Opening Lines

Hi Everyone:

          I have always loved movies. Even as a little kid growing up on the East side of Cleveland, I looked forward to going to the Saturday matinee. In those days, theaters used to entice the audience with a double feature that included at least one action film, News of the Day, Previews of the Coming Attractions, a Travel-log, numerous cartoons, and a cliff-hanging Serial. Along with my two older sisters, I went every Saturday. My sisters liked the romance films while I favored the action movie, but none of us wanted to miss the Serial. We just had to find out how the hero survived last week’s big finish.

          As they used to say at the movies, “Time Marches On.” Some things have changed, but not my love of movies. I still favor action films and even they have changed. In the past, the filmmakers first focused on the main characters, allowing viewers to identify with them and their surroundings. Do you remember “On the Waterfront?” The big fight scene where Marlon Brando defies the mob boss didn’t take place until the movie was about over. Now films open with an explosion and after fifteen minutes of non-stop action, the picture fades into back-story letting you find out how all this came about. It seems that the movie moguls have learned that they only have a few minutes to grab the public’s attention.

          The same is true of many readers. Before television, and even before the picture show, authors like Sir Walter Scott introduced their characters and setting before engulfing the reader with the novel’s action.  I believe Somerset Maugham said, ‘There are rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’

          Modern authors tend to begin their story where the action takes place. They recognize that they have about three pages, at best, to capture their reader’s interest.  Sol Stein in his excellent book, Stein on Writing, listed three goals of the opening paragraph:

1.     To excite the reader’s curiosity, preferably about a character or a relationship.

2.     To introduce a setting.

3.     To lend resonance to the story.

Do you recall reading The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens? You can probably recite the way his opening lines introduced the setting:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”   

Mark Twain was adroit at capturing the reader’s curiosity. Here are the opening lines from Roughing It : “My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor’s absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year, and the title of “Mr. Secretary,” gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. . .”

See how Leo Tolstoy gives resonance to the story, and even without mentioning  Anna Karenina, pulls us into his setting:

 “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it.”

Mario Puzo introduces readers to a character and arouses curiosity with these opening lines from The Fourth K:

“Oliver Oliphant was one hundred years old and his mind was as clear as a bell. Unfortunately for him.

It was a mind so clear, yet so subtle, that while breaking a great many moral laws, it had washed his conscience clean. A mind so cunning that Oliver Oliphant had never fallen into the almost inevitable traps of everyday life: he had never married, never run for political office and never had a friend he trusted absolutely.”

If that didn’t grab you how about this from Mitch Albom’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie:

“The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience.”

Authors try to entice the reader to invest time in taking a journey. The writer who becomes so enamored of his prose that he waits until the second or third chapter to inject conflict, or a goal, risks losing his readers before they get to page three.

Here are the opening lines from my novel, Path to a Pardon, that revolves around stolen diamonds:

“In the early hours of a cool mid-October morning, while Miami slumbered under dark skies, they drove the route to the diamond exchange for the last time. The downtown streets emitted the quiet sounds of a hospital zone.

Gus checked his watch as they circled the block and then turned into the little alley behind the building on Flagler Street.”

My detective novel, Palm Beach Style, begins with this dialogue:

“I tell you, Frankie, it ain’t right. It shouldn’t be no even split. I know this thing was Pike’s idea and them other two are gonna help guard the guy, but where are they? We’re out here making the damn snatch for a lousy twenty percent of the take. Right?”

You are invited to learn more about my novels by going to: www.joshswritingroom.com

Hi Everyone:
     It is finally done. After weeks of frustration, I finally managed to upload my short story,
The Man in the Ironed Suit.  THERE IS NO CHARGE FOR READING.  Just go to my website at: www.joshswritingroom.com and click on short stories. 

Do I just start writing?

Do I just start writing?

Hi Everyone:

          I hope you keep checkingt my website because as soon as I figure out how to create and upload a PDF file I intend to post a very special short story. It’s one of my favorites; I wrote it to help celebrate the holiday season. It’s called The Man in the Ironed Suit. Just go to the Short Story page at http://joshswritingroom.com

 

Perhaps you have an idea for a story; it’s because of something you experienced, or it’s just an idea that came to you as you were completing a household chore. You say to yourself, gee, this would make a darn good story.

