First Line Comb-Overs and an Amazon Gift Card!

I'm working my way through Donald Maas's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. Different in many ways from his non-fiction book; similar in his straight-shooting style. Chapter 25 is all about first and last lines in novels. Weather and description rarely sing. Scene setting isn't always strong. Mood can be disastrous. Action doesn't immediately engage the reader unless there's something puzzling about it. According to Maas, great first lines have the "intrigue factor."


What's the intrigue factor? A mystery. Something that makes us inwardly shout, "What the hell did that mean?":

124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

or awakens our subconscious into charging ahead to find out what the second sentence will bring. Our eyes race forward to see if any answers lie in those words. If not, what about the third line? At this point, the reader is hooked.

Great first lines lead readers into the world of the novel:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
—James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

They may raise a unwritten question begging to be answered:

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.
—David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

or present vivid physical situations in an arresting way:

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
—Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

The best lines often ignite a character's point of view as J.D. Salinger did in Catcher in the Rye:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Maas's exercise for writers is to find the intrigue factor in their opening line. What question does it pose? What puzzle does it present? If writers are unable to answer these questions, first try tightening it. Make it shorter. If that doesn't work, Maas advises, "audition your second line for the lead spot. Or combine elements from your first paragraph into one short, super-charged sentence." The exercise does not end until the writer has created a different first line.

American Book Review has compiled a list of the 100 Best First Lines From Novels. Read through them to find inspiration, then audition your own. If you're a reader, pick up the one your bookmark is parked in. Ask yourself, "Do I want to hear the next line?" Ask us. Post it here.

I'll start:

Even his own breath reeked of psychosis.

Analysis: short, back loaded with "psychosis"--the hero's internal conflict. "Even" is a nasty bugger--almost NEVER useful in literature, but it does speak to how overwhelmed he is. Can't get much deeper point of view than smelling your own breath. But does it match up to The Donald? (Maas, not Trump) Let's see. Does it pose a question? No. Raise a puzzle? Not really. Similar to this one (as it starts with mood or mental state--a Donald no-no):

He plunked two ice cubes into the glass and submerged them with Johnny Walker Black.
-Howard Swindle, Jitter Joint

However, Mass goes on to explain this lines gets an acceptable reading because the protagonist is an alcoholic and the plot concerns a murder in a rehab clinic. Vital information straight out of the gate.

So here's the second line, auditioned:

Stale from exhaustion and hours-old Jamaican Blue Mountain coating his teeth, Evan Braun’s urgent, but intimate exchange with the oak door spiked an inferno against the sweat sheen above his lips.

This second sentence has been a bitch. Some are lost in the denseness. Some think he's humping the door, which is clarified in the third sentence:

The peephole’s convex glass bubbled the front lawn into a telescopic blend of muted autumn colors.

But does it all raise a puzzle? Maybe. What does he see through the peephole that is making him sweat? Are these three lines enough to hook a reader? Jury's still out.

Your turn. Post the first line of your work-in-progress or the opening sentence of a book you're reading. Open it up to the same scrutiny a reader will bring to the page. Audition your second or third lines. Give each other feedback. Have fun. How often to we get to play "The Donald"?

Everyone who offers up first lines for analysis or gives feedback will be entered into a drawing for a $5 Amazon gift certificate. The more you post, the more chances you have to win. Let's break my statcounter record and help each other.

Kumbaya, people.

An Invitation

Granted, this one presents with more theatrics than Mullet Man from Craig's List. And no, this is NOT my September opportunity from the tarot deck. I SO wish could take a road trip to California to find out what specimens show up for this one. Here's the meeting spot. I can only imagine the interviews conducted under this "main sign."

"Pulse?"
"Check."
"Meds?"
"Good, we'll all need them."
"Rorschach test?"
"Yeah, I see Einstein's hair, too. You're in."

Dear Writer:

Although it must be a thousand years ago that I sat in a class in story writing at Stanford, I remember the experience very clearly. I was bright-eyes and bushy-brained and prepared to absorb the secret formula for writing good short stories, even great short stories. This illusion was canceled very quickly. The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done. It is a most difficult form, as we were told, and the proof lies in how very few great short stories there are in the world.

The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules. A story could be about anything and could use any means and any technique at all - so long as it was effective. As a subhead to this rule, it seemed to be necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat of our story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough to enlarge it to three- or six- or ten-thousand words.

So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.

It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

She told me it wouldn't.

John Steinbeck, 1963

One year after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature

Time Travel Aboard the Mothership

Ten things I learned at yesterday's psychic fair:

1)Beware the Sandra Dee woman. She may look like the room mother for your kids, but the orb-eyed creature on her name badge should have been your first clue. She'll expound on her Earthly extraterrestrial mission and send you on your way with an I-Dream-of-Jeannie facial squeeze and a knowing stare.

