Top 10 first lines in children's and teen books | Children's books The boy and the old man arrived at the port at night. That's the first line in my debut novel, Close to the Wind, and I'm rather proud of it. The line doesn't shout out at you, but it does a lot of work establishing the tone of the book and giving you the setting and characters without any fuss. It's always difficult to know how to begin a book. Of course, I objected. An opening sentence should draw the reader from their own head and take them somewhere completely different. It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried out bed of the old North Sea. 1. Is this the best ever opening line from a children's book? The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. 2. A great book that's all about the voice and he nails it in the first line. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. 3. 4. Elegant prose that's solid as a rock. 5. This one breaks all the rules. 6.
3 common copyright myths that really, REALLY need to die off Joseph Campbell Adjective Order Adjective Order Overview | Order | Comparative | Possessive | Superlative Adjectives can be used to describe lots of things, from physical size, age, shape, colour, material, to more abstract things like opinion, origin and purpose. We can use adjectives together to give a detailed description of something. Adjectives that express opinions usually come before all others, but it can sometimes depend on what exactly you want to emphasise. For example: "That's a nice, big, blue bag." When we group adjectives together there is a general (sometimes flexible) rule for the position of each type of adjective, these are:- You might swap adjectives that express an opinion and an adjective based on fact depending on what you wish to emphasise:- For example: "She had a long, ugly nose." emphasising the length of her nose." This is just for fun as you wouldn't normally see so many adjectives in one description. "She had a big, ugly, old, baggy, blue, stripey, cotton, British, knitting bag."
25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling 1. Stories Have Power Outside the air we breathe and the blood in our bodies, the one thing that connects us modern humans today with the shamans and emperors and serfs and alien astronauts of our past is a heritage — a lineage — of stories. 2. We love to be entertained. 3. Segmentation. 4. Story is also not a square peg jammed in a circle hole. 5. You put your hand in a whirling clod of wet clay, you’re shaping it. 6. A story is so much more than the thing you think it is. 7. The storyteller will find no original plots. 8. The audience wants to feel connected to the story. 9. The audience isn’t stupid. 10. Conflict is the food that feeds the reader. 11. Tension is how you ramp to conflict, how you play with it, how you maneuver around it, how you tap-dance up to the cliff’s edge, do a perilous pirouette, and pull back from the precipice. 12. It’s not just tension. 13. The story you tell should be the story you tell. 14. The audience cannot relate to big ideas. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
The DOs and DO NOTs of getting your book reviewed | Damien G. Walter Writing a regular column for The Guardian on weird books, I get asked by writers of all kinds to read their latest tome. And sometimes that question becomes “how do I get my book reviewed?” In the age of social media and the internet the book review is a much different beast than it once was. There are two overarching issues to consider in relation to publicising a book. DO NOT issue a press release. DO put coherent publicity information on your website (and have a website)Have a page for media enquiries on your website. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SPAM PEOPLE Whoever it was this week who spammed the entire membership of the SFWA begging for award nominations has probably done themselves no favours in actually getting any. DO win the respect of super-fans You can try and get reviewers like myself or newspaper and magazine editors to review your work. DO tell people what your story is And by this I do not mean the story of your book. Genre needs a lot more cruel and nasty reviews
The power of a great introduction - Carolyn Mohr Writers come in all shapes and sizes, from every country in the world, and are practically every age. Some people write about history, some write science fiction, and some write about things that are happening in this very moment. Regardless of what kind of writer you are (or want to become), you should seek the advice of those that are already doing it (and you'll probably find some that say you shouldn't be a writer). Find some resources that can help you in your journey. An introduction is the first paragraph of a written research paper, the first thing you say in an oral presentation, or the first thing people see, hear, or experience about your project or book. Here is a guideline for writing a literary analysis.
The Writer's Forensics Blog | Forensic Comments For Writers from D. P. Lyle, MD Ten rules for writing fiction Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Diana Athill Margaret Atwood Roddy Doyle
25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing I read this cool article last week — “30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself” — and I thought, hey, heeeey, that’s interesting. Writers might could use their own version of that. So, I started to cobble one together. That is, then, how you should read this: me, yelling at me. Then go forth and kick your writing year in the teeth. Onto the list. 1. Right here is your story. 2. Momentum is everything. 3. You have a voice. 4. Worry is some useless shit. 5. The rise of self-publishing has seen a comparative surge forward in quantity. 6. I said “stop hurrying,” not “stand still and fall asleep.” 7. It’s not going to get any easier, and why should it? 8. You don’t get to be a proper storyteller by putting it so far down your list it’s nestled between “Complete the Iditarod (but with squirrels instead of dogs)” and “Two words: Merkin, Macrame.” 9. The mind is the writer’s best weapon. 10. 11. 12. Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. 13. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
6 Ways to Hook Your Readers Although I consider myself an avid reader, I must admit I have a short attention span when it comes to getting into books. If you fail to grab my attention in the first few lines, I start spacing out. Most readers are like me. Here are a few things I find annoying in the first lines of a story: Dialogue. The last thing you want to do as a writer is annoy or bore people. (N.B. 1. Put a question in your readers’ minds. “Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” 2. By starting at an important moment in the story, your reader is more likely to want to continue so he or she can discover what will happen next. “It was dark where she was crouched but the little girl did as she’d been told.” 3. Description is good when it encourages people to paint a picture in their minds. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” 4. The promise of reading more about a character you find intriguing will, no doubt, draw you into a story’s narrative. 5. 6.