From: djheydt@kithrup.com
In article ,
William Vetter wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt explained on 11/23/2014 :
>> In article ,
>> William Vetter wrote:
>>> Dorothy J Heydt was thinking very hard :
>>>> In article ,
>>>> William Vetter wrote:
>>>>> It happens that J.Pascal formulated :
>>>>>> On Saturday, November 22, 2014 1:44:48 PM UTC-7, William Vetter wrote:
>>>>>>> Some time ago, I read one of those books...this one was about openings.
>>>>>>> It's thesis was the belief that it is possible to write an opening so
>>>>>>> strong, that editors, literary agents, readers, publishing executives
>>>>>>> are compelled to read on. One of the examples mentioned the
>>>>>>> assassination of JFK in the first sentence. Author claimed that this
>>>>>>> made it so interesting that people MUST read it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What I thought was that, "There are a lot of books about JFK. Why
>>>>>>> should I read this one?"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Of course, we want to be interesting, the get the quality of being
>>>>>>> interesting. What do you think makes a fragment or piece of writing
>>>>>>> interesting?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think it's different for different people.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your example is a good one. Lots of people would think, Oh, JFK again?
>>>>>> Yawn.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "The first time I died I..." might get an, Oh! More!, or else it might
>>>>>> get, Ew, gimmick much? Or else, yawn, vampire, right?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't think that the question itself, of how to craft that one
>>>>>> beginning that is so strong that no one can put it down, is
particularly
>>>>>> valid. Obviously the creature does not exist. I think that it might
be
>>>>>> more useful to think in terms of who am I writing for and how do I get
>>>>>> my audience not to set the book down. If my audience begins and ends
>>>>>> at "agent, publisher's slush reader and Editor" that's a particular
>>>>>> challenge, and frankly the only one that doesn't have cover art to help
>>>>>> you out.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Once I read a short story in one of the 4 magazines. I only remember
>>>>> the opening. It was one of those flash forward openings. A character
>>>>> shot another character's Roman nose off with a pistol because the nose
>>>>> annoyed him. I remember it because it was obvious as a hook.
>>>>>
>>>>> Was it interesting? Maybe. It was violent action.
>>>>
>>>> I think I would've closed the book, or paged through the
>>>> magazine, at that point, and my reaction would've been not Yawn
>>>> but Yucch.
>>>
>>> I don't remember what or who it was, but it was in F&SF around 1980.
>>> What I was getting at is you can often see where somebody equates raw
>>> violence or action or grisly crime scene descriptions with the concept
>>> of hook.
>>
>> Lawrence Block, who back in the day wrote lots of whodunits and
>> also wrote a monthly essay for one of the writers' magazines on
>> how to write fiction (generally, everything else in the book was
>> about how to write nonfiction and how to sell it to the editor
>> before you had written it). One of his essays was titled "Let's
>> Hear It for Sex and Violence!"
>
>Are you talking about _How to Write Killer Fiction_?
>I don't think there's anything about nonfiction in that.
No, I mean the magazine in which his essays originally appeared.
Writers' Digest, I *think*. I haven't read _HtWKF_, but I have a
couple of his other collections.
At least, I think I still have them; haven't looked in my shelves
lately.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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