2)Even the bathrooms have a mystical aura: a potent combination of flowing incense garb, residual heat from the aura photographer's bulb and the wrong end of the fru juice made from brown seaweed.

3)Scarborough Festival shirts are to psychic fairs what Skynard shirts are to monster truck pulls.

4)The only ring of Solomon I see at the base of my index finger is the inner goo of a Pop Tart from breakfast and it has nothing to do with wisdom.

5)The whites of your tarot card reader's eyes do not indicate a seizure. Her fifteen bracelets on each wrist might be interfering with a nearby electromagnetic field.

6)Even having psychic or higher-awareness skills does not redeem a man from being innocuous to details. It's nature. Just saying.

7)The compulsions I feel in this lifetime toward all things Reese's, purple and Oliver Hudson could be past-life shrapnel that didn't fully filter through the veil when I entered this life. This no doubt means I was a 1800s peanut farmer's wife, royalty, or a bartender with an astonishingly witty vernacular.

8)Something as disturbing as a short lifeline or impending health strife on the palm is still amusing in the presence of cherished friends.

9)Don't judge a psychic by a last name, but don't give him your ten bucks either. I'm sure Mr. Crooke would gift you with life's greatest secrets, but it wouldn't go down nearly as satisfying as the sangria at Pappasito's afterward.

10)The X-files Hallmark card belted out the perfect ending credits for the day. I want to believe. That the September thing will come true. That Sandra Dee will never teleport me back to her mothership.

Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain

Can I begin to express to you what a delicious time-suck Stumble Upon is? Before, it was a non-issue. Something I'd check every month or so when I remembered. Now, with the addictive button taking up real estate in my browser, it calls out to me each time I'm viewing or reading something less than entertaining. It's like having a remote control that doesn't ever land on WWE or a Telemundo soap opera you wish you could understand. And it's restored my faith in humanity's creativity.

The best part? It constantly caters to your whim. With one click of a thumbs up or down rating, not only does it make you the Great and Powerful Oz of the current selection, but shapes your interests for future stumbles.


Who wouldn't want to experience a 360 degree rock climbing experience in Spain? If you love this like I do, check out the full-screen archives. I went to the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower this morning while drinking cranberry juice in my pjs.

How about something more intellectual? Psychology quizzes to determine your Brain Sex ID? I took the test on Disgust where you observe a photo and rate its level of ICK. Tell me what that did to the self-esteem of the poor man in photo 6. Cranberry Juice rating: put it down. Seriously.

My final gem is a parody of the homeland security website. I challenge you to read through these and not have cranberry juice coming out of your nose.

A final note: When selecting your interests for Stumble Upon, be sure to click photography and art. Every ten clicks or so, you'll be treated to something truly stunning that could change the outlook of your day better than a thousand words.

Let me know what you find...

Today in life: slaying ants
Today in novel: leaving on a steam-engine train bound for Denver, 1881

Matthew

I don't believe in coincidences. Whatever you file amazing, potentially life-altering happenstances under-fate, predestination, God-I filed one yesterday. Still too fresh and incredible to share, but not unlike the one other time this has happened in my life.

His name was Matthew. You remember him. The one you grew up with in elementary school who had the eye tick everyone made fun of. He existed in a constant nervous social bubble, causing him to repeatedly stroke his thighs with his moist hands. His head seemed too large for his body, his neck too loose, like a bobble head with bad hair, but no one thing identified him as someone with a condition for which the teasing became taboo. He was just Matthew. He drank glue and ate snot and that was just him. He held a small, forgettable slot in my fifth grade memories until he moved away.

Nine years passed. I moved twelve hundred miles away to attend college. Fresh back from Europe and internalizing the enormity of the planet, its boundaries and people, I moved through a Randall's supermarket checkout late one night.

"Hey, I think I know you," the checker said. His arm stalled, whatever item I'd bought dangling forgotten over the scanner.

In an instant I knew. Not the kind of metamorposis most boys undergo-deeper voice, matured face that would render someone from the past unrecognizable. Dressed in a blue supermarket apron, he was the same boy on growth pills.

"Did you grow up in Denver?" he asked.

"Yeah, I did. You're Matthew." Genius, given his name tag, but I knew so much more about him. I remembered him sitting on the parallel bars at recess because no one invited him to play wall kick-ball. He'd sit alone at a study carol in the library instead of the seven steps littered with pillows where everyone else accumulated to read. He stuttered when he spoke up in class.

I smiled, a genuine release stemming from the incredible odds and the unbridled enthusiasm reflected from him. The vast, tiny world closed in on that express lane.

He remembered my name. First and last. His eyes, his smile, lit up like he'd stumbled upon some family reunion complete with fireworks.

"This is incredible! How are you? What are you doing here?"

