Sweating the Opening

Work is progressing on my first book.

I decided to write the first chapter or at least he beginning of the first chapter and then tweak it mercilessly. This will serve two purposes.

First it will (hopefully) provide an attention grabbing first page and second set the tone of the book for the following chapters. Looking back on the work so far I believe the former goal has progressed while the latter may require more careful work to formulate the tone.

All books need to have an attention grabbing first page. Thus makes sense when you think about the readers. Unless you draw them in early you could bore them. If this happens in the bookstore they will put your book back on the rack. If this happens after they buy the book the reader might put the book on the shelf to gather dust forever. The best thing you can hope for is if your book is re-gifted.

For the beginning writer there is a more important reason to write an attention grabbing first page and a killer first sentence. To get published.

Think about it. You spend a year or more of your life sweating over each page. Your characters become real to you. You laugh and cry with them. You rewrite all of your chapters a number of times honing your story. Your blood, sweat and tears are contained within those pages. This is your masterpiece, the next great American novel.

Then you send it off to a publisher and start the waiting game. The publisher has no idea of your brilliance and to make matters worse is understaffed. They want to find the next promising author but all they see is a big stack of manuscripts. Someone has to through them all. Something has to make your book stand out.

Reading articles and blogs about this process you find out that the first hurdle is to get the reviewer to read past the first sentence and then the first page. Some books do not get past the first sentence and many not get read further than the first page. So it pays to really hone in the first sentences of your story. Sweat every detail. Grab the reader’s attention.

You could try to write an emotional first sentence, paragraph, and page about a woman staring out a picture window weeping. She is standing there thinking about her life and her situation to set some context for your story. She could reminisce about her cold husband, how he has treated her and the kids, and how he cheated on her many times. She could lament about how she gave up the best years of her life for him and what is left for her now that she is older. Then she has a glass of wine and falls asleep on the couch.

Or you could have her jumping through that picture window and have her run into the woods being chased by her knife wielding, jealousy enraged, black belted, husband. This is the exact same guy as above but he is reacting like this because she went to lunch with a male friend from work and he spotted them laughing together at Burger King. Luckily for her when he finally catches her she is a professional kick boxer. Or maybe a mountain lion jumps him. Or maybe an alien beast.

Maybe I over did it. But can you see what I am driving at? Which story draws you in faster? Which one would you like to read if you are having trouble sleeping?

So to start my story I wrote three scenes and about 2,500 words. I then proceeded to submit my work to anyone who would read it including an online writer’s web site. So far I have revised this beginning four times and now it is down to 1,600 words. That is another thing about writing. Good revisioning usually means less words. In effective writing less is more. So even if you have enough words to qualify your work as a book, probably you do not really have them.

But even now I am not done yet. I have another group of writers I meet with locally who are looking at my opening. They are all better writers than me so they will have even more suggestions. Now we are at five revisions. At some point the revisions become somewhat pointless. But I am not quite there yet.

My book desperately needs a good opening. My protagonist almost dies twice in the first 500 words. I have to cross my fingers this is attention grabbing enough.

More to come.

Starting a new story is always the hardest part for me so far as a writer. That first blank page stares back at me defying me to fill it with something good. Is that possible? Can I do it? Am I kidding myself?

My High School story idea is no different. I procrastinated on writing that first page to write this blog. While I have many ideas, getting started is the hardest part. Once I get started the pages flow. I do not how that happens for me but it does. It could be magic.

The hardest part of any story is putting together an effective plot. There are no good or bad plots, just plots that engage the reader and those that do not. The former is desired.

One very good piece of advice is to be able to summarize your plot in a single sentence. Ok let me try, although I reserve the right to change it later.

A boy enters high school and leaves as a man.

How is that? Simple right? Maybe deceptively so. In those 10 words many interesting things can happen and do every day. The trick will be to bring the reader into that change and interest them in the story.

Another standard piece of creative writing advice is to make sure your characters suffer some adversity. What about high school is not perfect for that? I know my own experience was a torrent of new situations, setbacks, and emotions with a little bit of life threatening thrown in for good measure.

This story is fiction and will not be about me. Although, I will put some of me into it. And some of you. But don’t worry. I will make sure the names do not match up.

Public School in the suburbs is one of the few melting pots you can experience in life. The rich, the poor, the popular, and the anomie afflicted are all thrown together based on where they live. Later in life you will find ways to associate more with your own kind, whatever that may be to you. But that melting pot idea is so powerful and rich with interesting story ideas. I hope I can take advantage of the natural resources my setting choice presents to me.

