Naked on the Page

Warning: Explicit Language Below


One of the elemental rules of crafting story dictates that a protagonist must grow or change as a direct result of the story's action. I guess it could also be argued that the protagonist could choose *not* to change as a result of the story's action, as well. Still, shit happens, or you don't have a story.

In order to transport a reader into the story world and hold them there, the story's movement must also result in some incremental and potentially dramatic shift in your character's sense of self awareness as she struggles to reset her world's equilibrium.

I swear to you that I would never dare to soil the field of women's literature with another tired plot revolving around a middle-aged love triangle. (Yawn. Lived it, don't want to read about it) However, an episode of same-sex marital infidelity does provide the fuel that sets my protag's journey into the realm of the (mostly) dead into motion.

As of yesterday's revisions, my protag had not yet realized yet that her competition for her husband's affection is another man. I kind of dreaded returning to the scene, because during the original draft, my words felt "episodic", and the character's reactions to her plight wooden.

During the rewriting, the most amazing thing happened. Lo and behold, my main character's prissy little personality decided to dig in to the plot and pull her own weight. That stuck-up garden party belle stood up off the page and taught herself how to cuss. She'd have done any sailor proud, too.

Watching the little lady perform represented one of those moments when it felt as if I was taking dictation as opposed to writing fiction. You see, there are just some words that a woman of a certain age and upbringing will not allow to soil her fair lips, but my protag broke all of her former rules of decorum as she prepared to catch her husband and her competetion "en flagrante"...

(Dear God, please tell me my Mom doesn't read blogs...the hot flashes, yes, we'll blame it on those...)

excerpt:

...Then, I remembered that I wasn’t dressing for a dinner date. It could well be that trail of years stretching out behind me and Byron would go for naught by the end of this day.

Tears sprang to my eyes when I realized that I was donning armor for the fight of my life.

"That two-bit trollop,” I cursed. Somehow, my choice in swear words didn’t feel quite as vindicating as I’d hoped.

“That hussified jezebel,” I tried again.

Nope, not quite the word I was looking for.

“Fuck?”

No way, I thought. I’ve already used that word. Twice.

“CUNT,” I dared.

Oops. Now there’s a word. Outwardly, I recoiled in shock, lest Momma roll over in her grave.

But if the word fits…

“Just who the hell does that cunt think she is, moving in on my life? Over my fucking dead body!"

“There,” I said as I topped my ash blonde chignon with a black straw hat whose broad brim boasted a discrete sprinkling of linen flowers. “Cunt was exactly the word I was looking for.”

Momma would just have to get over it...

Back to the first rule of fiction--the protagonist must grow or change as a result of the story's action. Hmmmm. The belle formerly known as the lady with the stick up her backside says the dread C word. In doing so, the reader might actually BELIEVE it when she rebels against the status quo and breaks every single one of the rules of Deadiquette.

I think we're getting somewhere. Its about (fucking)time.

*please excuse the lack of italics when presenting the characters internal dialogue above. Blogger beta sucks toads and seems to be refusing to do its job of recognizing html 101.

**If you're thinking of switching to Blogger beta, don't. At least not yet. I can't comment on original Blogger blogs without making up a whole new identity, and folks on the old Blogger can't comment on mine most of the time. Its getting quite lonely out here in beta land...

***if the blogger beta police come after me as a result of my public blasphemy, please send cakes with embedded hacksaws to starmuse23@gmail.com

Hope Floats. (But my first line sank!)

Yesterday, I dumped the first line of Draft #1 on you,with a promise to re-visit it today. Sadly, my opinion of my work continues to bother me for a number of reasons, beyond its general state of sucking blowfish.

First, there's the "second person" voice to contend with. Normally, stepping outside of story to address the reader directly wouldn't represent my first choice of viewpoint. However, when I first dug into creating the original manuscript, I wanted to move forward into the thick of the plot as quickly as I could.

I'm the kind writer who has bumped into sagging middle syndrome more than once. And no, I'm not talking about my gut. I had hoped that by erupting out of the starting gate as if the hounds of hell yipped at my heels, sheer momentum would force me to tumble over my typical page 125 existential crisis. Hopefully, before the magic of my story got away from me. And it worked! I learned something new. However, I also learned that there is a huge flip side to runaway writing. My slop factor tends to increase proportionate to my keyboard velocity. (Where I'm from slop is what we feed hogs.)

Since I'm savant at speed typing, I'm able to lay down thoughts nearly as fast as the words flood into my mind. For that reason my writing comes out sounding like I'm talking directly to my reader. Now granted, this can sometimes be a good thing. My internal editor doesn't have a prayer of keeping up with the flow of my writing, so I don't struggle much with the sadistic witch anymore.

