The Beginning Three Times Over by Nancy L. Eady

 

I have been editing my first mystery novel for a very long time now, so long that I put it away last year and am just now getting started on one final edit.  I thought I'd share you with the original opening lines, and the first revision and the latest version. 

ORIGINAL:

The 2011 annual Christmas dinner for the local Webster County bar was memorable. Due to a hectic trial docket, the dinner was held December 23, much later than normal, and a rare dusting of snow greeted each of us as we entered the venerable, but still elegant, Radford Grill. The party’s attendance was up that year; William Henderson, the esteemed local bar president for the last 15 years (mostly because no-one else could be bothered with it) and head of the local Democratic party for the last 20 years (mostly because nobody was better at it) had arranged for an after-dinner speaker of national prominence, an unusual treat for our normally cash-strapped local association.

Memorable achieved never-to-be-forgotten status after the national speaker (who was every bit as good as anticipated) stopped talking. As the applause died down, William stood up from the white clothed head table and went to the podium.

"I'd like to thank my good friend, Tim Tolar, for that wonderful presentation. Now, folks, it's up to you whether you want to..."

At that  moment, Jackson Herring threw the double oak doors at the entrance to the meeting room open with a bang and strode purposefully towards William at the podium.

REVISION ONE:

Christmas, cocktails and crime are a curious combination and one that none of us – not me, not Boyd and especially not William - were ready for. When I first arrived at the Christmas Dinner for the combined Webster and Windover County bar, the most trying ordeal I anticipated enduring was coping with Boyd’s latest dating partner, Cindie with an “ie.”

I had counted myself lucky, though, when Boyd sat by me, and Cindie with an “ie” sat on his other side at the half table allocated to our firm. I would like to be able to say that I couldn’t understand what Boyd saw in Cindie with an “ie” (she had introduced herself that way to so many people that I couldn’t separate the name from the qualifier), but the reasons were self-explanatory. Boyd certainly hadn’t been looking for character or intelligence when he asked her out.  As president of the Webster County bar, William, our senior partner, and his wife Molly, along with Molly’s guide dog Sidney, were at the head table.

We had made it through dinner and finished listening to the nationally known speaker that William had persuaded to speak to our always cash-strapped local association, when it happened.

"I'd like to thank my good friend for that wonderful presentation. Now, folks, it's up to you whether you want to..."

At that moment, Jackson Herring threw the double oak doors at the entrance to the meeting room open with a bang and strode towards William at the podium.

LATEST VERSION: 

            Formal business functions are not my thing.  It didn’t help that this particular function, the joint Christmas banquet for the Webster and Windover County bar associations, was scheduled on Friday December 23.  Unfortunately, as the youngest lawyer in our three-person firm, my absence would have been too conspicuous.  I consoled myself with the thought that the biggest challenge I had to weather was meeting Boyd’s date.  I was wrong. 

            Whatever Boyd saw in Cindie with an “ie” (she had introduced herself that way to so many people that I couldn’t separate the name from the qualifier), kindness wasn’t it.  She was politely cool towards me even though Boyd and I were friends and co-workers.  Her green eyes, fair coloring and striking red hair eclipsed my straight brown hair and matching eyes.  I remind strangers of their first spouse or someone they knew in grade school.

William, our senior partner, along with his wife Rose, her golden retriever guide dog lying patiently beside her, had to sit at the head table rather than at our firm’s allotted half-table because he was president of the Webster County bar. To accommodate the lawyers of the two rural counties, the restaurant had to arrange banquet seating for 30 attorneys plus spouses and significant others. The venerable Radford Grill, the town of Robersdel’s oldest restaurant, had done its best, but the white-clothed circular tables were a tight fit. The rectangular head table, raised on a slight dais, was adorned with a wide evergreen centerpiece stretching the length of the head table, dotted with candles and cherubic faced Santas. This created a strange illusion—the heads of the lawyers and spouses sitting there floated, disembodied, above the rest of the assembly. At least the savory smells from the kitchen were promising. 

As William stood at the front table to make the traditional opening remarks, the dark paneled double oak doors across the room slammed open. Sheriff Jackson Herring strode up the narrow aisle, then skirted the head table until he stood behind William.  

            So which version do you like best?  Would you read any further based on any of these?  What struggles do you have with the opening lines of your own novels?

First Lines for Shorts

 by Kaye George

As writers, and as readers, we know how important beginnings are. The first line, the first paragraph, the first page—that’s what determines whether or not the reader decides to invest more precious time in your story or not. I’m going to deal with short stories today.

I have some first lines I’m proud of. And some that work okay. I’ll put some of mine out there. Feel free to rip me up—I mean rip my WORK up, not me. (Although it does feel that way, right, writers?) Also feel free to tell me some of yours that work, or some famous ones you love.

“Grist for the Mill” (have to say this, my Agatha nominated story) in A MURDER OF CROWS:

Kevin Grady couldn’t wait to get outside.

