The Opening Hook by Jim Hill

I’m teaching a picture book writing class at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, and it’s been fascinating exploring the connections between middle grade novels and picture books. How do you compare a five-hundred-word story to a thirty-thousand-word-plus novel? One way is to look at the opening.

Among the many books I’m drawing from for lessons is Ann Whitford Paul’s Writing Picture Books. She talks about the “story question” of a book, an idea I think of as the character’s need and theme bundled up together. Getting the reader involved with the character’s need is imperative from the get go, otherwise why will she turn the page? So, how do you do that? What’s the hook?

At the 2014 NESCBWI conference, Jo Knowles presented a fantastic workshop on baiting the hook, “Let’s Go On a Journey.” She proposed a series of questions that every book opening should answer:

• Who is the main character?
• What do you know about him/her? How?
• What is happening?
• Is there a conflict? What is it?
• What is the overall emotion conveyed?
• Would you keep reading? Why/why not?

With these questions in mind, I’ve been looking at my work-in-progress and published books to see how well Jo’s questions are addressed. The opening of Up & Down (Philomel, 2010) by Oliver Jeffers makes for an excellent example.

Up & Down features two characters (the Boy and the Penguin) established in Lost & Found (Philomel, 2005). Lost & Found can be described as “a wonderful story about the meaning of loneliness and the importance of friendship.” Up & Down continues that theme by looking at the importance of individual growth within a relationship.

It opens with a spread that establishes the relationship between the Boy and the Penguin with the text:
“Once there were two friends…”

The second spread continues:
“who always did everything together. Until the day the penguin decided there was something important he wanted to do by himself…”

The third spread takes the reader inside the head of the Penguin so that she can see his dream:
“…fly!”

Run that opening through the magic of Jo’s Questions and you’ll see they’re all answered. And unless you’re the Grinch, pre heart-expansion, you want to read on. Now, in a middle-grade novel you’re more likely to hit these points within the first two pages. The brevity of text and the interplay with the pictures allows Jeffers to breathe space into the opening. And yet, there’s a ton of story in there that reveals the tone, the protagonist, the need, and addresses Anne Whitford Paul’s “story question.”

Now it’s your turn. Pull a book off the shelf, and give it a close read. How does it compare? Make notes. Next, take a look at your draft and do the same. You might find the opening needs a little revision love–I know mine did.

Un-Walk-Away-Able

A woman in my book club claims she has finished every book she has ever started.  It's a personality tick of hers. She has to know what happens. It doesn't matter how bad the writing is or how uninteresting the story, she will slog through hundreds of tedious pages until she gets to the very end.

I must confess: I don't have that type of dedication. If a book doesn't grab me within the first four or five chapters—okay, sometimes even within the first one or two—I'm outta there. Often it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. Sometimes I just don't like or connect with the main character early on. Sometimes the storyline just isn't my cup of tea. And, okay, sometimes it is the writing. Let's face it, we all have certain writing styles we like better than others.

I recently started a new release that came highly recommended by friends and had strong online reviews. But it was a genre I don't typically read—science fiction—and I really struggled through the first fifty pages or so. Several times I nearly walked away from the book altogether. Generally, I don't believe in sticking with a book you're not enjoying. Time is precious. We all have other things we could be doing—spending time with family, working on books of our own, reading something we actually do like. Why waste your time on a book that just isn't speaking to you?

As writers, I think we need to keep in mind that the first several chapters are crucial. A slow or uninteresting beginning or a story that takes too long to take off can be a deal breaker. I've heard some people describe a book by saying, "Well, it gets really good if you stick with it about ten chapters" or "about a hundred pages or so." In my mind, that's a problem. Because let's face it, many readers (and editors and agents) aren't going to hang around that long. And especially in middle grade, where attention spans can be a bit tenuous, a story needs to snag readers pretty quickly. This, of course, is the reasoning behind the often-heard advice that a book should start as close in time as possible to the main action of the plot, to avoid overly long beginnings or unnecessary tangents. Other good techniques for those early pages: start with a bang (or a shock), offer up a particularly colorful or intriguing or amusing character or voice, raise a mystery or question that compels the audience to read onward for answers. The goal is to create a story that the reader will find it very hard to walk away from.

Of course, sometimes I have to eat my own words. That book I was struggling through? Around page 65, it gets really good. Some characters come together who have wonderful interaction and chemistry, and the action picks up considerably. I flipped page after page and flew through the rest of the book.

Okay, I guess some books are worth sticking with until the end :)

At what point do you walk away from a book? And what makes you do so?

-Dawn Lairamore

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…

The deadline is fast approaching for one of my favorite writing contests of all time—the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. You all know who Edward George Bulwer-Lytton is. Yes, you do!! Even if you don't realize you do. Who hasn't heard the famous line, "It was a dark and stormy night"? This is the opening line of Mr. Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel, PAUL CLIFFORD. Well, it's actually part of the opening line. The full line is:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Somehow, somewhere in time, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton's stormy opener became the poster child for bad, cliched opening lines, a stigma I think is perhaps rather a little unfair, seeing as he also coined the poetic and popular "the pen is mightier than the sword," among other well-known adages. Still, in tribute to Bulwer-Lytton's (in)famous opening sentence, Professor Scott Rice of the San Jose University English Department hosts the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which the competition's website describes as "a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."

The contest, nearly 30 years running, has produced some absolute whoppers of opening lines. Here's a sampling:

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.

--Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)

She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.

--Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington (1993 Winner)

Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy's girlfriend in an Italian restaurant he said to the waiter, "Hold the spumoni--I'm going to follow the chick an' catch a Tory."

--John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas (1995 Winner)

Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life.

--Dr. David Chuter, Kingston, Surrey, England (1999 Winner)

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

--Mariann Simms, Wetumpka, Alabama (2003 Winner)

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blown’ off Nantucket Sound from nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jonesw be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

--David McKenzie, Federal Way, Washington (2009 Winner)

The deadline for entries is April 15, which their website is quick to point out is "a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories." But even if you're not interested in entering, I strongly recommend you spend some time reading over the opening lines of past winners at the contest's website (click on "Lyttony of Grand Prize Winners"), for both a good laugh and some great examples of truly creative writing. Here, too, is the line-up of 2011 winners.

And yes, I suppose there is a lesson in all this, about the importance of a really fabulous opening line. Personally, I love opening lines that grab you in some way, whether they're really gripping, surprising, or raise an intriguing question that compels you to read further for answers. Remember, your opening line sets the tone for everything that follows—the entire book—and it can really grab readers—or really put them off. So, it's probably worth investing a little extra time to make sure it has the desired effect. :)

-Dawn Lairamore

photo credit: Alphafish DMPaine via photopin cc

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