First Chapters

I recently had a noted author write to me with this advice: "First chapters are critical in getting the attention of an agent, and agents are critical in getting your work before publishers."

Personally, from a reader's standpoint, I find that "first chapters are critical in getting the attention of the reader" too!

Some people judge a book by its cover. I often judge one by the first two or three pages -- and if the writing's good, the first chapter.

One of my favorite pastimes is going to Borders or Barnes and Noble, grabbing a half dozen titles from the stacks and sitting down to read with a cafe mocha. Last Sunday, my wife and I had the rare opportunity to break away from the kids and go to Barnes and Noble to do just that.

I brought my pile of books back to the tiny table and began to read. I was really excited about one particular author, so I grabbed several of his books. Unfortunately, I wasn't hooked by his writing style, so I put them down and picked up a random book from the "new fiction" shelf. I was captivated.

The book: Leo Furey's The Long Run

Wow! I haven't had a book grip my attention like that in awhile. I read the first chapter and was amazed at the emotions I went through. I literally laughed outloud at one character, Brother McCann, and then found myself ready to reach through the pages and kick him in the head until he was comatose. I was very impressed, and I can't wait to buy the book (My finances that night were going toward a movie -- American Gangster -- that was worth every inflated penny). I only hope the entire novel can live up to "first chapter" expectations.

The last few books that really caught my attention like that were Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

A very good resource for "first chapters" is the NY Times "First Chapters" site.

A few discussion questions:

1. What are some books with first chapters that grabbed your attention?


2. Do you find that subsequent chapters -- even endings -- often don't live up to first chapters?


3. Do you often trudge through clunky first chapters because you know that a good story is around the bend?


4. For writers, how much importance do you place on the first chapter?

Cliff-hangers and chapter organization

I posted earlier with a question about chapter length and organization. Although I received no comments on this site, I also posed the question to the Crimespace community. Here are some tips that I receieved:

* Some readers don't like to be burdened with having to hang in there for 20 pages before turning off the light. Others get irritated by one page chapters. In the end you have to do what feels right for your book.


* Virtually all of my scenes end with some sort of cliff-hanger. Not all of them are of the Bad-Guy-Pulls-A-Gun variety either. I try to end with some sort of a twist or reversal which increases tension and (hopefully) forces the reader to go on to the next chapter.

* Let your writing flow naturally. It's better than having a preconceived notion of what it's supposed to "look" like. If you're on your second chapter, chances are it will end up looking a lot different in the second draft anyway. My chapters in the last book start out long in the beginning and get shorter and shorter as I raised the pulse of the reader.


Personally, one of the best books I've read (in terms of cliff-hangers) was The Da Vinci Code. When I read that book (prior to all of the plot points being revealed on every major network), I couldn't put it down. EVERY chapter left me wanting more. I read it in about three days but had to force myself to put it down on the night stand and go to bed.

I thank everyone who took the time on Crimespace to answer. I've decided to just write and break to a next chapter when it feels right. I'm in the middle of Chapter 3 right now, but I've already started Chapter 4. Now, I just need to fill in the gaps!

Things I'm learning along the way

This blog is actually working...

No, there are not very many comments coming in (yet), but by writing my occasional posts, I have been motivated to work on my book and to seek out resources that I didn't know existed before I started this (Wicked Wordsmith, Crimespace, etc). As of today, my book is at 22 pages and I'm well into chapter 2! This is exciting for me because I have a definite direction for this work -- and that is a huge accomplishment for me, as I've started many things that just kind of fell flat.

Some things that I'm learning along the way:

1. The characters really do drive themselves. Yes, I have a conclusion in mind, but my protagonist has a life of his own. I often find myself saying things like: "He'd do this instead of that" or I'll go back and make significant changes because I'd have Tommy doing something that was totally out of character.

2. I read somewhere that you shouldn't introduce secondary characters without having them reappear again with some significance. That makes a lot of sense, when I think about it. I've actually introduced some characters for flavor, but coming across that advice, I need to figure out how they'll reappear. I'm actually very excited about this and have some ideas.