***I hope I’ve made the reader wonder why he wants to go outside and can’t wait.

You know, I like the first line of the second paragraph better:

When he choked on it, he stopped and looked around, spitting out the foul taste he had inhaled.

***Now you have to wonder what he’s choking on. Much more important.

“The Darkest Hour” in DAY OF THE DARK, 2017

I think it was on a Saturday afternoon when Tom got the bright idea to rent out our spare room for the eclipse. I wish I’d just killed him then.

***Two sentences, but I have to use both of them to entice you into the story.

“Dream Girl” in BOULD Anthology, 2019

She stretched with delight. What a great dream that had been!

***Of course, here, I want you to wonder what the dream was. That’s revealed over the course of the story, which I hope confuses the heck out of the reader.

“The Bible Belt Buckle Killer” in Suspense Magazine, Fall of 2018:

Isabel Musik dropped her Bloody Mary when she heard the scream.

***This is my second Isabel Musik story. She’s a “reformed” vampire, so it’s fitting she’s drinking a Bloody Mary.

I’ll put a few more of mine out here, then step aside and let you post yours.

“The Truck Contest, Fish Tales” (the first Guppy anthology):

The first time I saw it I assumed it was an accident.

“Levittown Louie,” Mysterical-E, Spring 2007

First off, Kimber's entrance to the Ground Hog Day Ball was disastrous.

“Handbaskets, Drawers, and a Killer Cold,” Crooked, January 2009:

“If your brother screws up once more…” Cal Arnold’s tirade skittered to a stop at the expression on his wife’s face.

“Snatched Potatoes,” Kings River Life, June 2014, also in Black Cat Thrillogy #11 from Wildside:

“Be sure you gouge out the eyes, Imogene.”

A SHOUTOUT TO MY FELLOW SHORT STORY AGATHA NOMINEES:

Barb Goffman, Cynthia Kuhn, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Art Taylor

Your turn!

You can find links to these on my short story page, some for purchase, some to read:

https://kayegeorge.wixsite.com/kaye-george/short-stories

hourglass photo by lisaleo at morguefile.com

First Lines by Nancy Eady

            One of the most prevalent pieces of writing advice I’ve heard for those of us who wish to be published is to pull your reader into the story immediately. I am still working on learning how to do that, so I skimmed through some of the first lines of books that I’ve read. Can you match the first line or phrase below with the correct book?

1)         “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

2)         In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

3)         It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

4)         As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

5)         In a hole in a ground, there lived a hobbit.

6)         When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

7)         There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

8)         It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

9)         It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.

10)       In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

11)       One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

12)       On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.

13)       The Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north.

14)       In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.

15)       Petronius woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied.

            How do you think you did?  What is your favorite first line of a book?

A)        Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

B)        The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

C)        The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

D)        Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

E)        Ben-Hur:  A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

F)         Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

G)        The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

H)        The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I)         And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

J)         Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

K)        Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

L)        The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

M)       A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

N)        Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

O)        The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Answers:  1) F, 2) G. 3) D, 4) B, 5) H, 6) L, 7) A, 8) M, 9) N, 10) O, 11) J, 12) C, 13) E, 14) I, 15) K.

Catching The Reader With A First Sentence by Mark Bacon

Where to begin? I agonized over this question when I wrote my first mystery novel. For my first sentence should I go for something literary, something clever, a play on words? Trained as a journalist and a nonfiction writer for years, I was tempted to write a first sentence that summarized the story or the theme. And I did. Then came my second novel—the just-released Desert Kill Switch—and I decided I needed a new way to start.

One of the most significant ways that writing fiction has influenced my recreational reading is that I pay closer attention to first sentences. Sometimes they can put me off a novel immediately. Or draw me in. I’ve become a student of first sentences.

When writers and editors put together lists of best first sentences, the work of classic novelists tends to cluster at the top, Austen, Melville, Dickens, Orwell. They provide excellent examples, but are they suitable for a murder mystery? “Call me Lyle,” (one of my main characters) is not memorable, except perhaps as a riff on Melville. “It was the best of times for Lyle.” Nope.

A first sentence is like a first impression when you meet someone. Does a person’s verbal greeting or looks attract your attention and encourage conversation? Like someone going out with a highly touted blind date, a writer is eager to make a good impression.

One of the best first-sentence writers around, Stephen King, offered this advice in The Atlantic Magazine in July, 2013. “There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It’s a tricky thing….But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

Anne R. Allen, mystery writer and co-author of How to be a Writer in the E-Age: A Self-Help Guide, agrees. “On that first page, we have only a few lines to grab the reader and keep her from putting the book back on the shelf. We have to present an exciting hook…but not overwhelm [readers] with too much information.”

One item of information that may be extraneous in first sentences is weather. It’s become clichéd thanks to the familiar “dark and stormy night” penned by British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton 187 years ago. “Never open a book with the weather,” is the oft quoted line from Elmore Leonard. Yet years before Leonard offered his advice, Raymond Chandler used weather in the first sentence of The Big Sleep. And I think he got away with it:

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.

