Hey Folks,
Okay, the light of a new day.
First, I’m not going to start a monthly magazine. At least not in fhe foreseeable future. To do so would make a LOT more work for me (layout, a cover, the intricies of adding scalable covers for the stories and novels inside the magazine) and would give me only a hyper-minimal return on investment. Plus the time investment would be massive and ongoing.
So I’m not going to do it. Still, I’m glad the possibility was part of yesterday’s thought process. It’s been a long time since a stream of such provocative ideas passed through my brain-housing group. Felt good.
Today I’ll get back to my WIP. There is a possibility I might abandon this one, or maybe compress it into a short story or novella. Then on to other things.
Topic: Openings Revisited
I’ve talked a lot about openings relatively recently both here and on the Pro Writers blog.
I’ve talked about the importance of openings not only at the beginnig of a story, but also at the beginning of each chapter and each scene.
I’ve talked about the necessity and importance of grounding the reader by providing sensory detail through the opinions of the POV character.
I’ve talked about great opening sentences (hooks). I even have a book about those (See https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43960). You can’t get it through Amazon because I reference other writers in it so they fear plagiarism. (grin) Go figure. But you can buy any eformat at Smashwords.
Yet somehow I managed to skip right over some of the plainest, best, truest advice any writer could ever receive regaring writing those opening sentences.
It’s a bit of advice from Ernest Hemingway.
I’ve read it at least a few hundred times before, as each of you probably have. But somehow it didn’t register earlier that he was talking specifically about writing an opening sentence.
The advice, as we most often see it presented, is “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
But it’s something he said as he was talking about how to begin a story. It was how to write the opening sentence.
Via an OpenCulture link I shared in “Of Interest” on June 11 (http://hestanbrough.com/the-journal-monday-june-11/), in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway wrote
“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going … I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence….”
The importance of this deceptively simple bit of advice didn’t strike me even when I read it a few days ago. It wasn’t until I was glancing over some of my own published work that the significance hit me.
In my novella Jobs Like That, the opening sentence was exactly that: it was the truest sentence I knew in the moment. It wasn’t the only time, but it’s the one that most easily springs to mind.
And everything in the story — every sentence, every paragraph, every sensory image — emanated from and reflected that opening sentence.
The opening sentence (one sentence, one paragraph, 28 words) sets the tone for everything else in the book. It even served as a synopsis, a beacon to keep the rest of the story on course.
Finally, finally I realize the full impact of Hemingway’s statement.
Notice too that Hemingway doesn’t drag emotion into the mix. He doesn’t say the sentence has to be dramatic or dark or light or humorous or witty or angry or jocular or stoic. He says simply that it must be the truest sentence you know.
Of course, “truest” has many connotations. In my case it goes to mood (at the time) and character or event (if I have a character or event in mind for the story). But the many connotations of the word is exactly why the advice fits the broadest possible spectrum of fiction.
So I’m taking a vow. From this moment forward, I will never start another fictional work without first writing that one true sentence. The truest sentence I know.
I recommend you do the same.
***
Actually, today I made four different unsuccessful runs at D.R.E.A.D. and hit a stone wall at all of them. I’ll take another look at it tomorrow and we’ll see.
I’m not counting any fiction words written today. If D.R.E.A.D. continues, I’ll report those words next time.
See you tomorrow.
Of Interest
Wow. Nothing of interest to mention for the second day in a row. Maybe tomorrow.
Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 750 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 750
Writing of D.R.E.A.D. (novel)
Day 1…… 3391 words. Total words to date…… 3391
Day 2…… 3827 words. Total words to date…… 7218
Day 3…… 3194 words. Total words to date…… 10412
Day 4…… 2456 words. Total words to date…… 12868
Day 5…… 2197 words. Total words to date…… 15065
Day 6…… 2794 words. Total words to date…… 17859
Day 7…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for the month……… 17859
Total fiction words for the year………… 224823
Total nonfiction words for the month… 8050
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 71560
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 296113
Calendar Year 2018 Novels to Date………………………… 5
Calenday Year 2018 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2018 Short Stories to Date……… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 31
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 5
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………………… 193