3. I need to write when I don't want to write. The other night, my wife and I were lounging on the couch and flipping channels. I told her: "I hate nights like this when you feel like you've just wasted an entire evening." She said "Why don't you go write?" At first, I felt like saying "I'm tired" or "I just don't have it in me tonight." Instead, I got up and dragged myself to the computer and pounded out three pages or so. I started to get tired and wanted to quit midway through a scene, but I continued to write -- just to finish the scene and "turn the corner." Before I went to bed, I had revised the first chapter (again) and was well on my way into Chapter 2 (It might even be time to move to Chapter 3). I was tired the next morning, but something had been accomplished -- which is the point, right?

4. Do chapters have to be similar in length? At this point, I'm deciding they don't because my second chapter ends naturally at about half the length of the first. Is this appropriate, or is there some rule regarding chapter length?

Looking forward to some comments!!

Considering a change

I am very disgruntled with my creative nonfiction thesis project -- so disgruntled, in fact, that I'm considering a change. I want to write fiction! But I've taken no fiction writing courses because there haven't been any offered after 5 p.m., when I could take them.

Some challenges I've discovered with creative nonfiction:

1. It's tough to analyze yourself and to then put it down on paper.
2. When people are still living, it's tough to analyze them and put it down on paper -- for me, there is a genuine fear of upsetting someone. Facts are facts, and they should speak for themselves (in theory and within the confines of objective journalism); but...when delving into creative nonfiction, you let your judgements show, and that still seems pretty risky to me.
3. I've got some great nonfiction ideas, but I feel rushed to write those stories based upon a thesis deadline.
4. Right now, I want to write fiction -- plain and simple!

Any thoughts?

Resident Tiller of the Soil

Are you the "resident tiller of the soil" or "the trading seaman?"

In Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov", the author examines these two groups.

Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which
all storytellers have drawn. And among those who have written down the tales, it
is the great ones whose written version differs least from the speech of the
many nameless storytellers. Incidentally, among the last named there are two
groups which, to be sure, overlap in many ways. And the figure of the
storyteller gets its full corporeality only for the one who can picture them
both. “When someone goes on a trip, he has something to tell about,” goes
the German saying, and people imagine the storyteller as someone who has come
from afar. But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home,
making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions. If one
wants to picture these two groups through their archaic representatives, one is
embodied in the resident tiller of the soil, and the other in the trading
seaman. Indeed, each sphere of life has, as it were, produced its own tribe of
storytellers. ...

The actual extension of the realm of storytelling in its full historical breadth is inconceivable without the most intimate interpenetration of these two archaic types. Such an interpenetration was achieved particularly by the Middle Ages in their trade structure. The resident master craftsman and the traveling journeymen worked together in the same rooms; and every master had been a traveling journeyman before he settled down in his home town or somewhere else. If peasants and seamen were past masters of storytelling, the artisan class was its university. In it was
combined the lore of faraway places, such as a much-traveled man brings home,
with the lore of the past, as it best reveals itself to natives of a place.

At this point in my "career" I consider myself a resident tiller of the soil -- "the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions."

As a journalist, I have taken what others have told me, organized it, and passed it on. So far, that's been my form of storytelling (which, Benjamin would argue -- along with the novel -- is a step down from the oral tradition).

There's a lot more to the essay than what I've shown here, but I like the imagery of digging up the stories and sharing them with others. As writers, that's our job -- whether the stories come from others or from our own personal experiences, expressed in both fiction and non-fiction.

What do you think?

(Actually, I think I confused myself in all of this ...)

A few questions

What's in a name?

Do you ever have trouble naming your characters? My protagonist is Thomas "Tommy" Richter. I wanted a good German name, but now I'm re-thinking my choice -- Is the name "Tommy" appropriate for a 30-something? My thinking is that he's "Tommy" to the people in his neighborhood and "Thomas" in the workplace. Is that too distracting? Are there any really good resources out there for character naming?

Using real places?

