#lessons Learned from @HollyBlack: Start the #storytelling with #writing the departure from the #characters’ normal.

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Snagging readers is always one of the greatest challenges writers face. First fifty pages nuthin’. We gotta grab readers in the first five pages. Heck, if we can’t grab an agent or publisher with the first five sentences, we are out of luck.

Holly Black establishes just enough intrigue within her first lines of The Cruel Prince to hook readers and keep’em on the line until the last page. Let’s dissect a few of these opening sentences, as well as the entire first chapter.

(Yes, I said entire first chapter. Don’t groan yet.)

Prologue:

On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street. He hadn’t parked a car, nor had he come by taxi. No neighbor had seen him strolling along the sidewalk. He simply appeared, as if stepping between one shadow and the next.

Inside the house, Jude sat on the living room rug and ate fish sticks, soggy from the microwave and dragged through a sludge of ketchup. Her twin sister, Taryn, napped on the couch, curled around a blanket, thumb in her fruit-punch-stained mouth. And on the other end of the sofa, their older sister, Vivienne, stared at the television screen, her eerie, split-pupiled gaze fixed on the cartoon mouse as it ran from the cartoon cat. She laughed when it seemed as if the mouse was about to get eaten.

The first four sentences take care to show something abnormal is in the works. While the first sentence of “a man in a long dark coat” sounds ominous, it’s a common sort of ominous–oh no, a dude in a coat. Aaaaah.

The next sentence plays upon our reality’s norms and begins to trim them off: no car, no taxi. There go the typical, nondescript forms of transportation. Black’s not going to insult our intelligence and list other vehicles not used, like RVs, semis, and so on. If my son Biff’s taught me anything, it’s that kids will notice any vehicle bigger than a car, and they will make a big deal about it. “Mommy, a truck! Mommy, a bus! Mommy, an RV!”

The third line continues to nullify yet another assumption: he didn’t walk there. If Black can say no neighbor saw him “strolling along the sidewalk,” then that means neighbors are currently outside to witness such things.

But no one did. Which means that when “he simply appeared,” he literally did just that.

Now that is abnormal.

In the next paragraph we meet our protagonist Jude and her two sisters. Black has situated this family in a very typical setup: snacking and watching television.

It is this sort of normal the man of the long dark coat penetrates.

I don’t have to share the rest of the prologue with you to know there was something abnormal in Jude’s normal–her elder sister Vivienne has “eerie” split pupils. As the narrator explains, Jude and her sister accept this without question; after all, they’re identical twins, which is weird enough. For them, this is normal, and therefore requires no further explanation.

But they do get an explanation with the man’s arrival.

He is not human.

He is also their mother’s first husband, and Vivienne is his daughter. Jude’s father tries to fight him, and dies. Jude’s mother tries to run, and dies.

He takes all three girls back to his home in Elfhame.

51j9XTR5oZL._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_Now here Black makes an interesting writing choice: while the prologue is given in 3rd person past, Chapter 1 shifts us into first person present.

CHAPTER 1

In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television.

That’s the whole chapter.

(Told you not to groan.)

What good is a one-line chapter?

For starters, Black’s story isn’t about little kid Jude and her sisters. In Chapter 2 we learn ten years have passed since General Madoc killed their parents and brought them to his home. The Cruel Prince will share the tale of these girls finding their place in–or out–of Faerie. 

Ten years is a HUGE amount of time to cover in any book, let alone a sentence. So let’s see what Black did to help us make that leap.

First, she establishes the time with “are.” The events of the prologue are done. The narrator’s in a new time.

What place? “Faerie.” For all the variety of worlds made about fairies/faeries, we do tend to make similar assumptions about what these magic folk don’t have: cars, for instance, or computers. Black builds on this concept–ruling out what isn’t in the world before building on what is–by listing the three simple things that symbolized the normal of Jude’s life: fish sticks, ketchup, television.

“Television” clearly encompasses technology of all sorts, but for a kid, no tv is, like, huge. It’s a primary resource for entertainment, education, distraction. It’s challenging enough to limit a kid’s screen time. Can you think of completely removing the tvs, computers, tablets, phones, and all the rest out of your life, let alone a child’s? Let that sink in. Now you appreciate that dose of culture shock for Jude and her sisters.

“Ketchup”–so often associated as the go-to dipper for kids. They’ll draw pictures in it, squirt each other with it. Adults can show their age if they like by using more “sophisticated” fare like oils, glazes, marinades, or sauces constructed with food processors and farmer’s markets and sweat, but if a kid’s got the choice between some organic garlic beet radish kale compote and “ketchup,” what do you think he/she will take?

