I saw a reference to a "Free Paragraph" in the "Introductions are in order" discussion. Can someone give me an idea what that is?

This means that you can violate your PoV, take your narrative voice a little more casually, and take some liberties with information dumping (setting establishment). Be careful not to alienate your audience however.

The first paragraph is free.

It is definitly a tricky feat to balance both.

Some people will exploit the freedoms of the first paragraph to facilitate the hook. This works when the concept/idea in the story would be interesting to read about. This is particularly used when the first paragraph will summarize the rest of ths story.

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The day I discovered that I could read the minds...

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This means that you can use any POV, person, milieu, or even language you like, because the reader hasn't had any time to develop expectations about what you will or won't do in that first paragraph. When we start reading your first paragraph, we're not in a position to say you're doing anything wrong because we have no idea what you're trying to do.

The first paragraph is not free in most of the senses that people often think of when they say "free". You get only one first paragraph. Once you use it, it's gone. So it isn't "free" in the sense of costing you nothing to use. It also isn't free in the sense of being a chance to do whatever you like without any consequences. The only way for any paragraph you write to be free of any consequences is if you never allow that paragraph to see print. And a first paragraph is going to have great impact on the rest of the story, frequently it is all of your story that anyone will read. Certainly very few people will read your story without having formed an opinion based on that first paragraph.

I think we only get into trouble with all these rules; show or tell, first five pages, thirteen lines, free paragraph, etc, when we let them intefere with the story we want to tell. I think we should view them as tools or techniques to get the story told, and I think we should try to learn how to use them as such.

I have successfully driven a nail with a pair of channel locks when there wasn't room for a hammer. My goal wasn't to use the proper tool, my goal was to drive the nail. However, if you want to drive nails, you'd best know how to use a hammer.

(Edited to fit your screen.)

"Rule Disease"

Apparently Rule Disease is very contagious, as everone here has got it or is in the process of catching it. Luckily, I must be immune because I am able to read any post I like and show no symptoms of it.

But don't worry, faithful writing community, for I have a cure! My cure is very simple, too: Write the story the way the story is best written.

I repeat: "Write the story the way the story is best written."

Ignore the "hook" in the first thirteen lines. Ignore the free paragraph. Ignore conventional methods of plot construction, character introduction, paragraph formation, and whatever else it is that you keep constantly in mind while writing, and just write the story.

I'm not saying to flout every conventional writing method and attempt to rewrite Finnegan's Wake, because that is just another way to conform, which is what I'm telling you to avoid.

Just write what the story naturally demands, in the way the story naturally demands it. Write the story the way the story is best written.

In doing so, you probably will follow a lot of those "rules" and "conventions," because those "rules" and "conventions" are mostly underlying principles of good writing, and will appear without you even realizing it.

Take this advice with a grain of salt, however, for I have never published a single thing, and most of you probably have. I'm just stating my opinion, which is based on an insignificant 18 years of reading and writing experience.

I think that beginning writers should become intimately familiar with the rules -- more -- I think they should become intimatley familiar with the REASONS for the rules. What effect does it have on the reader when there is nothing to grab them in the first few paragraphs? What will the reader do with a book written almost entirely in the passive voice? What kind of effect does an unsympathetic character have on the reader?

After that, you should let all this information flow to the back of your mind and write the story with the rules in your SUBconscious mind as you refine them to suit your own needs. You will then be able to break any rule, knowing the price, knowing whether or not your story has the resources to pay that price, and knowing how to gain more emotional resources.

Simply ignoring the rules and telling the story the way it needs to be told is not meaningful or useful advice since most beginning writers have no idea how the story needs to be told. Very few people are natural storytllers. Even writing and storytelling talent can be improved through practice and technique.

Isaac Luke said:
"Just write what the story naturally demands, in the way the story naturally demands it. Write the story the way the story is best written.

In doing so, you probably will follow a lot of those "rules" and "conventions," because those "rules" and "conventions" are mostly underlying principles of good writing, and will appear without you even realizing it."

You invalidate your own argument by saying this. To echo Christine: You can't follow those rules and conventions "without even realizing it" if they are not in your brain to begin with. You have to put them there. How? By learning about them, discussing them, evaluating your existing work against them, and above all, practicing them. Eventually they work their way into the permanent subconscious.

To succeed at "writ[ing] the story the way the story is best written" without ever learning the "rules" of good writing and "conventions" of what readers will read would be akin to the monkeys at typewriters producing Shakespeare: a very unlikely coincidence.

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You, as a writer, must know the rules before you can know how to break them properly.

