Tag: Grammar

8 Things to Keep OUT of Your Opening Sentence

In our on-demand culture, we need the best, and we needed it right now yesterday. There’s no time to afford mediocrity developing into greatness. If a TV show isn’t piquing my interesting within five minutes, then I’m switching on “Downton Abbey Zombieland.” If YouTube drivel doesn’t make me “lol” within thirty seconds, then I’m going to chew gum instead. And if the first sentence of a story doesn’t suffice, then your writing isn’t worth my time (or anyone’s else).

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Hi W.A.W.-

What ingredients do you need for the perfect opening sentence?

—Carter Bellamy, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Don’t call me W.A.W. That’s actually Waxing All Wrong, an unaffiliated blog that has everything to do with waxing, and nothing to do with writing.

This is an inexhaustible topic. You’ll find dozens of ways on how to “do it right,” but none on what *not* to do. Since I’m not Writing All Right, you can look for the “Opening Sentence Ingredients” elsewhere. Here’s a blacklist for things you don’t want in an opening sentence.

1. Banal Brevity

(waits for you to look up “banal” – ok, good)

Don’t shoot for the pithy one-worder or the half-sentence. Why can Dickens get away with an opening sentence of “LONDON,” and you can’t? You’re no Dickens. You are not clever if you think “less is more” and fart down something like “Smokehouses,” or “The falling of the rain,” or “Nothing beside remains.” The discriminating reader will see right though your fraudulence.

2. Truths Self-Evident

There’s a way to state the obvious with mastery, and unless you do just that, don’t do that. 

“Yet another day passed where I’d had enough with my boss.” — How insightful. No one thinks that.

“I loathe Mondays.” — Really? Thought everyone liked those.

“The sun arced ‘round the ridge, just as it always had, just as it ever will.” — Nuh uh.

3. Dialogue

Of all tactics, this one might be the most well-known. Doesn’t stop amateurs from disregarding the rule. Unless one of your characters says something that will stop both the revolutions of planet Earth and the bowels of one who binged on Taco Bell at 2 AM, then don’t use dialogue for your first line. Heck, even if it’s a great line, use it later.

4. Mundaneness 

The opening sentence need not be something you can slip into anywhere else in the story unnoticed. “Some character did some thing and yeah.” You’re setting a tone with style, not with slumber. You are allowed to jazz this up. There’s a profoundness in the placing of that opening line. Ignore it at your peril. If you’re going to write boring sentences, write them in the middle of the book, where the flames of spite will eat them at the last.

5. Backstory

“Whaaa? But how are you supposed to introduce the events of the story?” Let the events themselves introduce the story. I do not care that “High King Regurgitus was born on the Nocturnalpictus of Seventhember, thus granting him legendary power, all of which sets in motion our story.” Start too far back, and you won’t have anything at all. Need proof? Star Wars hit the scene halfway into its story, right on the money. What? It’s a movie? Yeah, well, whatever…

6. An answered question

“It was where the dead buried the dead who buried their dead.” Cool, that’s great: another dumb zombie/vamp/undead novel that I really don’t need to know more about. Come on, if you’re going to propose something like that, leave room for wonder, not blunder.

7. Character description

“He pressed a firm handed to his barrel chest, peering through penetrating hazel eyes into a lake that reflected an empty soul within a chiseled frame.” Pardon me while I reverse my dinner in hopes of purifying this sentence. This is one of the weakest of weaksauces. It doesn’t even have the consistency of sauce. This isn’t so much clever or cheating. Unless the description plays a key part in the story (and even then, that’s borderline emesis), don’t start off that way. You know, just don’t start off that way, period.

8. Introduction

“Our story begins in—” 

“Here is the tale of—” 

“Lemme tell ya about a story about—” 

You’ve seen these lazy attempts before. At least I have. I failed them when they were written back in Creative Writing for Kindergarteners. These don’t even qualify as weaksauce, vacuous as they are. May God forgive your talentless soul should such opening sentences issue from your pen.

What else do you try to avoid in your opening sentence?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). He was both the Best of TIME® and the Worst of TIME® in the same TIME®.

Building Sentence Structure with Style

Hitting a wall with a hammer. With a bowling ball. With a dead seagull. With the codpiece of Beelzebub. Switching back between them, alternating thuds with trinkets and tokens, skulls and bones.

Yeah, we’re pulling out a variety of eclectic items to do the hitting and thudding, but have we done anything worthwhile? Let’s shift this to inferior writing: No matter how you dress it up, no matter what trickery you employ, if your writing style comes across as drones of drumming thuds, then you need to rethink your place in the universe.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Hey Writing All Wrong,

I was happy to see that you’re accepting some writing samples again. (Editor’s note: No, we’re not.)

Since you obviously hate fantasy writing, I present a more modern opening. It doesn’t take place in a castle, so don’t be too hard on it:

“Barron entered the dimly-lit hallway. His fingers ran over chipped paint. He walked over the shattered glass. The light blinked vaguely through the narrow corridor. He tiptoed further. Blood pooled more thickly around each step.”

