Your First Sentence(s)

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dchampagne
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Re: Your First Sentence(s)

Post by dchampagne »

I agree I think first sentences are the hook on the book. It is how the book is started to tell you how it is written throughout.

My first sentence to this story I am writing (progress in work) is.......It was a dark and snowy night....
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moderntimes
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Post by moderntimes »

Depends on the length of the material. For my mystery novels, I try to have something "happening" in the first chapter and I make it short, and it's usually "in medias res" to get the reader going fast.

Short stories, I don't focus on the 1st sentence so much as the 1st paragraph. It's a bit silly I think to require all your money on that first sentence. However, some authors have made a huge impact on that first sentence, such as Orwell in 1984: "It was a bright, cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen." One of my fave grab lines.

Here's the 1st paragraph from my recent short story "Perspective":

"I tilted the seatback and slumped, hunching my shoulders and burrowing my head in a fruitless retreat from events to come. But I really didn’t know what might occur and for that I was fearful. I could scarcely comprehend what I was doing, flying to Detroit to meet a man I did not like and witness the grave of a woman whom I had loved. How I’d persuaded myself to undertake this pilgrimage was beyond me.

So I set the scene (guy on a plane), the mood (mundane, as "Detroit" is intentionally not exciting), psychological (he's fearful), and intellectual (1st person narrative shows a smart educated person).

-- 21 Jun 2014, 12:13 --

I always try to set a mood. Here's the 1st sentence from my 2nd mystery novel:

"It was nearly midnight when I stepped off the splintery wooden porch of the tavern and headed toward my car."

From this you learn 1- shabby surroundings, 2- late night and therefore trouble may soon appear, and 3- a sense of indifference or fatigue from the narrator.

And the 1st sentence from my 1st mystery novel:

"Police Headquarters in Houston is a seven-story concrete monstrosity that squats on a downtown cul-de-sac named Riesner Street."

You know the location, the intentional "blah" about the HQ, and a slight sense of irony (monstrosity).

However in my 3rd novel, just completed, I take longer to build up the mood, one para to show a mundane and routine locale (a student's apartment) and then in the 2nd para I blow it up big time:

"The efficiency apartment was neat and spotless, maintained by someone who took her student life seriously, a young woman with pride in modest surroundings. Inexpensive bookshelves lined the walls, filled to capacity with paperbacks and collegiate texts. Stacks of notebooks, a pristine desk and office-style cubicle, laptop and printer, family photos. A small flatscreen TV and combo DVD player on one shelf. Nearby bed made up, sheets tucked. Adjoined kitchenette gleaming, dining counter and two bar stools the same. Bathroom next, also clean, bright.

Except that the apartment was now an abattoir, every surface strewn with her body parts. A vile and perverted display...[with worse to come, graphic and bloody]
"Ineluctable modality of the visible..."
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Post by tangowithParis »

I needed to be somewhere that didn't regard macaroni and cheese as another
reason to reconnect with the Almighty. "Let us pray. Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts,
which we are about to receive through Thy Bounty." Everyone of the delicacies passed
around the picnic tables full of mourners, got the treatment. The "treatment", under the circumstances, made my discovery seem intrusive. I had happened upon the The Flock
doing the Lord's Work, and my yankee upbringin had made empathy impossible.
I excused myself and smiled a cheesy departure. "I'm sorry. I've still got jet lag."
I drove the rental car to the hovel we had rented in Palatka. I hurled in the john and fell on the bed. The pictures would have to wait
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Post by moderntimes »

I really like that first sentence! A couple of small comments on typography:

1- No comma after "mourners"
2- Comma inside the quotes for "treatment," [US standard punctuation]
3- Yankee is capitalized
4- Either upbringing (with the 'g') or add apostrophe, upbringin'

No explanation why he/she pukes, maybe a bit more exposition to explain, or maybe he's/she's just got a headache from the "boundless joy"?
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Post by tangowithParis »

I woke up refreshed, anxious to renew the task at hand. The pot luck dinner had been
attended by the lessers of evil. People who knew what went on, but were not participants in the rituals and dogma. "Pap," was someone they named their first born
son after, was allowed to drink too much at Church picnics, and decided where the next barn burning would be. He was also the subject of everyone of the black and white
stills I had spread out over the bedspread in front me. They were pictures of Arthur Emeritus
Clarkson, The Grand Dragon of The Palatka Klaxon of The Ku Klux KLan. I had just attended his funeral. And was married to his favorite granddaughter. Until I'd happened
upon the dogeared envelope in an old family picture album, I knew as much about Pap
as I did grits.
Last edited by tangowithParis on 02 Jul 2014, 13:52, edited 1 time in total.
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moderntimes
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Post by moderntimes »

You sure you want to name him Arthur C. Clark? Estate of the SF author Arthur C. Clarke might take umbrage. Be very careful when naming your characters -- I'll bet you dollar to a donut that when you place your book, your editor will require that name be changed after your book is vetted by the publisher's legal department.

