posted
Survivor made this comment in a recent post:
quote:I'll grant that many of the best books don't have strong openings, but almost none of those books are fiction, strictly speaking. Really good fiction books always have strong openings.
I second that opinion and wanted to offer an example. Here's the opening line of "His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novik:
quote:The deck of the French ship was slippery with blood, heaving in the choppy sea; a stroke might as easily bring down the man making it as the intended target.
We get complaints all the time that 13 lines isn't enough. Yet this author has managed to convey a wealth of details in a single line. We learn: the setting is on a ship at sea, the weather is bad, a chaotic combat is happening, there are wounded, and the combatants on one side are French. Not a bad job of communicating in the first 30 words.
A strong opening is:
1) CLEAR - We understand what is going on. There are no confusing, vague references to things unexplained.
2) CONCISE - The description isn't overdone. Saying the deck is slippery with blood is sufficient. I don't need flowery, irrelevant details describing the size of the pool of blood, the color, the viscosity.
3) RELEVANT - Every word counts and contributes to the plot.
4) TENSION - Some sense of interest or urgency comes across. It makes the reader want to know more.
This business of tension and relevancy are particularly important, I think. By pruning away the non-essential details, the reader can more clearly focus on the plot.
This sort of strong opening apparently worked well for Naomi Novik, who is a relatively new writer. As a side note: The movie rights to "His Majesty's Dragon" were bought in Sept. 2006 by director Peter Jackson. Think "Napoleonic era British and French armies engaged in aerial combat using dragons."
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited November 05, 2006).]
posted
I'm trying to find a way to disagree with what you've said but the truth is that a strong opening tends to predict strong story telling abilities in general.
The only way can think to argue is to say that not EVERY book with a good opening is good and not EVERY opening without one is bad. But the correlation is strong enough that I, for one, won't even give a novel more than a few pages to tweak my interests before I put it down. Life's too short.
It's hard. I've spent the past week trying to come up with the perfect opening paragraph for a new draft of an old novel I'm working on. I keep thinking of moving past it and writing the rest of the chapter and the rest of the book, but something keeps stopipng me: FOUNDATION. The beginning is the foundation atop which the rest of the novel lies. You can't build a house on sand.
Alternatley, I keep thinking of writing some of the okay openings I've come up with and calling it good enough. After all, the event at the end of chapter 1 is is very good (even if I do say so mysel) and should hook people into reading the whole book -- but who's going to read until the end of chapter 1 if the begining doesn't grab them?
No, as frustrating as it is, I canno and will not argue. The opening has to sing. It is the most important part.
posted
I agree that a strong opening is vital, but it's important to remember that such an opening has to be backed by a decent plot and good writing all the way through.
Lately people have been emphasizing beginnings so much that I've personally been really frustrated with story after story or novel after novel that started out really well, and quickly degenerated into something that didn't meet the promise implicit in the opening.
In other words, while, yes, your opening needs to make an impact, make sure it still is appropriate to the feel of the rest of the novel. If you are writing a slow, tranquil, beautiful tale, don't start with something frenetic and action packed just to hook readers. But make sure your tranquil beginning is so breath-taking that people want to read on.
I don't know how many times in the past year or so I've bought a book on the strength of a fine opening only to find that the rest of the story -- past the first chapter is usually the case -- is very poor work indeed. What REALLY infuriates me is when the opening has nothing to do with the story arc of the the rest of the novel! Not as in a prologue sense, but as in the mc of the opening never appears again and what he does has no bearing on the rest of the story.
posted
His Majesty's Dragon was an excellent first novel, and Novik has received an amazing amount of support from her publisher for it and its sequels. I think a lot of that is due to the strength of the opening, the first few chapters, and the attractive central idea.
posted
That's the worst opening I've read in ages. I don't know what's happening, why or why I should care. I don't know if 'm on the french ship or on another ship looking at the french ship and we don't even have a POV charatcer yet. That line about the sword is ambiguous. Does she mean the swordsman will slip or stab himself or both? How can it be slick with blood and not be littered with bodies which will be just as much of a trip/slip hazard. Why is a deck slick with blood worse than one slick with water? Surely they're trained to fight in slippery conditions, after all theyre' sailors/pirates/actually,I don't know what they... that's another problem.
(Just kidding, someone's gotta be contrary... don't they? Please love me. )
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited November 05, 2006).]
posted
Actually, following on from last post, (which was a joke BTW) critiques that reflect good judgement are great but many critiques are really exercises in fault finding. If you read an opening that you think is great as it is-- like Elan did above -- you should be prepared to say so.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited November 06, 2006).]
posted
I agree, Hoptoad. Too many times I think that critiquers are trying so hard to find something wrong, that they tell, in detail, what is wrong with the opening, only to say later that they would read on, or that they liked it. If an opening makes a reader read on, then it does what it's supposed to, so why not just say something like, 'it works for me. I'd read on' in a critique. It seems contridictary to suggest fixing an opening that worked for the critiquer.
