna.
My name is Anna and I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t exist.”

So much information in so few words. Already we know that this is Anna’s story, set in the future. Already we are wondering: Why shouldn’t Anna exist? We want to read on.

2. SAVING FRANCESCA, by Melina Marchetta
“This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed.”

A simple sentence, but it does raise the question, ‘Why not?’ An apt beginning for a story about a girl whose mother is suffering from depression.

3. GRACE, by Morris Gleitzman
“In the beginning there was me and Mum and Dad and the twins.
And good luck was upon us and things were great and talk about happy families, we were bountiful.
But it came to pass that I started doing sins.
And lo, that’s when all our problems began.”

What we notice first is the highly original voice – childish and Biblical. It’s the voice of a girl raised in a very insular religious cult. Kept away from modern life and anyone outside the cult, the language she uses is heavily influenced by the linguistically outdated Bible. This opening also tells us about the narrator’s family and lets us into her psyche – she has done something wrong, or thinks she has. But what?


There are many different kinds of openings. The good ones raise questions. They hint at conflict and keep the reader turning the pages. And writing them depends on knowing what comes later. As the renowned French thinker and writer, Blaise Pascal, famously said: “The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.”

About the Author

Robyn Bavati lives in Melbourne, Australia. Dancing in the Dark is her debut novel. Her next novel, Pirouette, will be out in November.

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About the Book

When Ditty Cohen first sees a ballet on TV, the beautiful, gravity-defying dancing captivates her.

She’s instantly connected to the graceful performers, realizing her passion is to be a dancer. There’s just one problem: Ditty is from an ultra-orthodox Jewish family and her parents forbid her to take dance lessons.

Refusing to give up on her newfound love, Ditty starts dancing in secret. Her devotion to dance is matched only by her talent, but the longer Ditty pursues her dream, the more she must lie to her family. Caught between her passion and her faith, Ditty starts to question everything she believes in. How long can she keep her two worlds apart? And at what cost?

DANCING IN THE DARK is the dramatic, inspiring story about a girl who discovers the trials and triumphs of pursuing her greatest dream.

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“So you gonna ask her out?” came the inevitable question.
--SALVATION, January 10th, 2013

“On the night of her coming out party, Aurelia almost died. Of boredom.”
 --AURELIA

“Aerin tried to ignore the bloodstain on the control panel of the fugitive.”
--ACADEMY 7


I tend to think of the beginning of a book like the final third of an ordinary chapter. In most chapters, the suspense and action build toward the end, dropping you off at a cliffhanger. Which is then analyzed and internally dealt with at the beginning of the next chapter. But at the beginning of a book, you don’t have time for analysis or to build the reader’s suspense. You have to grab the reader right away. So it’s like starting right before the cliffhanger. Probably my favorite opener of all time comes from THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE by Philip Pullman. He spends about two paragraphs describing a genteel blond young woman standing, waiting outside a door, in Victorian England. And then he hits you with this line. “Her name was Sally Lockhart and in fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man.” I dare you to stop reading there!

My experience is that every first scene should in some way encapsulate the main theme and/or tone of the novel. There’s a sense of foreshadowing, often with more depth than the reader first senses. The educational director at the Oregon Shakespeare Company teaches a lesson called “Sleuthing” in which students act out and direct the opening scene of a Shakespeare play. In the process they discover the themes within the entire play—because those themes are right there, at the very beginning. The duality in Macbeth. The mistaken identities in The Taming of the Shrew. The death in Hamlet.

The opening of my first novel, Aurelia, began, initially, at a party. At one point I revised the first line to the one listed above, and the advice that got me there was simply the word “stronger” etched in pencil by editor Angelle Pilkington (who ultimately became AURELIA’s real editor) after she read it for a critique at a conference. This scene, though, while still my favorite, is no longer the first scene in the novel. Instead, the then third scene—which I originally envisioned as the first chapter’s cliffhanger—was switched to the beginning in the form of a prologue. A dark night and dead body. “Death disturbed the night.”



My current novel, SALVATION, begins with a much simpler line. Two guys checking out a gorgeous girl on the steps at church. But there’s irony there. And Salva, the main character, is in conflict. No, he won’t date the gorgeous girl who seems to share his exact background. Because he wants something else. Something more. Something bound to cause trouble among all the expectations pressing around him: from his father, his culture, and his best friend. “I’ll handle it,” Salva says.

But, of course, nothing is that easy.


About the Author

Anne Osterlund is the author of four young adult novels, SALVATION, AURELIA, ACADEMY 7, and EXILE, all published by Penguin Books. Her second novel, ACADEMY 7, won the OCTE Spirit of Oregon Award and was an ALA/YALSA Popular Paperback nominee. Anne works as a full-time author and presents for schools, conferences, and writing events. She grew up in the sunshine of eastern Oregon and earned a BA from Whitworth College, where she majored in elementary education with Spanish and English teaching fields. Anne lives in a cute little yellow house with her new feline friend, Simba, and her own library of young adult books. She has ten years of full-time teaching experience and enjoys immersing students in language, literature, and imagination. Anne and her characters can be found on her website. www.anneosterlund.com
Anne's Blog

About the Book

SALVA (Salvador) RESENDEZ is a god at Liberty High School. Quarterback. National Honor Society Member. ASB President. His Mexican immigrant family has high expectations, and Salva is prepared to fulfill them—mostly—but what he really wants is to blend in with his friends and enjoy his senior year. A goal bound for destruction when an asinine requirement forces him into AP English with the teacher from hell. And with walking disaster area, BETH COURANT. Who may be his salvation. But what neither Salva nor Beth knows is that the cost of salvation is mortality.

