The All Important First Line

First lines are like first impressions. A good opening should hook the reader in. There are many ways in which this may be done. Take the novel: you might wish to make the reader laugh, gasp or grimace, or prefer to write a line as memorable as it is surprising.

When it is all said and done, killing my mother came easily.

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

Your first sentence should raise questions, without using a question mark. Take the line below: What was feared? And why is it worse? I want to know.

It was worse than I feared.

Gang Petition by Peter St. John

Conflict can be introduced straight away or at least hinted at. Usually something has gone wrong or is about to.

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene.

Introducing two characters works well when the relationship between them creates mystery and captures the imagination.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Showing characters in unusual settings or situations can be another attention keeper.

They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

By starting at an important, pivotal moment in the story, the reader is more likely to want to continue so that he or she can discover what will happen next.

It was dark where she was crouched but the little girl did as she’d been told.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

There is no formula for the first line but it should set the tone of the book and reflect its genre. Every author has a unique voice and this is the first chance they have to establish it.

Slowly and painfully, I breathe in, appreciating the life it restores in me.

Hues of Blackness by Rosey Thomas Palmer

My last point is that you shouldn’t get bogged down with perfecting the opening. The best first lines are often written after a novel is completed.

Book Festival for writers and book lovers! Nottingham, Oct 7th/8th.

 Free talks and workshops from some great guest speakers. Click HERE for the details.


Full Programme www.newwritersuk.co.uk/festival.html

 

Writers unite for Queensland

I have had a short story selected for inclusion in the new anthology 100 Stories for Queensland. All of the profits from sales will go to help the Queenslanders affected by the unprecedented flooding and Cyclone Yasi. As you are no doubt aware, much of the large state has been declared a disaster zone and many communities have been devastated. Some families have lost everything.

The driving forces behind the book seem to be Jodi Cleghorn (in Brisbane) and New Writers UK member, Trevor Belshaw. I thank them and all of the editors, proofreaders, designers and authors from around the globe who have committed time to this project.

From March the 8th the anthology will be available in digital and print form as well as an audio book. Please consider buying a copy.

Chasing Shadows. The eBook has landed.

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK HERE

A Brief History of Crime

The first detective story is widely considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). It concerns the killing of a woman and daughter. The Detective, Dupin, became the model for the sleuth that dominates mystery writing. Dupin is a well-educated eccentric who lives in seclusion. Through science and reason, he amazes his younger partner with his deductions whilst he shows the dim-witted police how to it’s done. Forty years on Arthur Conan Doyle used this formula for his Sherlock Holmes stories.

Dupin and Holmes both used the smallest external traces to infer the thoughts of others. They relished the intellectual challenge of pitting their abilities against the police. It is a similar challenge that attracts readers who love to interact with the detective in a race to piece together the clues. This formula has been adopted by Dorothy L Sayer, Agatha Christie, and countless novelists since. After all, the causes of - and motives for - crime have not changed; mainly money, passion or insanity. Underpinning modern TV shows like Monk, The Mentalist and Lie to Me, is the notion that crimes can be solved through rational, scientific thought. Logic and reasoning is used to understand human behavior.

Poe’s idea of a semi-independent investigator, with their own expertise, exists today with James Patterson's Alex Cross and Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme, to name a couple. But it’s not just the character Dupin that has created the genre, Poe’s plots did too. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is also the first locked-room mystery, an idea enormously fashionable among writers in the Golden Age of detective fiction. The idea being if the room was locked how was the crime done? Deaver’s The Vanishing Man being one of many modern examples of these author set puzzles.

Poe’s The Gold-Bug, revolves around the deciphering of a code leading to buried treasure. Stevenson used the idea in Treasure Island, Conan Doyle employed a similar device in The Dancing Men, and Dan Brown has proved that code breaking remains a popular hook.

Another branch of crime fiction that owes much to Poe is what I call forensic fiction. Deriving solutions from forensic science (in Poe’s case the markings on a bullet) is prevalent in much of today’s crime. Step forward Kathy Riech, Patricia Cornwell, and a plethora of CSI shows.

It would be wrong of me not to mention the impact of other writers on contemporary crime fiction. The hardboiled, urban crime writing, popularized by the pulp magazines and Noir cinema remains influential. Raymond Chandler (influenced by the 1st hardboiled novel The Jungle) adopted a style and voice that changed the genre and a new detective was born. The 35 to 45 year old hard drinking, chain smoking, coffee loving, gun wielding, fist throwing hero, who lives and works in a big city with a rootless population.

Whoever your influences one thing is for sure, the sleuth who endeavors to fathom, defeat, or solve, through reason and action, is not about to go away.

Formulaic?

The supermarket shelves are awash with crime fiction, but how much choice is out there?

The Titles: Usually short. Often containing one or more of these words: Blood, Dead, Die, Murder, Bones.

The Blurbs: Likely to include any three of the following: Discovery, Daughter, Distraught, Darkest, Dangerous, Destroying, Disastrous, Deadly.

The Plots: A body is found (or missing), a young woman, she’s been brutally murdered. A clue at the scene (poetic note/sketch/taunt) will connect the victim to a) an old case, or b) other killings.
Meanwhile, the protagonist has a secret that haunts to this day. A past that is now (due to a plot twist) putting him/her (or their offspring) in peril, unless the killer is stopped.

Readers like what they like. Publishers want what they can sell. The result:

The Fields of Death, Death Message, Play Dead, From the Dead, Better Dead, Book of the Dead, Call for the dead, Play Dead, Dead Wrong, Dead Man’s Footsteps, Dead Silent, Dead Kill, Dead Simple, Dead Like You, Darker than Death, Die Back, To Die For, Worth Dying For, Fear the Worst, Darkest Fear, Dark Fire, Die Trying, Beg To Die, Dying To Please, Skin and Bones, Playing with Bones, 206 Bones, A Thousand Bones, Skin and Bones, Lucky Bones, The Fever of the Bone, Bone Man’s Daughter, The Kills, The Killing Kind, Killing Floor, Killing a Stranger, Killer Instinct, The Killing Place, Postcard Killers, Faceless Killers, The Perfect Murder, Blue Murder, A Murder of Quality, The Murder Game, Mortal Remains, Grave Sight, Buried, In the Dark, Dark Blood, Blood Dancing, Bloodline, Blood from Stone, Blood Simple, Blood Diamond, Innocent Blood, True Blood, First Blood.

New Writers UK Festival 2010