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This is probably some of the best advice on writing that I think a new writer can recieve. This is exactly what I was told by my sixth grade english teacher, and it has helped me ever since. If you don't know the rules, or know when the rules can or cannot be broken, writing with your heart will likely churn out a product that you aren't pleased with. When I first started writing, I tended to use a lot of passive voice, and so my writing sounded weak and uninteresting. It's still a nasty habit, but infinitely better than before.

As I said in my last post, if you don't have the technique you can't make a souffle even with a good recipe. And technique is something you have to learn. Trial and error is one way, if you are immortal. A better, quicker way is to lean on the experience of the 6 or 7 millenia of the written word. I hope to learn from those that have a technique.

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If a lumberjack tells you to always watch for kickback when using a chain saw, that's not really a rule. It's just a way to avoid a too common mistake.

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I don't always see a need for paragraph 1 to violate POV. But sometimes there just seems to be no other way to get in the info that's needed for the narrative. I wouldn't want to use it for irrelevant info that wouldn't draw the reader in! But if I need to tell you that it's 2586, we're 25 miles underground on Mars, and MC is a three-headed rebel against invaders from the 5th dimension, that almost *has* to violate POV, because MC is unlikely to be thinking to himself, "Gee, it's 2586, I'm 25 miles underground on Mars..." You can work it in, bit by bit, with the reader forming and discarding images as he gets more info, but why torture him?

Whenever I post a 13-line beginning for this story, almost everyone says I'm not giving enough information about what's happening, or as Survivor put it "What's hanging over this guy's head." The problem is that what's hanging over this guy's head is a world climate catastrophe, and it needs more explanation than 13 lines. I had hoped to set it up by letting the reader listen in to a status report he is to give.

More importantly, the climate crisis is just a backdrop or a subplot that is a necessary precondition to the main plot, which our hero learns about later. My beginning is intended only to set the scene so that MC can discover the evil Dr. Evil's evil scheme. I find, however, that when I set the scene, I don't set the hook.

My MC really isn't that conflicted yet. He's a little upset about the report he's about to give, but what's really got him upset has everyone else upset, too.

If I move ahead to the point when he discovers the villain's dastardly plans, then I'm still left with the reader not understanding the world crisis. Again, that crisis is the only explantion for the bad guy's plot.

"...the first paragraph is free. That is, the first paragraph of a story does not have to be in the same voice or mood or tone as the rest of the work. The first paragraph is important for setting the scene, for giving vital information that allows what follows to make sense."

http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-10-29.shtml
Para. beginning "But what is the "opening"?"

http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-11-17.shtml
Para. beginning "1. The Life Interrupted"

http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/lesson20.shtml
Para. beginning "The only exception to this is the "key information.""

I know he also talks about it in his books.

I think the real point of the first paragraph is this: If your POV character is a four-headed lizard living under a lake then you should probably just say so in the first paragraph to set the scene and be done with it. This information is likely to come up in POV later on, as this four headed lizard wouldn't think of his heads or his scales or the fact that he lives under a lake as worthy of note.

This thread might help you: http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002662.html

There are a lot of good points made in that thread. One of them is that, contrary to popular assumption, you don't have to get at the main plot or subplot in the first 13. Just some kind of tension that is real to the character and brings us in.

Look at Seventh Son. The tension in the beginning is Little Peggy's determination to get all the eggs and her fear of the chicken Bloody Mary. Does that get at the whole huge central plot? Certainly not. But it is "what's hanging over her head" at that moment.

EDIT for a conjunction substitution.

The climate problem turns out to be insoluble. The real conflict is caused by a good man's bad reaction to that prognosis.

I'm going to give this a lot more thought before I go any farther, but right now, I'm thinking of setting the scene with a "free paragraph" and immediately going into, not the full blown plot, but MC's discovery of a plot by someone. He'll unravel the full extent of it as the story unfolds.

All comments and criticisms are not only welcome but eagerly sought.

(Edited for time dilation)

A great example of this is in the novel A GARDEN OF VIPERS by Jack Kerley.

It opens with a vivid description of a rainstorm (setting) and then a little humorous exchange between the MC and his parner (police detectives) sitting in a car waiting out the storm. That done, the radio comes on and sends them to a murder site and the story rolls on.

I bought the book because the MC and his partner sounded like people I might want to hang out with for several hundred pages. I read a little ways and got interested...and bought.

There are lots of techniques for sucking the reader into the story. An intriguing idea. Characters you want to hang out with. And so on.

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited August 25, 2006).]

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Just as our sense of perspective allows us to understand that an object appears larger because it is closer, so an understanding of perspective allows us to show that an object is closer by making it appear larger.

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For example, my current WIP is supposed to be humorous. (I think it is, anyway.) Many of my chapters open with some clever (I think ) omniscient exposition about the state of the universe or the story. I usually do it when I switch POV (sort of a zoom-in to the character's head), but not always.