McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Beginnings
Jon Crenshaw:
--- Quote from: Mickey Finn on June 27, 2006, 09:48:02 PM ---Hell, there's been many, many deaths attributed to mistranslations of holy books.
--- End quote ---
Hmm...mistranslations, or "creative interpretation to impose one's own shortcomings/neuroses/psychoses" on the minds of others?
Power. Corruption
Absolute Power. Yada, yada yada. ;)
weever:
Conversely, have you ever been hooked by the first line or page only to be disappointed in the rest of the book? That is, if you took time to finish it.
Mickey Finn:
I've had that happen with movie previews, does that count?
How's this for an dual opening:
--- Quote ---The book sits on my nightstand, innocent in its trappings: a simple diary, encased in a simple cloth, the muted floral print stained and dirty. The small brass lock is jammed in the open position. The whole ensemble gives the impression of a child's diary, lost in the sandbox in school.
It scares the hell out of me.
The mist comes and we dare not separate. That was how we lost Charles.
--- End quote ---
It's a story within a story, so both opening lines had to grab the reader.
novium:
i don't know about everyone else, but for me I generally don't like books that start out with a brief, tantalizing scene, heavy with the "action" of the story, the meat of the story, and then shift into the real (so to speak) beginning, which switches to something else entirely- usually some boring scene in the past.
I think you have to be a really fine author to pull it off. I think you have to be an unbelievablely fine author to pull it off so well that the reader is so sucked into both parts that they almost don't notice. Except for that very rare latter circumstance, I almost always feel like groaning when I come across a technique like that in a book. Even when it works (i.e. grave peril, wasn't it?)
Mickey Finn:
Grave Peril worked the second time I read it, but the first time, I kept feeling like I missed a book somewhere along the line, where Michael was introduced.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version