My old crit group used to say that reading something I'd written felt like sitting across the table from me listening to me talk. I do like that kind of intimacy in a story, particularly in a romance. Still, beginning a book with second-person writing flirts with a risk humongoid enough to warrant automatic REJECTION. Since I'm not a "known entity" in the genre I'm trying to break into, it would most likely behoove me to choose another approach.

Second, my writing reads very "southern." Almost painfully so. Yes, this is how I talk. I can't help myself there. But I think I could tone it down a bit as I polish this manuscript. Fortunately, the characters are traipsing about South Carolina's low country. They can get away with a "you all" every now and then.

Lastly, I have to ease into chapter one's reincarnation a renegade character (Ceci) who popped up during the first write of chapter three. Ceci got ballsy in her insistence that she'd play significantly in the book's movement towards the denoument. I can't very well do the surprise ending without her, so it wouldn't be wise to dump her into the picture like a big old red herring to neatly wind up my story. So, it would be wise to introduce Ceci from the get go, don't you think? (There's that second person voice sneaking out again!).

As my original draft stands, my first line read's like this: If you’re sitting there thinking that your love life is beyond reproach, then you’d best just sit down and cut yourself a big old slice of humble pie, because you’re going to be chomping on it come sundown.

Whew. Reading it still makes me shudder. Let me try this again. Shorter this time:

Saying that my love life was beyond approach was my first mistake.

Gak. First off, I don't like beginning sentences with "ing" words. Not that I'm not guilty of doing exactly that, but certainly never for a lead in. Still, the gist of the idea is a bit better.

To tell God and anybody else who would listen that my love life was beyond reproach was the first mistake I made as I prepared to meet my fortieth birthday.

Yawn. Granted, the line has moved out of first person, and reads much less like southernese. While I feel more like my main character has a comeuppance story to tell, the passive feel of it doesn't get me any closer to introducing Ceci on the first page. Now this new opening needs a major was-ectomy. Scratch it.

What if the reader's suspicion that Darcy is hurting for a comeuppance comes out of Ceci's mouth instead of Darcy's? Now, this I like. If I can manage to set the concepts of the original first paragraph into an exchange between Ceci and Darcy, then I've moved away from a retelling of events, and into the magical realm of show. My penchant for was-ing my reader into slamming my book shut dies a natural death.

Scene setting and dialogue to initiate charactization? Woah. An editor wrote that on one of my manucripts once. could it be....that she knew whereof she spoke?

I probably nailed my own casket shut when I went on and on to Ceci about the beatific state of my marriage to Byron. (Beyond the cliche of "nail the casket shut", I like where this is going...)

"Lord, Ceci" I sighed as she pushed my freshly low-lighted head back over the rinse sink. "Even if I died and went to Heaven this very moment, I couldn't want for more bliss than I've already known."

Ceci yanked my soaking wet head up from the sink, forcing me to look her eye to eye. "Girl, keep on like that, you'll be chomping on humble pie come sundown."

Ahhhh, now we're getting somewhere. The exchange has established that Ceci is probably a hairdresser (which she is), and that Darcy likely has a very inflated opinion of her own marriage. Nobody's marriage is perfect. A comeuppance tale makes itself imminent.

The fact that Darcy is getting low lights gives me a bit of leeway to begin to insert hints about her coloring. I'm thinking we have a bit of a slave to her own good looks on our hands, too.

I'm starting to like this approach. Dialogue. Action. Character development. Now here's some writing I can begin to work with. While the first line doesn't have the gotcha factor I envisioned, its a far cry better than my original start.

Not bad for a second draft. I think I'll run with it.

The OPFL Nominees Are...

I finally re-opened my Book of Deadiquette manuscript file today. Smug in the illusion that the world had never seen a more diligent author, I put aside my typical weekend pursuits (laundry and lunch box washing) so that I could dig into these dreaded, albeit inevitable revisions.

It didn't require my reading more than one line of my own prose for self-flagellating humility to come along and rock my confidence. There really is no denying the fact that my first line sucks blowfish.

Considering that my book currently sits at 70,000 unedited words, I'm humbled enough to realize that this revision effort could take a good bit longer than I expected. Apparently getting the bare bones of my story onto paper represented the easy part of the creative process.

Now the real work begins. Somehow, I have to make a good storyline readable and engaging.

