I am feeling neglected! No one had anything to say about my first line, nor, indeed, about my first chapter.
OTOH, I quite agree that the line about Nancy Drew was fascinating. it’s also true that the original Nancy was a lot more liberated than some of her later iterations. You can see the same thing in Hitchcock; the original, 1930s Man Who Knew Too Much featured a determined, alert little girl and a sharpshooter mother. In the 1950s revision, the girl was replaced by a boy, and the mother got to scream and sing rather than shoot bad guys. Interesting!
More first line comments: (Thank you, Mary, for drawing my attention to that I had missed 'em!)
Interests me, but it really depends on where you go from here.
I’ve already told y’ what I think o’ this. If I may sum it up for the public view so mary won’t feel so singled out:
“When” may be the wrong subordinating conjunction in that first sentence, since it makes it sound like she found out by sticking her hand in. “Before” might work better.
Cut the first two commas from the third sentence. That’s a prepositional phrase, and the commas disconnect it from its subject.
Those last two sentences are fragments, in case you didn’t know, and that latter one is vague about whether it refers to the horse or the lady. (Note that the “her” referred to prior to that fragment was the lady.)
Ah, erm. Hrm-haw. This is going to sound mighty strange and blunt, okay?
My first thought is that this line can’t stand by itself. It needs to be surrounded by more so I could tell for sure, but I think you’re still working on developing your writing style. Possibly younger or newer to the world of writing as a hobby, and if you’ve worked on style itself, I’d guess it’s only in the past five years.
The line strikes me as bland, forgettable. I read it, then thought about something else, then came back and had to reread it to make my comment. When I skim some more paragraphs, the situation sounds interesting, but I’m not feeling drawn into it. I think you could benefit from someone revising a section for you to demonstrate how the same scene can be displayed in different ways. If you’d be open to such a thing.
I intend this nicely, mary. I hope you don’t take offense.
I’ll give you an opening line of my own to rip to pieces as a peace offering. I recently wrote the short story “Romeo and Jillian” for a friendly competition over on Patricia Briggs’ fan forums, and include the link if you want to see and mock the rest. (And yes, I only dish out what I can accept in return.)
Line 1: replace “overflowed” with “flowed freely” or maybe “freely flowed”
Line 2: replace “neglected to notice” with “were beyond noticing” or maybe “refused to notice”
But there may be things further in that makes this unacceptable.
considers Line 1, I can see your point enough that I’ll have to consider that, though I really don’t want an adverb there. Line 2, your suggestions change the meaning overmuch. Do you not like that because it sounds wrong, or just because it sounds odd?
Neglected seems to … passive. And it is awkward. As in not smooth. If the passive “mistake” type meaning is needed then maybe simply “didn’t” would be an option. Sounds like there are good reasons for neglected though.
Well, I’ll take the dissenting view (why isn’t my wife surprised?). I like the parallelism of “spilled” & “overflowed”.
I also liked “neglected”. To me this was the opposite of passive. It was not just that they failed to notice, but that they didn’t care to notice. That she wasn’t worth noticing. They neglected to notice. It implied social hierarchy of some sort in a way that “failed” would not.
The downside of this is I am doing something that I don’t like - pulling apart individual phrases and sentences, out of context and without reference to overall style and content. Case in point: Stephen King. The great SK is one of the best and worst writers I have ever read. Reading individual sentences from a Stephen King novel can be painful. BUT when you put those sentences in context, then you keep reading them because he has you hooked. I am not a Stephen King fan, and rarely choose to read his work, but there are few of his books that I have not finished once started. In contrast, there are some more “artistic” authors who write at a level of perfection that is breathtaking. Each sentence is beautiful. But combine them together it’s like walking through a gallery of independent art pieces - all nice to look at and incredibly skilful, but I forget the story and eventually lose interest. Then, of course, you come across someone like Tim Winton who hooks you with the narrative and writes beautifully all the way through (and he’s good looking, lives in the bush, surfs and is apparently a nice bloke. The fink).
Also, as I’ve noted before, there is the fact that great literature rarely follows the rules of formal grammar and often bends the rules of punctuation in unusual and potentially painful ways. How many words did Shakespeare actually create? How often did he distend words and phrases, not to mention pronunciation, to fit his rhythm and rhyme?
Vic: Again, I’m going to be a voice of dissent. I think the qualifiers are essential. Remove “heightened” and “of arousal” and the sentence loses it’s meaning and intensity. Was she sexually aroused? Emotionally aroused? Was it fear? Anger?
Having said that, I’d rather know what her heightened state of arousal entailed. Increased heart rate? Breathing? Perspiration? Butterflies in the stomach? Sexual arousal? Racing thoughts? Clenched fists? I learnt in the “describe, don’t tell” school, so this is my own prejudice coming through. Since I don’t know what is coming up, it may be you want the ambiguity so you can surprise me later, I’m hesitant to make recommendations or suggestions.
I am less enamoured with “sadistic juxtaposing of certainty and uncertainty”, but I would read on to find out. As an opening sentence, what you wrote would carry me on to at least the end of the first paragraph, maybe to the end of the second. Like every other author, you’d have to earn my eyes from then on.
O Sweet gentle Dee,
Im an Ex-hairy-arsed welder, not a MA English Language. I wouldnt know what a split subject and verb was, even if the explanation was tattooed backtfront on my forehead, and I was a chronic narcissist
How do I show she was in a highly aroused state, rather than a torpid state, for example, if I remove those two modifiers. I must confess I don`t follow your reasoning on that at all.
Um, sorry. Lemme clarify: I removed the modifiers merely to demonstrate why the comma should be removed. I didn’t mean to say that you should remove them altogether.
EDIT: So Jaysen read my words as I’d intended them. It makes me feel a bit relieved that somebody did.
shrugs Still no comma. The clause is necessary to the sentence, so the comma actually interferes with the meaning.
You’re right, Caradee, I did ask for it! All I can say is that we have very different styles. I do not think of style as something to be worked on separate from content, and I never have. I’m a minimalist by inclination, and have never attempted anything as long as a novel before. But I have been writing, on and off, for close to thirty years - and I’ve got to say, you’re the first reader I’ve had (that I know about) who didn’t want to keep reading my novel-in-progress after the first paragraph.
As to your first paragraph, do you mean to say (or imply) that the wine spilled? That the girl was trying to avoid puddles of wine? If so, “overflowed” isn’t a bad way to put it. If not, it’s confusing. But that’s just the way I see it, and it’s clear we have very different styles. Yours seems ornate to me; perhaps overly so. I find it a bit off-putting for that reason.
But I have a rule for the kids in book club that I try to follow myself. You must always read at least the first chapter before expressing an opinion. One or two sentences isn’t really enough to go on.
BTW, perhaps the best opening I ever read was from a good, solid kid’s book (Torn Away by Henaghan. ) As I said, the book is good, indeed, very good of its kind. I’m not sure it’s a classic. And that goes to show you that a really exceptional opening, by itself, doesn’t always indicate an exceptional book. It does give you a fair indication of the tone, setting and type of book you’re in for. Heneghan does all that, and quite well.
And - this is reminding me of a fun exercise on another board. People quoted first lines from various books and then tried to guess authors and titles. Here’s one for you:
“It was six o:clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills.”
