From: mdhangton@gmail.com
Dorothy J Heydt brought next idea :
> 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.
I have _Telling Lies for Fun and Profit_ here. It doesn't have the one
you're talking about in it. I think you're talking about Writers'
Digest.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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