Before I made the decision to dive head first back into my aspiring novelist career after having spent ten years away, I did do my homework. While writing with any kind of consistency felt pretty impossible as I raised and advocated for two kids with autism, I never stopped studying craft. I'm well aware all of the dire warnings that remind me if I am to grab an editor's attention, I have approximately one line of twelve-point Times New Roman to do it with. Is it any wonder that I've now developed an acute case of first line anxiety?

So here I sit, with dozens of my favoritest favorite books piled around me, and with God as my witness, I have eaten up my entire first day of scheduled revisions voyeuristically perusing OPFL's (other people's first lines). I'm trying to glean for myself why it is that some first lines have the power to send me running for the nearest cash register while others leave me so unmoved that I return them to their places on the bookstore shelf.

I doubt that I'm the first writer to hate her own manuscript beginning with word one, so in hopes that another might benefit from the conundrum I face today, I'm going to share some amazing first lines.

While this quest didn't get me any closer to my sixty-days to completed second draft goal, it certainly has given me a bit of new insight into how writers command readers, and hopefully why editors choose the manuscripts that they do.

So here they are, my personal nominations for Best OPFL's. For me, each is imbued with elusive power to not only draw a reader's interest, but also to compel the irresistable urge to turn the page.

Genre: paranormal chick lit:
"The Day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry"
Undead and Unwed ( by Mary Janice Davidson).
This line speaks of magic in an Every Woman kind of way. Haven't we ALL had days like this? And don't we all want a bit of magic to come whisk us away now and again?

Genre: short story
Mavis McPherson is locked in the bathroom and will not come out.
(Ordinary Life: Stories, A Love Story by Elizabeth Berg)
Now I, for one, want to know what in the hell is up with Mavis! By the sounds of her name, it appears that she may have been around the block a time or two. Forget chic lit, I see a hen's tale coming on, and I want to know more.

Genre: women's fiction:
Until I met Grace Russo, I did not know that my Lacoste shirts did not have to be dry-cleaned.
(Full of Grace, A Novel, Dorothea Benton Frank)
From the first line, I'm dying to know exactly who Grace Russo is, as well as why any woman in her right mind would pay good money to dry clean Lacoste! So much so that I purchased this book in hardcover. With no discount.

Genre: thriller:
Scott Duncan sat across from the killer.
(Just One Look, Harlan Coben)
Did you say killer? Nothing like starting the reader off in the thick of the plot.

Nonfiction:
Let's say a spaceship lands next to you on the coffee table (does size matter?) and inside is The Universal Book of Everything.
(What the Bleep do We Know?, William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vincente)
Don't know about ya'll, but The Universal Book of Everything is right up there on my wish list with the Holy Grail. That, and finding a bra that enhances something other than back rolls.

Middle Grade Children's Book:
When May died, Ob came back to the trailer, got out of his good suit, and into his regular clothes, then went and sat in the Chevy for the rest of the night.
(Missing May, Cynthia Rylant)
Poor Ob! Who was May, why did she die, and what made Ob love her so much that he'd sleep in a Chevy? (A Lamborghini, I could understand, but a Chevy?)

Paranormal Romance Novella:
The dirty, sweat-soaked demon dropped to his knees.
(Mysteria: Mortal in Mysteria, Susan Grant)
Wow. I like demons. Especially sweaty ones on their knees. Hubba Bubba, gimme more! :)

Young Adult:
God, I hate School.
(Oh My Goth, Gina Showalter)
Show me one teenager who can't sympathize with such a universal sentiment. My daughter read, and re-read this book in the space of 24 hours. So natch, I had to steal it from her in order to glean for myself how Ms. Showalter managed to come between my angst ridden, would be Goth girl (if she hadn't been cursed with Abercrombie and Fitch genes) and her love affair with the internet.

With my new enlightenment regarding OPFL's that I wish had been my own, I returned back to my own first line. As the eager writer in me erupted out of the starting gate, my (humble, I swear) beginning stood like this:

If you’re sitting there thinking that your love life is beyond reproach, then you’d best just sit down and cut yourself a big old slice of humble pie, because you’re going to be chomping on it come sundown.

I could argue that there are worse first lines out there, but I also have to acknowledge that this one is far from magical.

Tomorrow, I'll revisit my first line, as well as the following paragraphs. I already know that I have to introduce my protag's best friend much quicker than I did in Drafty old Draft 1, as she suddenly popped onto the reader's radar, completely unannounced, in chapter 3. (That scene stealing bitch!)

In the meantime, tell me about your favorite first lines. You can use your own, or those of an author whose work you love.

I really do want to know what sends you to page two.