“He pulled out a forgotten flashlight. The shattered (Ok, we’re done.)”

—Cranston Holloway, Kansas City, Mo.

Cranston, you mistake me for a hater. I don’t hate fantasy writing (ok, maybe I do). I hate bad writing. Genre fiction has become a sinkhole for those of poor talent, bad form, and no sense of how the writing craft works. But nevermind that. I’ll be pulling another item from the inbox to rail on this soon enough.

Good writers, good readers, good people will read between the lines and under the words. Whether you’re aiming for an economic style or a direct approach, you’re not a stylist if your style is dull, redundant, and tiresome.

If your prose reads like you filled in some cheeky “Novelist’s Mad Libs,” then it’ll show, and it’s going to show your book to flight out the window. (Noun) – (verb) – (place). (Noun) – (verb) – (thing). (Noun) – (verb) – (thing or place, take your pick). (Noun) – (verb) – (adverb, ah) – (something boring). (Kill) – (me) – (now).

Don’t write like you’re hitting a wall with a variety of syncopated thuds. It’s not art. It’s lame. Change it up.

If I wanted to throw this writing sample into a better trashbin before taking it out to the dump, I’d recommend tying a few things together. How about using rare and unheard of things like “compound-complex” sentences? If we’re looking at a basic remix:

“Barron entered the dimly-lit hallway. His fingers ran over chipped paint while he walked over the shattered glass. The light blinked vaguely through the narrow corridor. Blood pooled more thickly around each step he tiptoed further. He pulled out a forgotten flashlight to peer into the shattered (ok, I’m done again)”

Even without coffee, that edit just flows better.

“But I don’t want it to floooow, I want it to, uh, not flow!” Then what, idiot? Want it to stall? Read it again. It still plods along with a pace foreboding. By contrast, let’s hand it to Fake Henry James:

“Barron, having entered the hallway dimly-lit, one which beckoned his fingers to run over chipped paint during the walk upon shattered glass; this, a corridor with light blinking vaguely illuminating the blood pooling around each tiptoe of a step taken further, pulled out a forgotten flashlight to peer into the shattered (sorry, we’ve gotta pull this plug)”

Have you ever caught yourself thudding along before snapping into proper writing? If not, there’s still time.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). If you want to hire Fake Henry James, please enquire within.

Inventing Words: Stop That!

“People everywhere, just wanna be free, wanna read your story, don’t wanna have to figure out your crazy idiosyncratic terminology.” — The Rascals.

The cup of judgment is not yet full on the misguided purity of storytelling. We’re not “Storytelling All Wrong” today. But for pure storytelling that chokes on its own chunks with too much of these noodling neologisms and invented wordspew? Cup of judgment: OVERFULL.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I heard you do some unsolicited reviews, so I wanted you to read as [sic] sample of what I’m working on.

“The rolled curtains of darkness covered the Arkhurt and the shields of the guarding Morghoth, defenders of the plain. The righteous field magick, the am’nepath, could only hold the evil back so long . . .

“Blisstrix cast aside her mitirith in disgust. The ritual jewelry of King L’andrøth was a stinging reminder of the maiden’s hollow servitude, a hidden curse of the Arkh-fathers . . . ”

—”Mage” Blackstone, Falls Church, Va.

I had to put “Mage” in quotes because there’s no way your name is Mage.

I had to withhold generous portions of this sample because, again, there’s no way your name is Mage.

I had to check my sources on where I said I do these unsolicited reviews because, once again, there’s no way your name is Mage.

Let’s break this down:

1) I asked Mrs. Writing All Wrong whether or not you “roll” curtains over anything. (“Nope.”) Gotta chalk off a point for clumsy mixed metaphors.

2) What’s with this invented vocab, this battery of fake words we have going on?

[I’m gonna park right here, folks. This needs attention.]

Fantasy/SF/cyberplank/wannabe writers: Please stop the unnecessary thuds of invented words and made up inner-narrative terms. You are not a genius, nor are you crafty for “inventing” a world of imaginary words. If you want to codify the mind goo of excessive D&D play and occupying a rent-free basement with your thoughts, then write Urukhukturian Culture and Vocabulary for Beginners, or what have you.

I don’t care if you explain what a jallidot is, or how the séances of Yrthbayne progress to the luminary cycles. If you take a detour to explain that a nuurgodd is a “special type of axe dipped in royal jelly,” let’s agree to call it an “axe” instead. Readers with even mediocre brain function will soon peer right through the vapid vapors of glitter and excess, finding a weak story and limpid writing as a whole.

Am I against even the slightest whiff of neologism? No. But this imaginary vocabulary exuberance affects the weak-minded to a fatal degree. Instead of focusing on trifles like theme, tropes, pacing, cadence, connotation, narrative, and plot, the weak writer latches onto the giddiness of his own rubified brain dumps, pinning them to a flimsy story and a weak, sputtering tale.

If you get too excited about the technobabble, the psuedo-linguistics, the mythical tongues of invented ages, then write a curriculum or a primer. Don’t shame the writing trade with your attempt at a story.

 Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). He’s the Phthanath of the Realm of Stythrandorn.