Perhaps you relate it to a friend or to your spouse and the reaction you get is,

          “Yeah, you’re right; it’s a good idea, why don’t you write it?”

          You open your big mouth and say, “Maybe I will.”  

          You are hooked and you think, I can do that, but what do I do first? Do I just start writing my story? Don’t I need to write an outline or something?

          The answer to these questions plagues a lot of writers. The quick answer is YES. Both ways work. It is really up to you.

 Either way, you will need to create a beginning, middle, and end. Most writers, who develop a story without an outline, do at least; have a strong idea of its beginning and a tentative ending. As they create the story and its main characters, and thrust them into the conflict they envision, they often ask themselves, what’s the worst thing that can happen now? Creating that horrendous event, and immersing characters in it, may propel the story in unexpected directions. This is exciting and perfectly okay as long as it moves the story forward. Authors, who only know the beginning and end, frequently rely on frequent crucial events to help bridge the tricky middle ground of their story. I suspect that a lot of stories that never get finished are gathering dust because the writer failed to ask and act on the answer to that critical question; what’s the worst thing that can happen now?

You may decide that you will be more comfortable writing your story if you first develop an outline. If you take the time to develop the story with most of its twists and turns from exciting beginning to climactic end, you will probably avoid those tricky middle sections. It may take weeks to outline a novel and some parts of it may be sketchy, but when you finish you will have a roadmap to use in guiding you from one end of the story to the other, thus avoiding writer’s block.

 You still need to ask yourself the same critical question as shown above. And if you intend to write a mystery or a story with mysterious circumstances, as you are about to reveal a clue, ask yourself; does my reader need to know this now?

I doubt that Charles Dickens or Mark Twain ever wrote an outline but I once heard that Mario Puzo had a huge message board that he used to diagram the structure of his mafia gangs for The Godfather. I think a large number of modern writers plot out their stories. Write an outline, use three by five index cards, make diagrams, do whatever works. I’ve tried it both ways. For me, storytelling is easier and quicker with the outline, but it’s much more fun to write by the seat of my pants.

Don’t worry about it—just write it. The real art of writing is in the re-write. As a character states in my recent novel, Alex—Peanut Butter—And Me, “Remember, you can always edit crap, but you can’t edit a blank page.”

Mark Twain, once said; “There are few stories that have anything superlatively good in them except the idea—and that is always bettered by transplanting.”

 

 

 

Ideas for a story

Hi Everyone:

          I have spent over fifteen years pursuing the art of writing, much of that time in the company of other writers. It seems to me that one of the most frequently asked question by those thinking about joining us is; “Where do you get your story ideas?”

          In answering that, I’m tempted to repeat what Edison once said when asked a similar question about the source of ideas for his many inventions, from the ethereal. Truly, ideas for stories are everywhere. They exist in our daily routines. You take your car in for repair and overhear an argument. You turn on the TV and a news report catches your ear. You look at the sky and see changing cloud formations. You serve your church, your community, your country and observe an incident that makes you wonder. You watch the Olympics and see a runner with no feet, or pick up an old newspaper, read a passage in your Bible, or a story from mythology. Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real that you wanted to write it down before it vanished?

          Here is how I got the idea that culminated in my first novel, Path to a Pardon. A TV newscaster reported that Governor George W. Bush had a problem. DNA proved that a man doing time in a Texas prison was not guilty. It posed a big question, would the Governor, who was considering a run for the presidency, free the man? His father, George H.W. Bush, had heavily criticized Governor Michael Dukakis back in 1988 for granting a temporary release to Willy Horton, a murderer. Horton committed rape while on furlough.

 I thought; if you were politically inclined and had a friend in prison for a crime you didn’t think he committed, why not run for governor and pardon him. I soon found out it’s not that simple. It led to lots of twists and turns when I wrote the novel, Path to a Pardon. To learn more about it, please go to novels on my website at:      http://joshswritingroom.com

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time said; “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”