Btw, "granddaughter" isn't capitalized. And has 2 "d's"

But the initial sentences are very good!
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Post by tangowithParis »

If an editor ever considers publishing anything I've written, I'm going to demand a recount. Thanks, tiempos modernos!! Mucho gusto!
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moderntimes
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Post by moderntimes »

Thanks, but tango, your focus needs to be on selling your writing. And of course getting published. Heck, if I can do it (2 novels sold), anybody can!
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Post by tangowithParis »

Come to think of it, my response to a previous thread "How Do We Name Our Fictional
Characters was "who cares? what's in a name?." Hmmmmmmmm.
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Post by moderntimes »

Well, legal departments care, because using someone's real name in fiction can be libelous. Hence lawsuits. Hence money down the drain, not to mention books jerked from shelves and shredded.
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Post by tangowithParis »

"How you doing, baby? Claudette said you looked liked you seen a swamp fulla ghosts
when you left here last night. Shoulda come got me. I was still good ta go 'bout that
time. You mighta even got lucky!"
"That's OK, Pascagoula. I think it was too much of Cousin Deb's possum pie. I wished
she'd have told me what was in it before I ate it."

"Deb's crazy as a loon. Coulda been anything. Boa, pigeon, inner tube, one uh Jasper's
pet turtles he couldn't find. Jus' sayin"
"You're kidding right?"
"Course I am. We don't have boas in these parts. That's yankee food."
"Pasca, you're different. Real different since we got off the plane in Jacksonville. What's
goin' on?"
"Don't be so uptight, Hank! I'm just funnin' sall. These guys would never stretch yer neck while I'm here. I'm Pap's little girl. They cross me and they'll be datin' alligators
for a livin'."
"So Pap was an influential member of the community?"
"Influential? He was the community, baby."
I couldn't believe what I'd heard. My wife had just admitted she was aware of her
Grandfather's life work. I considered the possibility, given her ignorance of just about everything save her nails and eye shadow, that she was like a Mob bosses' daughter,
and spared the tedium of the day-to-day. The equinoxes and soltices didn't matter
because everyday was the First of May. But she was a little better informed than that.
Without even bothering to steal a towel to verify my night in Palatka,I fired the rented
Pinto to life and headed toward Jacksonville. I was going to take the first available flight out. No matter where it went. Even Gary would do. Where the sun is illegal.
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Hurricane John
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Post by Hurricane John »

"I sit by the automobile window, watching the shadows and light fly by into the night."
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Post by cattykins »

melrose226 wrote:For me, opening sentences are the most important part of the book, hands down (okay, that might be an overstatement. But still, if a first sentence grabs me I will be hooked for the whole book.) so I am always trying to come up with exciting first sentences for my projects. My favorite thus far is for an incomplete crime thriller novel I'm working on:

"I kill people for a living."
Good opening sentence, however it has been used before. It was the opening sentence in a book I recently flicked though in my local library. Perhaps time to head back to ' the drawing board or indulge in another brain storming session.
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moderntimes
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Post by moderntimes »

tango, a moment if you please...

"rented Pinto" sets the story back into the 70s I would think. If this is intentional, a little added background info might help with that, otherwise you'll get the readers to going "Huh?" and you want to reduce "huh? factors" as much as possible.

Also... be quite careful about injecting too much "quaint" dialogue and jargon. I've spent many years in the South, North, East, West, you name it, and nobody I've ever met in the South speaks that way. It sounds like Beverly Hillbillies which was stupid even when it was a new TV show. Also, readers quickly balk at too much country-fied slang. It seems forced and artificial. Now if the characters are joking around and pretending that dialect, okay, but don't let it go on too long. Just realize that only a few people actually talked that way and that was maybe 200 years ago. TV is now a fact of life everywhere, has been for decades, so even deepwoods people speak more conventionally.

Of course you may be writing a comic parody story and not intending to write something that is realistic. Even so, realize that readers quickly tire of too much broken English and stereotype characters, unless the story is very broad slapstick-level Benny Hill type comedy, which is in itself passe.

Realize that such a blatant image of Southerners speaking that way and say such things (possum pie, gimme a break!) is just like writing a story where ALL people in NYC speak with a Bronx "Bowery Boys" accent taken from the 1920s.

-- 03 Jul 2014, 10:28 --

Cattykins, I agree that the sentence from melrose is interesting but trite. And it's also passive, not always the best way to start a novel.

melrose, instead of the protagonist telling us what he/she does, why not start with an actual killing? Such as:

"I slipped the cord around her neck, quickly turned and leaned forward, pulling the cord taut across my shoulders so that she was hanging across my back. It only took a minute and she was gone, no sound, no muss, no evidence."
or
"I came up behind him as he stooped to open his car door, yoked him around the neck for support, jammed the icepick into his right ear. He was gone in seconds."

Just off the top of my head, not polished at all, just a hint.
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Post by tangowithParis »

I haven't made up my mind how I'll resolve the prints I'd come upon. And it's been
forty years since I found them. They've taken on a spiritual dimension. But, even back then, 1974, I had no emotional attachment(or repugnance) to them. I never told "Pascagoula" about them. And they wait in a special place. I truly believe that they
stand for much more than sweaty Klansmen relaxing. After committing some terrible crime. They lie fallow.

-- 03 Jul 2014, 16:00 --

I haven't made up my mind how I'll resolve the prints I'd come upon. And it's been
forty years since I found them. They've taken on a spiritual dimension. But, even back then, 1974, I had no emotional attachment(or repugnance) to them. I never told "Pascagoula" about them. And they wait in a special place. I truly believe that they
stand for much more than sweaty Klansmen relaxing. After committing some terrible crime. They lie fallow.
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