I've seen critiques like that here on F&F from time to time, as well as experienced a critique myself (not from here at Hatrack, BTW) where a critiquer went so far as to tear apart, in detail, each individual sentence of a six sentence opening, only to say at the end, 'great opening'. All I could think was 'huh'?
posted
Usually when I follow up suggestions for change with the line, "I would read on" or a similiar line (I usually try to respond with hooked I am or how interested I am in the story rather than whether or not I would read on.) I don't mean that I think it is of publishable quality and that if I saw it in PRINT I would read on, only that it's not awful and I would be willing, as a critiquer, to read on if I have some time. I can see where you might think it was a contradiction but I take all such contradictions to mean just what I mean by them.
And if I did see something in F&F that I thought was fine the way it was I would say so and mean it. The trouble is, almost nothing that comes through F&F is, IMHO, fine the way it is.
For the record, and NOT JOKING, I didn't like the opening sentence of His Majesty's Dragons all that much. Everyone is going to have his or her own opinion and that is important to keep in mind, but in MY opinion this sentence doesn't show conflict or tension nearly as much as it shows a cinematic bird's eye view of a ship. I've also read it 4 times now and I still don't know what he means by "the men making it." Maybe I'm just dense.
To be fair to His Majesty's Dragon, I would not stop reading after just one sentence. A first sentence would have to be pretty bad for me not to give it a few paragraphs to hook me. I've seen first sentences that work as their own hook but I think that's an awful lot of pressure to put on one sentence.
I'm not saying that everyone here is a great critiquer but everyone here is entitled to his or her own opinion and they should feel free to give those opinions no matter what. I would hate for people to feel intimidated into holding back because someone convinced them that an okay opening that pretty much made them want to keep reading was "good enough" to shut their mouth and not say anything else. "Good enough" can be better. It's up to the writer to learn what to do with the feedback and decide if they should use it.
posted
I'm not saying that people shouldn't comment, in fact, quite the contrary. I appreciate criticism and take it for what it is, mostly one person's opinion. The writer is perfectly free to discard or take what they feel is important from any critique, and I would be the last person to expect people not to comment on what they think, or to hold back for any reason.
It's just that I sometimes get confused by a critique and what the critiquer was getting at. It seems that sometimes there would be no way that the critiquer would read on, considering all of their negative comments, but some still say that it's a good opening. I've no doubt done it myself, though I do try to avoid it.
I think most of it is a communication issue. What the critiquer is really trying to communicate is that it's not a bad opening, but in their opinion, it would be better, or stronger, if some things were addressed, or changed. This may be the intention, but it just doesn't come across that way from the words in the critique, making it more difficult to apply what the critiquer is trying to communicate. I know first hand how easy it is to write what you think, trying to make the meaning clear, only to have it taken differently by a reader. Writen language can be construed in many different ways, some good, and some bad, but it's all in the intrepretation of the person doing the reading.
For the most part, I see most people here doing a lot of critiques that do try to communicate exactly whether they feel an opening is weak or strong, regardless of whether they'd read on or not, and why they think a sentence or idea might be better phrased. The ones I wonder about are the ones where that's just not quite clear enough.
posted
Appropos to this discussion, here's something I ran across in a recent (expensive) collection of material from the late and lamented Spy magazine:
quote:Liz Smith's Blurb-o-Mat: The Annotated Edition
"I read the first sentence of this book, threw up my hands, and then stayed up all night to finish."---Liz on Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs, as quoted in the recently published paperback edition.
"Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murders, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth."---the first sentence of The Silence of the Lambs
posted
I don't think that qualifies as an all around strong ending. It just lets you know if you've found "your kind" of book. In my case, it lets me know I've found "not my kind" of book. What would you say is good about it? I suppose the "half-buried" is a good bit of color.
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posted
It tells you right away that the story is going to be about FBI agents hunting down serial killers by figuring out their psychology. If you don't want to read about that sort of thing, you don't want to read Silence of the Lambs.
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posted
Ah, but is it a strong enough sentence to make just about anybody "throw up [their] hands, and then stay up all night to finish"? Or maybe just Liz Smith.
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Even if I had eaten my own hands, I doubt that sentence would be strong enough to make me throw them up.
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They may not have been her own hands, she might have bought them. Still, it explains her interest. And raises the question of what she spent all night finishing.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited November 08, 2006).]
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I do agree that that line works better than anything that would have featured "Clarise [verb] [direct object] [adverb]..." It does challenge the idea that the POV character is where to start. Or is the rule only to start a character story with the POV character? Is the setting not, in some sense, a character in a story?
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posted
I think it was an opinion I formed after going through all my OSC novels and seeing that the first word in each book was the name of a POV character. If you don't count the quips at the tops of chapters in the Enderverse books.