One of the things you have to choose right up front, as an author is a point of view or POV, as it is known. You can write a story as yourself. As attractive as that may sound, writing an interesting story with this POV is very difficult. My choice will be Third Person Limited, a safe choice for a junior writer. Here the POV is someone outside of the story. This unidentified nameless narrator can know some things across all the characters and can set scenes as needed.

A story written form this POV can shift back and forth from the perspective of any character as needed for the story. In this way it is easy to explore everyone’s fears, motives, and crazy thinking. I also will give my narrator some omniscience, but not too much as to spoil the story.

Another requirement for a successful story is change. The characters must experience change. My plot line guarantees this condition.

A story also needs main characters. So far I have identified two. The main protagonist, the afore-mentioned boy, and of course a girl. Both of these characters will not be your run of the mill high schoolers, each will be something special. And each will represent an aspect of humanity with opposing energy. There will be conflict! Exactly what the writing doctor ordered.

There will be more characters of course and some of them will roll in and out of the story. They will have to prove themselves to me to become major characters. They will audition one at a time. If I find them interesting I will bring them back

This brings me to how I write. Some authors will write an outline of a story and then follow that preordained formula. I cannot. I start with some raw idea and characters and then let the story write itself. It seems like magic to me. Where do these words come from? I have no clue. My task now is to make those words form a story that would interest a reader. Maybe even you.

My setting choice gives me with the raw materials to write a great story. Can I rise to the occasion? A story in and of itself.

Time will tell.

What, me a writer?

Recently I made a number of changes in my life. One of those changes was becoming a writer. I have long dreamed of this. The transition was easy, just start writing and –poof- I became a writer. But I have higher aspirations; I want to become a published writer. Not so easy.

The first thing on your to-do list to become a published writer should be to first become a good writer. Some very lucky published writers did not have to follow this path, but I am not one of those.

I have been working on my writing. Now instead of being the worst writer in the world I am at least five to ten from the bottom. It was a long struggle.

So now that I can write a paragraph that does not make you sick to your stomach or fall asleep the question is what to write. For many years I have been writing stories in my head. These exercises have helped me to become a very prolific writer in my first attempts. I have conquered the blank page! Now, to fill those pages with more than drivel.

I love to write with music blaring in the background. Can you hear it? Where would Kurt Cobain have progressed musically if he made through his own difficult period? I wish we could know. My favorite song/ballad is Richard Thompson’s 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. I wrote a story that follows this plot. Some day I may unearth it. Black leather, red hair, and chrome my favorite colors.

I also tried writing some of those other stories I have created in my mind over the years. But so far when I actually try to write them they do not turn out to be something that most people would want to read. One of the things they tell you when you come up with the crazy idea of becoming a writer is to know who your readers will be.

What if that reader would only be me?

My book sales would be off the charts targeted reader percentage wise, but the overall sales would be low.

So I have elected to move to plan B, new stories. Maybe later in my career I can unearth some of those older ideas and bring them to life. The dead may only be sleeping.

In my search for a new writing venue I came across a new idea at least for me. High school. If I wrote about the High School years who would my target audience be? Everyone that went to high school, of course. Now this topic has been written about voluminously. But with such a wide topic there is always room for one more. Some adaption of my story and those around me may be if not unique at least interesting.

The first part of most successful creative writing projects is research. The story has to ring true. To begin with I have my own memories to draw from. These are real or at least an interpretation of real. But I need more.

I am blogging here under my web pseudonym Fraxum. But in real life I attended Palmyra, NJ High School 1968-1972. I was the weird guy who started out fat and ended up skinny.

If you think you knew me in high school drop me line or a thought here on my Blog. You could email me here: fraxum at gmail dot com. Or find me some other way to contact me. It is not very hard on the Web.

At PHS We were all brothers and sisters rowing together knowing not where we were headed. Mr. Ianucci was in the front beating the drum. Remember? Even though he assigned me many times to detention I should thank him. I can now write 500 pages on the inside of a ping-pong ball. Mr. I. we miss you!

If I wrote in your Tillicum I would be very interested in reading what I wrote. If you wrote in mine I would be happy to reciprocate.

I would also be interested in hearing any true high school stories that relate to the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood. I am sure there are millions. So if somehow you get wind of this blog and did not know me you can help too. I want to really capture the experience.

Thanks for reading. As things progress I will update this blog to track my progress and share with you some of my high school epiphanies. My story will be fictional and will include some magic. After all, high school was a magical time, some good and some bad.

Rock on.

Fraxum