Are there any dangers having your characters going to real places, like real universities? Right now, I have Tommy as a graduate of St. Louis University, but it's basically a place-holder until I can do some more research. Tommy is a journalist, but I haven't checked to see if SLU has a journalism program. I went to a Missouri school with a journalism program, but it's not in St. Louis. I want Tommy to go to a school in St. Louis. Does "creating" a university -- even if it's just a brief mention -- give the story less credibility?

Any good examples out there of dream sequences?

I'm looking for a creative way to insert a dream -- in real time -- into my story. Do you know of any good examples?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Three hours of writing!!

This was an amazing night. Very unusual, as I had three hours of time to write. My older son went to bed early, and our baby went down soon after. So, I fought the temptation to channel surf and buckled down to write. I reworked the first chapter and I love the changes I've made.

It's still not perfect, but it's time to move on to chapter two.

The original version led off with my protagonist, Tommy, sitting in the back of a Catholic church wating his turn to jump in the communion line. But after much consternation and a nagging feeling that it was all wrong, I went back and changed it -- not the story line, just the opening pages.

Now, I lead off with a pretty nice narrative of the church (a central theme to this novel) and I put Tommy at home in bed as the church bells begin to ring -- waking him up to the realization that he is late, again. It's odd, but this slight change has allowed me to better define Tommy, to give him more depth and to introduce several integral elements that need to be revisited throughout the story.

I was just so excited to actually have the time to sit and write. If I had any alcohol in the house, I'd make a toast!

Also, I have begun to receive some comments on this blog. That is very exciting too. Please keep them coming, and I will try my best to make this site worth visiting. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Personal Interviews

I have interviewed many interesting people in my life, and by using this tool of communication, I've found that some of the most ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.

The last couple of years, I've been "interviewing" my grandparents. Unfortunately the conversations are usually so impromptu that I don't have a tape recorder set up, but I've been able to absorb some wonderful historic information. This weekend, my grandmother visited for my son's dedication at church. We sat and talked for hours; she told me stories about herself and others, filling in many gaps about relatives I thought I'd known. And while it was fun to learn about my relatives, I couldn't stop thinking plotlines and characters. I know they'll show up in my writing.

My grandmother was born in the Old Mines area of Missouri, just north of Potosi. The area was mined first for lead; and when that ran out, they began digging for tiff. There's an amazing French culture that is literally dying out.

For those who are writing any health-related, suspense or (dare I say -- horror) fiction, my grandma told me the story of her grandmother's funeral. This would have been in the early 1930s. Apparently, my great-great grandmother died of dropsy -- we know it as edema -- when your organs swell with fluid. Before she died, she told her husband to wait three days until she was buried. He abided by her wishes, but those three days proved to be a bad idea. You see, my grandmother's body continued to swell with fluid. During the funeral procession, the casket was put in the back of a horse-drawn wagon. Much to everyone's dismay, the body was so bloated that it DRIPPED fluid from the house to the graveyard. Yuck.

Anyway, here's the reason my great great grandmother wanted to wait three days to be buried. Back then, when people fell into a coma, people thought they were dead because the diagnoses were so innacurate. So....the rumors were that many people were buried alive.

There were other stories, but that's the one that was most vivid. My grandmother is a great storyteller -- and I'm thankful that she's taking the time to tell me and she's also writing these things down for me.

Feel free to share your personal interview stories.

Crimespace

I recently became a member of Crimespace ("a place for readers and writers of crime fiction to meet").


Angela, Wicked Wordsmith, revealed on her site that Crimespace was hosting a short story competition. The theme is "Australia" and the use of this theme is very broad. I think I might enter.

One author finds time

I was reading a story in the New York Times about Anne Enright, the winner of Britain's 2007 Man Booker Prize for her novel "The Gathering." (I haven't read the book, but it must be pretty good.)