Mystery writer Lilian Jackson Braun used weather to begin The Cat Who Tailed a Thief in 1997. “It was a strange winter in Moose County, 400 miles north of everywhere.”

Adding to my confusion, I discovered this advice Ernest Hemingway wrote to John Dos Passos in a letter* in March 1932: “Remember to get the weather in your god damned book—weather is very important.”

Can’t ignore Hemingway. What to do? I turned for help with my first sentence to noir master James M. Cain. He used a short but telling sentence to begin his famous depression era, The Postman Always Rings Twice. With nine words the narrator tells us he’s a less-than-first-class traveler and perhaps disreputable, too. “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”

Sometimes unusual or intriguing sentences are best to grab your interest. Ross Macdonald, one of the best stylists of the detective genre, started his 1954 Find a Victim this way: “He was the ghastliest hitchhiker who ever thumbed me.”

Since most mystery, crime and detective stories involve murder, you could begin with that. “Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to kill him.” That’s how Graham Greene began his dark 1938 tale, Brighton Rock.

Ultimately, I abandoned the weather, decided a reference to murder could wait for the second paragraph of my novel, and went with an intriguing first sentence that conveyed action.

“Lyle Deming braked his Mustang hard and aimed for the sandy shoulder of the desert road.”

----

Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961, Carlos Baker, editor, Scribner Classics, 2003; original copyright 1981 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation, Inc. and Carlos Baker.

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Mark S. Bacon began his career as a southern California newspaper police reporter, one of his crime stories becoming key evidence in a murder case that spanned decades.

After working for two newspapers, he moved to advertising and marketing when he became a copywriter for Knott’s Berry Farm, the large theme park down the road from Disneyland. Experience working at Knott’s formed part of the inspiration for his creation of Nostalgia City theme park. 

He taught journalism as a member of the adjunct faculty at Cal Poly University – Pomona, University of Redlands, and the University of Nevada – Reno. Bacon is the author of business books and his articles on travel and other topics have appeared in newspapers from the Washington Post to the San Antonio Express News. Most recently he was a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. 

www.baconsmysteries.com

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It was the best of lines, it was the worst of lines . . .

Today we have Carolyn J. Rose joining Writers Who Kill as our guest blogger on Salad Bowl Saturdays. Her guest blog got me wondering exactly how important that first line is. What do you think?

Your opinion counts and when you leave a comment, we’ll put your name in the drawing for a copy of No Substitute for Money.

~ Jim

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If you’re an avid reader, especially one with a to-be-read pile leaning like the Tower of Pisa, you’re probably well aware of the significance of a first line. It can draw you in to another world, set the scene, and establish what’s at stake. Or it can prompt you to look again at the TBR pile, consider how time is fleeting, and set that book aside in favor of another.

If you’re a writer, I’ll bet my lunch money (Roughly $4.67. What can I say? I’m frugal.) that you’ve come awake in the heart of the night with an all-time great first line flashing in your brain. It’s a line on a par with the greatest first lines of any list on the Internet. It’s right up there with: “It was the best of times . . .” “It was the day my grandmother exploded. . .” “I was born twice . . .” “The past is a foreign country . . .”

You might switch on the lamp, scrabble in the nightstand for a pencil or a pen that actually works, and scrawl that line on a bookmark, tissue, or even your arm. On rare occasions, you might be able to read that line in the morning. Sometimes you even think it’s still a darn good line—or at least not a darn bad line.

But now, what do you do with it?

Sure, the first step is to type it out and add it to your collection of other all-time great lines. But after that?

Do you carry it like a sacrificial lamb to your critique group and watch them shear it? Or even slaughter it? Do you save it for a day when writers’ block has you paralyzed and use it as a springboard for a couple of stream-of-consciousness pages to break the mental logjam? Do you stuff it in a drawer for a day when the power goes out and you need something to get a fire going? Do you enter it in the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest? Or do you commit yourself to writing hundreds of great lines to follow?

Here’s a line that came to me recently: Only by reminding myself that my knitting needles could be lethal weapons was I able to get through an afternoon with my aunt.

It won’t lead off my next book or the one after that—those are all planned out—but it might have a long career as a writing prompt for a workshop presentation.

Writers: If you have some all-time great—or even not-so-great—first lines you’ve penned, share them and tell us what you have planned for them.

Readers: If there’s a first line that hooked you and made you read on or is stuck in your mind because it’s so good—or so bad—please share that.

Leave a comment and we’ll put your name in the drawing for a copy of No Substitute for Money.

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Carolyn J. Rose is the author of several novels, including Hemlock Lake, Through a Yellow Wood, An Uncertain Refuge, Sea of Regret, A Place of Forgetting, No Substitute for Murder, and No Substitute for Money. She penned a young-adult fantasy, Drum Warrior, with her husband, Mike Nettleton.

She grew up in New York's Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She founded the Vancouver Writers' Mixers and is an active supporter of her local bookstore, Cover to Cover. Her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.

You can find copies of No Substitute for Money at Amazon and Barnes & Noble