"I go to school here."

"Me, too."

A Greek blond, leading a brigade of impatient customers behind me in line, snapped her gum and shoved her Zimas closer to the scanner. Matthew glanced at her, felt the rush of the moment. His words shot out rapid-fire.

"Give me your number. We can catch up sometime when I'm not swamped."

I scrawled my name and seven genuine digits across a corner he'd ripped from a paper in his apron. Something about it spelled relief for him, no longer a passing moment never to be recaptured.

His shoulders relaxed, his speech returned to casual. He uttered those three words girls loathe. "I'll call you." This time they were a comfort. What could he and I possibly have to talk about? How I never once went over to those parallel bars? How I'd never borrow a pencil or wish for one of my own back from him because I was afraid of some unknown funk residue? Did I ever once show him a shred of human decency in my own child-like way?

I bid him good-bye and left, fresh with an OMG story to tell my roommates and a lingering sense of awe at the distance and time. I tried to find meaning, because there are no coincidences.

The next night, alone in my dorm room, the phone rang. I listened to the insistent bell vibrate seven, eight rounds that night, certain it was him, but unable to understand why I wouldn't pick it up. Rings born of the same excitement we'd both been guilty of. Curiosity. A desperate need to connect. Instead, I tackled a creative writing assignment I'd been putting off. As bad as this poem is, it came fully formed that night, later published in a class anthology:

Like Him

He was the one
Who would make you laugh
When he did something wrong
Laugh, at his expense.

He was the one
The boys would shove
The girls would ignore and giggle at
The one no one wanted.

He was the one
I saw last week at a store
A thousand miles away and nine years ago
He was the one I giggled at.

He and I recognized each other
And pretended a long lost friendship had been reclaimed
He and I are near again
Much as we were back then.

He was the one who found my number
And called hours after the encounter
I still have not called him
Because they would think I was like him.

Not a proud moment, the poem or my deplorable inertness, but I did take something away from it. From that night on, I was determined that every student who set foot in my classroom would never feel what Matthew must have. On recess duty, I'd head up a kickball game with a special invite or make sure I had pressing business I needed some special hands for. An attonement, too late for Matthew.

This yesterday encounter, incredible on its own, but a complete echo of Matthew came full circle. There are no coincidences. Only fleeting pockets of meaning.

Its up to us file them.

One of 3.7 Million

If you're like me, you rapid-fire delete all those emails that circulate inboxes threatening seventeen years of bad luck for not following through. I'm not superstitious. I've been known to read my horoscope or a fortune cookie and hang onto it all day, only to find that all the inertia of "please come true, please come true" didn't come full circle. I walk a pretty fine line between being grounded and fascinated by all things paranormal.

For some reason, I'm fascinated by the birthday calculator. Not that I really needed to know I share today's special day with Tommy Chong or my predicted date of conception was August 31. Both would clearly fall into the TMI category, but I love the science of it. I can boil 4.11 ounces of water with my birthday candles this year. The moon's phase was waning gibbous the day I was born. My Native American plant is Mullein. Who isn't a better person for knowing that? Check it out.As promised, the answers to the previous post. Congrats to Marilyn for her dogged determination to correctly match up words most of us make when we sneeze.

1) Perfect. Fifty miles from civilization, and he was about to be rescued by Doris Day.
(f) eponym: a reference to a famous person who is recognized for an attribute. Instead of using a comparative word, the author substitutes the person's name for that attribute.
2) Three winged shadows eclipsed the sun, circling him in a halo as tight as chalk marks around a cadaver.
(d) simile: a comparison using "like" or "as"
3)The classic, rocket-shaped convertible crawled along the fractured road.
(c) personification: giving human qualities to objects
4) He didn't want to stop. Couldn't stop.
(i) epistrophe: repeating the last word or final phrase for emphasis.
5) Her old fashioned mannerisms, her reserved innocence, her optimism blended into the picture of a woman who'd set off in search of love and become lost along the way.
(g) anaphora: repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of three or four successive clauses or sentences or almost successive clauses or sentences
6) Two roads converged on a lost highway.
(h) backloading a sentence: restructuring the order of a sentence so the most impactful word(s) come at the end
7) What if he were a psychopath with a preoccupation for gutting women?
(a) rhetorical question: raising a question that is not answered
8) Doo-wap music blared from the car's speakers.
(e) onomatopoeia: using words that imitate the sound the word describes
9) He fished an old bus ticket from his front pocket-every number, every detail-as faded and smooth as a wish stone.
(b) amplification: repeating a word or phrase and adding more detail to emphasize a point. Restating or amplifying a concept

Even if you're not a writer, you'll soon notice these when you read and recognize these devices for what they are-an author's attempt to manipulate emotion and thought.

I'd love to hear your tidbits. Leave behind one fact about your birth date here...