Of interest to me were a few paragraphs at the end of the article regarding Anne's writing time:

“The kids go to school; I sit down and write,” she
said. “The kids go to bed; I sit down and write.” Her husband, Martin Murphy, who runs a theater outside Dublin, works at night, which makes finding time to be together a challenge. “At the Booker dinner I thought maybe we could talk about our holiday plans,” she said, laughing. But in different ways they were both too nervous.

Oddly enough, Ms. Enright said, having children — she has two, 4 and 7 — has made her work easier.

“I find that the whole sense of anxiety and largeness, the sense that you’re writing everything, the allness of it, disappears completely,” she said. “You have just three or four hours a day, and you’re going to write a book, and it just shrinks the work into its proper proportion.”

Obviously, Anne is a full-time writer. Personally, I can say with authority that having two kids doesn NOT make writing easier. It gives you something beautiful to write about, but the actual TIME to write all but disappears. I'm very thankful to God for providing me a wife who realizes this and does what she can to help me find the time.


Ahh...just more encouragement to make it, right?

Tips for creative nonfiction

On a tip from my friend Angela (Wicked Wordsmith), I browsed the "Velda Brotherton" section of her Web site. Velda is an Ozarks writer with several novels and works of creative nonfiction under her belt.

As you know, I'm working on a series of creative nonfiction pieces for my thesis. I found Velda's posts -- including those on character development and historic research -- very encouraging and I've made note of several tools and tips.

See Velda's Wicked Wordsmith posts here.

Velda's professional site is located here.

Mississippi Solo

Have any of you read the book Mississippi Solo?

If you have not, you're missing out. In this work of nonfiction, Eddy L. Harris -- who lived a portion of his life in St. Louis -- recounts his solo trip (in a canoe) from the head waters of the Mississippi down to Louisiana.

This is an amazing story -- quite scary at times, especially when the author is paddling his little canoe through the locks and dams and dodging the wakes of massive barges (and dodging the barges themselves).

I was intrigued by this journey because I grew up in St. Louis within a mile of the Mighty Mississippi. I didn't spend a lot of time on the River, but I've been down to its banks enough to feel its overwhelming power. When people say they want to go boating on the Mississippi, I reply with "Good luck!"

When I was a teenager, a buddy of mine and I planned to do some night fishing on the river. The spot we'd had picked out was, of course, on private land, and we were not invited. But we were determined to drop a line in anyway. Well, before I left the house (wearing old jeans, an old ratty sweatshirt and toting a much-too-small fishing pole for the Mississippi) I made the mistake of telling my mother where we were going fishing.

I don't think she believed me. Certainly, two teenaged boys were up to no good if they were heading to the river at night. She was certain that we had something else up our sleeve, so she replied with an emphatic "Nuh-uh. You're not going fishing."

I pleaded my case, but she stood her ground. She said "If you ARE going fishing, you're NOT going there. What would happen if you were sucked in? At night, when no one could see you? Forget about it."

When I was that age, I would often try to argue to get my way. But that night, there was a seriousness in my mom's tone -- something I didn't want to question. And I've never questioned it since. For the past 15 years, I've wondered what would've/could've happened that night -- two kids trying to balance on slippery rocks and battle the rip-roaring currents of one of nature's powerhouses. I'm glad I didn't go.

That's why I was fascinated by Eddy's book. He challenged the River and he won. But it wasn't for a lack of respect -- respect he learned to afford the River and respect he gained for himself.

Great book. Good writing.

Eddy followed up this book with a handful of others, including Native Stranger, Still Life in Harlem, and South of Haunted Dreams.

Wicked Wordsmith

Last week, I was excited to hear from an old friend, Angela Wilson, who worked with me at the Springfield News-Leader several years ago. Angela is an aspiring novelist. But she is also a communications professional who works to market books, as well as provide resources, tools, reviews, etc. to other writers.

She currently maintains a professional blog called Wicked Wordsmith. I would encourage any writer to frequent this awesome resource.

Like me, Angela is writing a novel and she's seeking encouragment. She's been kind enough to share with me a few pages of her manuscript, and I can say this: It is suspenseful and well written.

Keep writing, Angela!!

I look forward to following her career.