One of those wavelets has been going around the Net. At least, a week or so ago, when I was writing up some thoughts on beginnings that work for me and don't, others were thinking along the same lines.

coneycat was talking about it here, mentioning in particular a riff by Patricia Wrede here where she talks about implied promises, and gaining reader ( Read more... )

I think I’ve seen now half a dozen postings by people ruminating about openings of stories and books. Openings are such a juggling act--you want to get the reader hooked, not bored. You want them to see everything and understand everything, but you don’t want to confuse them. You want a brisk pace, but there is so much of this world to tell--and ( Read more... )

Discussion going on begun by greengolux here and continued by coalescent hereThis is something I was talking extensively about with a small group of writers earlier in the year. Our context was big novels, but the conversation here can cover many areas--as indeed it does. Jane Austen comes up as a good example. There are some readers for whom the work of reading ( Read more... )

I don’t know how useful or even how interesting this exercise is; I suspect finally that everyone’s reading protocols are so different that it’s a crapshoot trying to define what might hook a general readership ( Read more... )

A tired fumble on openings and discussion of same in this venue with the knowledge that authors of discussed works might be present:
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Yeah, I know this subject has come up before, but (at least for me) in a slightly different form. Maybe it’s just tedious for others, which is why I will cut after this sentence, but I at least find I need to look at certain topics from as many angles as I can to try to comprehend them-and then maybe use whatever it is I think I’ve learned.
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My reward over the past couple of days has been rereading Sorcery and Cecelia in preparation for reading The Grand Tour. I have also been thinking about openings. One of the things I wanted to do was take a look at a few books that others might have read and loved, to track hooks and nets: hook being the obvious one, some image, sentence, or idea ( Read more... )

I actually had two, count them two, excellent writing conversations within the past twenty-four hours. One by phone, the other by the more usual method in my isolation: e-mail.

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I trundled out to the patio at six, as usual, to water my plants. As I stood there with the hose running a hummingbird darted near, up, to the side. I stayed very still, only the water flowing from the hose, as the hummer jinked nearer and nearer, then suddenly zipped past my neck, its wings burring ( Read more... )