Same with “fish sticks.” Microwaved, no less. One of the staples in a family’s fridge, fish sticks are a primary example of the pseudo-nutrition parents like to use to keep kids’ stomachs placated. Heck, I used’em for Blondie last night. (Biff and Bash don’t like them. Hmm, maybe they’re from Elfhame. It would certainly explain their ever-warring natures…) The easy, go-to processed food kept frozen by technology and heated at the click of its buttons is only memory to Jude.

By grouping this little trio of food, pleasure, and entertainment in the normal of Jude’s young life, and emphasizing with three No’s that these do not exist in her new normal, Black successfully jars readers out of Jude’s childhood and shifts them into the plotline for The Cruel Prince, told by Jude with intimate immediacy.

If your story needs a setup, consider how much you can pack into a single line. Think about what will separate this setup from the rest of the story, and what voice is best suited to prepare readers as well as engage them for the story proper. Do not think you must provide a detailed summary of the time passed over between setup and story; rather, consider what can symbolize that which is now lost, or gained, or transformed. Let that symbolism speak the necessary volumes for you while you lure readers into the shadowy realm that is Chapter 1.

50 thoughts on “#lessons Learned from @HollyBlack: Start the #storytelling with #writing the departure from the #characters’ normal.”

    • Oh man, I dunno…one Christmas I got a mug covered with famous openers.
      https://www.amazon.com/First-Lines-Literature-Coffee-Slaughterhouse/dp/B01D6TGVHW
      The opener for George Orwell’s 1984 is a good one: “It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” But recently I keep getting drawn to “Call me Ishmael”–not because of the book, but because of a FAR SIDE cartoon collection Blondie’s been reading.
      https://missionimpossiblemobydick.wordpress.com/tag/far-side/

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      • I remember my dad being mad about The Far Side. I think he has books of the cartoonists stuff. I don’t know much about books – dyslexic and all that – but in terms of lyrics – forgetting the melody – one of the first lyrics we studied at uni was ‘Yesterday’. The opener, ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away’ is probably the best ever opener in musical terms. Even better, McCartney knocked out the melody in about 20 minutes then got stuck for words, so the original first lyric take read, ‘Scrambled eggs, oh baby how I love your legs’! Also, brilliant.

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      • Oh wow. That is also quite, quite brilliant. 🙂
        The Far Side…no, it’s not for everyone. Nor is Moby Dick, to be honest. I HATED that book when I read it. But I can’t deny that it’s first line is a keeper. 🙂

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      • You realize I’ve been running hundreds of lyrics through my mind trying to find the ultimate great opening line. Too many; too much. I found my own favourite from my portfolio, ‘The nights were getting longer, your days were drawing in’. Finding that took ages as well!

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      • Thank you. The original, recorded in the sound friendly bathroom I’d hidden in the day life went pear shaped was probably better than this one in terms of passion, yet could never get mixed and mastered given just a mic and nought else.

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      • A live venue? I used to but only small venues playing lead guitar – metal. So far it hasn’t done it for me. The fear of ending up gigging in pubs, fat and 40 puts me off. I think you can have more success as an online artist than being that thing I never want to be. Also, my dream is to write for others – whatever platform. Once I make a song I like to make a new one and so on.

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      • Mmmm, good point. When we saw what remains of The Who a couple years ago, I couldn’t help but wonder: did Pete and Roger really think they’d be STILL performing these songs decades after creating them? I can’t imagine so.

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      • LOL! I know, right? Roger sang that song, too. I think there was a bit of laughter in the first refrain, on his part and the audience’s. And he could still belt it. If only *I* could sound that good at that age…

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      • Though for the record, some day I’m going to hop the pond to give your parents a hug and you a listen. With or without the family, I’ll get over there. Just give me a year or seven… 😉

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  6. Funny thing about opening lines, sometimes an absolute cracker happens by accident, but usually they’re the trickiest part – don’t a lot of writers advise leaving it until last?

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  7. Thank you for a really interesting, valuable article, Jean:). I write something, but until the story is completed, you can’t write a really effective start, because until then you don’t know where you are actually headed…

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  11. Thank you Jean Lee. I find that after struggling with what the tone of the piece should be, if I get that first sentence in the right key everything else that follows falls into place, whether it be a poem, short story of four thousand words, or a novel or nonfiction book of 100,000 words. Hemingway was right–begin with a strong declarative sentence–BANG..

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  15. This is so beautifully well put. I always think two of the best opening lines to a book are Terry Pratchett “They say the world is flat and supported on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle“ and Douglas Adams “In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move”. Not forgotten on a slightly more serious note “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

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