The DREADED OPENER!!

So, I am a bit pumped for exactly no reason at all! This amount of energy is good because today we are talking about the dreaded first sentence grabber!!! The first sentence of your novel is one of the most important things you have to work with when you are writing a story. The first line represents the overall tone of the story as well as works as what I like to call the 'grabber' line. There is enough interest in the first sentence to grab the reader and shove their face into your book. Think about some of the most famous starting lines.

"Mr and Mrs. Dursley of number four Privet Drive were happy to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K Rowling

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattres."-The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

"Call me Ishmael." Moby Dick, Herman Melville

In each of these opening quotes you get a sense of the voice of the novel, the emotion of the novel, and it also grips you and makes you want to read more. Well, I can understand if you aren't in to reading A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick, but those two opening lines are some of the most memorable in literature today. I'm not saying we should all strive to have memorable first lines, it just some examples to help you see what I mean. Now, let's do some practices with our favorite stick figure PIP! We are going to give it a bit of a personality today.

This is Bro Pip. For anyone out there who doesn't know, a Bro is a person who like nothing more than beer and chicks and is often seen at a college party(usually part of the frat that is throwing it). Bro Pip is who we are writing our story about. We are going to do it in first person since last time I used third person. A Bad Opening:
 My name is Pipperson Rockwell. I like parties, girls, and beer. I go to the University of Illinois as a business major, but I spend most of my time at the bars, especially Joe's and Murphey's.

Eww, gross. First off this is an info dump. Second of all, even though I listed all that stuff about him, you still don't really get his personality and your bored as hell because they writing style did nothing to grab you.

A Good Opening:
The party was fucking wild. All I saw was Keystone cans, ping pong balls, and titties. I pop my color and shrug my shoulders because I got this shit on lock. The hot blonde screaming she loves the bitchin' Alicia Keys song that's playing will be in my bed tonight.

Here you get his personality...he is kind of a douchebag and I would like to apologize to anyone who is offended by Pip's colorful vocab. But if you've chosen to write about a college age boy you have to add in all the ways a boy would. You also kind of want to read a little further after the very first sentence. Why is the party wild? Where was it?

That is my help for today! I would be happy to help anyone if they are having some problems, just leave me a comment!

Saturday Help: Lesson 1-Character Development

I'm going to use Saturdays as a time to share things I've learned, usually the hard way. First things first, Character Development. 

When you sit down to write a novel you usually have two things in mind. One, the character you want to write about-the one that is bouncing around in your head asking to be put on paper and two, the point in the story you are dying to get to. The problems is that you have this picture of a character in your head that your going to write this entire novel about, but the reader has no idea. The first few paragraphs are vital to how your character is thought of and if it's a character readers want to follow for 358 pages. So right now, this is what your character looks like to the reader. 

                                                                        This is Pip.

Le expertly drawn stick person with awesome internet lingo

As of right now, this is all the reader sees. We don't know if Pip is a acne ridden teenage boy pining away for the senior cheerleader, a rebel girl with blue hair and a tongue piercing, or a viking warrior princess with the power to throw lighting bolts. It's all up you. What we what to avoid is word vomit or sensory overload.

Pip has long red hair with a string of freckles crossing her nose. She has bright blue eyes and ears that stick out too much. She wears huge glasses and has braces that cover her teeth that are colored red and gold for Gyrffindor house. She loves the colors blue, red, green, purple, and silver. She enjoys the soothing sounds of Metallica and Led Zepplin, but her mother doesn't know that. Pip hates her school and all the people in it. She draws stick figures of them walking the plank on her favorite pirate ship. She isn't very pretty, but she is really smart......blah, blah, blah,

I know that I've started out at least on of my stories like this. You just want to get all that personality stuff out of the way so you can get straight to the meat of the story, but we can't do that. If any of you actually read the entire paragraph I give you props, I wouldn't have. Anyway, we have to be careful not to do this-at ANY time during the novel. While some of those lines can be dropped in later in the story, we can't do it all at once. It isn’t a very good read and I stopped paying attention at about her favorite colors.  

Personality is something you need to give the impression of rather than spit it all out at the reader at one time. You wouldn’t walk up to someone and say:

 “Hi, my names is Jessica Montgomery. I like the colors yellow and red and I’m obsessed with Lord of the Rings and the video game Dragon Age. Let’s be friends?” 

Nine times out of ten that person is going to stare at you like your crazy and then turn tail and run. The same rule applies to writing about your character. I don’t want to be bombarded with Pip’s likes, dislikes, and secrets all at the beginning. It takes the fun out of reading. So, instead you’d want to lace it throughout your story.

Pip brushed her red hair behind her ears, getting it caught in the arm of her oversized glasses. She hated Mondays, mostly because that meant going back to school to get shoved into her locker instead of staying at home listening to Metallica. 

Now you get a little bit better impression of Pip without being overwhelmed at all the info. It’s still not the best way to start a story, but it doesn’t make you feel like your drowning in all things concerning Pip.

That is my helpful advice for today! I hope it’s helped clarify a little something! Have a good weekend! :D

Tuesday Rambles

Listening to: Deep Shadows by T.T.L

My first official post! WhooHoo! I basically set up this blog to help with my writing abilities and to detail the hardships of being an unpublished author trying to make it. I really would love to be a published author. So, more likely than not, this blog is going to be full with my belly-aching and jumbled brain rambles of the ups and downs of the writing world. Currently I have two novels completed. One is utter and complete shit, pardon my French. The second is good but is in need of some major revisions before I send it off to any sort of agents.
So a little about me. I recently was diagnosed with ADHD which makes writing an entire novel pretty hard, especially when I keep stopping mid-sentence to check all of the the internet for useless information. I live on a farm with my family while I attend college, which brings me to point number two about why I can never finish anything. Between training my horse to be able to ride, crowing roosters that would be more use dead than alive, and cats clawing into my skin, I hardly get anything done! I wouldn't trade it for the world, though. I love living on our farm almost as much as I love writing! Chances are you are going to see random posts about farm animals almost as often as you see posts about writing. As of right now I am trying to detach our devil cat, Nutter Butter, from my thigh.
In fact, lets take a look at the devil spawn.

Sure, she looks sweet and cute now. Its not until she thinks your legs are a scratching post you realize her true evil nature. She stares at me a lot like that. Mostly because she thinks I'm a stupid human not worth her time. Cats are so judgmental some times....
Well, that's my Tuesday Ramble! Hope you have a good day.