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For our Inspired Openings post today, please welcome Kristin O'Donnell Tubb. Her most recent novel, THE 13TH SIGN, released on January 8th.

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They took me in my nightgown. BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY by RutaSepetys
"Where’s Papa going with that ax?" CHARLOTTE'S WEB by E.B. White
It was a dark and stormy night. A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle (and every book Snoopy ever started...)

Many writers have been told, "Start the story on the day something changes for your character." It's excellent advice, but the danger of that, as I see it, is starting the story the *instant* something happens to your character. Hollywood openings have wormed their way into our psyche, and we become tempted to open our story with our hero hanging off the side of the cliff by her fingertips. As writers of such, we argue, "But we're rooting for my protagonist from page one! They're dangling over death!"

Sure, okay. But do we care? It's true, we will root for the protagonist to exit the mountainside safely. But imagine if, that morning, we saw her kiss her toddler goodbye before leaving for work. Now that dangle has consequences. Now we care.

So while yes, for plotting and pacing's sake, the old "the day something changes" is excellent food for thought, I'd argue it's just as important - maybe more - to weave in your character, too. How do you do that, and quickly? Voice.

The three examples I've given above are three of my favorite opening lines. Two of them both thrust us in to the plot and are chock-full of voice. (We'll come back to "dark and stormy.")

"They took me in my nightgown." It's a chilling opening to RutaSepetys' best-selling BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY. Who are "They?" Who is "me?" And why does They come *before* me? Took where? And at night? We have dozens of questions from this opening, and the pull to keep reading is deep. Too, Lina's story is told in short, rapid-fire sentences, just as this line reads. This tone adds to the confusion Lina feels when she and her family are awoken in the middle of the night and forced from their Lithuanian home.

Probably the most celebrated of all opening lines, "Where’s Papa going with that ax?" from CHARLOTTE’S WEB has gained that status for a reason. The "Papa" immediately alerts us to a rural family setting, and a relatively gentle one, at that. And where *is* he going with that ax? We want to know! So we follow Fern and we find out.


And then there's "It was a dark and stormy night." Ah, campiness! Ah, purple prose! This phrase was first used in 1830 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton as the opening to PAUL CLIFFORD. So why would Madeleine L'Engle, a master of prose, lean on a hammy opening such as this? I believe it's because she had written a book about time travel. For CHILDREN. A Wrinkle in Time was a rule-breaker from the get-go. Why not have a little fun with that fact, play with your words and your readers? Isn't word play what it's all about?

My latest book, THE 13th SIGN, starts off like this: “Sagittarius: Your bubbly personality and effervescent style make you a shoo-in for ‘Most Likely to be Center of Attention at a Party.’” In THE 13th SIGN, Jalen, the main character, feels very unlike the stereotypical Sagittarius. I hope this opening line captures both the nature of the story and Jalen's false feelings toward the zodiac.


Inspired Openings, for me, not only hint at plot, but give us a solid dose of voice and leave us with questions that pull us in to the story. What is your story about?A World War II story of a teen fighting for her life?A tale of family and friendship on the farm?A time-traveling child searching for her lost father? Your tone should be hinted at from the first handful of words. Happy writing!



About Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

I am basically a big dork who would still be going to school if they'd let me. (But they won't, cause that'd just be weird.) So instead I write historical fiction! All of the research, none of the tests - I've got the best job in the world, doncha think?
SELLING HOPE was given a starred review by Booklist, who said it was "a bouncy tale populated by a terrific cast of characters!" And AUTUMN WINIFRED OLIVER DOES THINGS DIFFERENT has been nominated for the Volunteer State Book Award (2011-2012 list) and was chosen to represent the State of Tennessee in the Pavilion of States at the 2009 National Book Festival. I'm delighted to have AUTUMN serve as Tennessee's ambassador!
I love hearing from readers! Please contact me through my website: www.kristintubb.com. You're also invited to swing by my blog: www.kristintubb.blogspot.com.


About the Book

THE 13TH SIGN
What if there was a 13th zodiac sign?

You’re no longer Sagittarius, but Ophiuchus, the healer, the 13th sign.

Your personality has changed. So has your mom’s and your best friend’s.

What about the rest of the world?

What if you were the one who accidentally unlocked the 13th sign, causing this world-altering change, and infuriating the other 12 signs?

Jalen did it, and now she must use every ounce of her strength and cunning to send the signs back where they belong. Lives, including her own, depend upon it.

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