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posted
That kind of opening does work best for character stories, which Card prefers. Silence of the Lambs is more of a milieu story, "Journey into the Minds of Serial Killers and the People who Want to Catch them" sort of thing. It's not about the main character as a person, it's about her travels in the land of "humans are meat and leather" thinking.
That said, I think that most stories could benefit from a closer focus on the character aspect. The most serious flaws in otherwise well-written works usually tend to come down to a lack of attention to characterization.
quote: It's just that I sometimes get confused by a critique and what the critiquer was getting at. It seems that sometimes there would be no way that the critiquer would read on, considering all of their negative comments, but some still say that it's a good opening. I've no doubt done it myself, though I do try to avoid it.
If you don't understand the critique, it would be perfectly acceptable IMO to ask the person what they were trying to say.
A strong opening for me is one that:
1) Is clear; 2) Flows well; 3) Has something different or interesting in it. Something that makes me wonder what happens next; and 4) Someone/ something to care about or hate.
A River Runs Through It's opening would have had several tough comments in F&F because it is all exposition. Beautiful exposition, but still exposition. River is, in part, a Milieu story from Christine's MICE. But it is a strong opening, despite not meeting what a lot of people here would want to see, because it does set the stage so wonderfully.
I met the agent who represented Naomni Novik. She sold His Majesty's Dragon as a three book deal for a first time novelist because she fell in love with the characters and expected readers to as well. The first line works for me because it puts me immediately THERE. I know where I am (on a French ship during a storm or rough sea) and what's happening (the French ship is under attack). The images are wonderful. I will trust the author to fill in the rest of the details in the next few lines because the writing is so strong in the first line. Assuming the next lines give me someone to care about or hate, I'l hooked.
Those four things I'm looking for in a strong opening hold true for shorts or novels for me. I'm not upset if I don't meet the MC in the first few lines. I don't even mind that the conflict isn't hinted at for a novel especially if the story is a "life interrupted" type one.
One of the many benefits of feedback is you can think you have been clear and then someone says "you are witholding." It just happened on one of my posts. So it gave me the opportunity to see the section from another perspective and why that person/ those people felt that infomation was withheld when I thought I had just told them.
posted
kings_falcon, you are correct--critiques do not have to be a one-way process. Questions may be asked back and forth between author and critiquer, at least, if both are reasonable about it. The exception to this would be where the critiquer completely missed the point of the story (or opening) or are not at a skill level to be of much help. In thoses cases, I would have to say that asking for more explaination would be a useless exercise.
Another reason not to ask is when the author has no intention of taking the critiquer's answers seriously. Then it wastes the time of both the author and the critiquer.
posted
Exactly, most people who respond to requests for crits are genuinely trying to help. Even if thier method of helping doesn't work for you or in your HO you think you are the better writer, so what? They cared enough to try to help.
Edit = Move the balance of response to the Pet Peeve posting as it fit better there.
[This message has been edited by kings_falcon (edited November 09, 2006).]
posted
A strong opening must be (my thought) one that rouses some emotion in the reader. Curiosity is a strong, easy one, but other emotions work, also. Pleasure. Body memory (of the reader's). Stuff like that.
I have read lots of openings that hooked me with a sort of philosphical discussion (I call them "riffs) of something.
I wish it were as easy as "start with the character."
Sometimes using a topic that exemplifies some major aspect of the story words as a hook. Sometimes a hint of something exciting/interesting that is going to happen but is not in the first page/chapter works.
It all goes back to rousing some emotion in the reader.
The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him. -- I think that was the opening line of a short story by Fletcher Pratt in the way back long ago. I remember going to conventions back in the 70's and playing a game of "first lines" late into the night. The doorknob was one that I never forgot though I never did find the story that followed.
Forsythe's THE FIST OF GOD Opening: The man with ten mintues left to live was laughing.
Now, since I'm a murder myster/thriller fan, that opening drew me in with CURIOSITY.
Hmmm...there are't all that many single lines...the 13 lines is a better way to address this, perhaps.
But, when you're looking at such, and it's successful, why? What emotion has it roused to draw you into the story?
Curiosity is a big one. Writers like Thomas Burnett Swann used really lyrical prose -- which took more than one line to really work, but which still opened without a clunker of a sentence.
Anybody else have openings that roused noticeable emotions?
[This message has been edited by arriki (edited November 10, 2006).]
posted
I might add that I was not suggesting that the first sentence is the sum of what makes a strong opening. I was saying that the whiners who gripe that 13 lines aren't enough to create a strong opening are wrong; and in evidence I gave an opening first sentence I felt was particularly strong.
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posted
I thought I'd mention a new blog I'm following at Live Journal. Only published authors may post, but lurkers are invited to read. The community is made up mostly of fantasy authors, lots of urban fantasy. Fittingly, the community is called Fangs, Fur, and Fey. http://community.livejournal.com/fangs_fur_fey/
Right now there's a discussion on strong openings, and first lines. The examples given are interesting, particularly for those of us writing fantasy.
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someone's gotta be contrary... don't they? Please love me. 
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