The power of 57
Aug. 9th, 2005 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stillsostrangeSome rambly thoughts on beginnings.
Last night![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cpolk mentioned book openings and what they set up at the very beginning. She found four books that did a lot in the first 57 words. (I never got the full explanation, but maybe she'll drop in and share.) So I found four nearby books and looked at their openings. I didn't come up with the magic 57 each time, but that's a good average number. It's interesting to see what a writer can do in just a few lines.
This is the worst story I know about hocuses. And it's true.
Four Great Septads ago, back in the reign of Claudius Cordelius, there was a hocus named Porphyria Levant. The hocuses back then had this thing they could do, called the binding-by-forms, the obligation d'ame. It happened between a hocus and an annemer, an ordinary person, and it was like an oath of loyalty, only a septad times more. (Sarah Monette - Melusine, 70 words)
What does it do? We have a character and a voice. We have a sense of history, and an implied sense of place. We have magic, and things it can do. We have a story, and we know it will be bad. That's pretty darn good for 70 words.
The Montreal has wings.
They unfurl around her, gossamer solar sails bearing a kilometers-long dragonfly out of high Earth orbit and into the darkness where she'll test herself, and me. She's already moving like a cutter through night-black water when Colonel Valens straps me to the butter-soft leather of the pilot's chair and seats the collars. (Elizabeth Bear - Scardown, 56 words)
Again a character and a voice. A gorgeous opening image. And we have the hints of conflict--testing; authority figure; strapping down; collars, and everything they imply. Shiny, nicht wahr?
The Pacific Ocean stood on her back. She ignored it.
It crushed the bodies of her friends. She forgot them.
It drank the light, blinding even her miraculous eyes. It dared her to give in, to use her headlamps like some crippled dryback.
She kept going, in darkness.
Eventually the seafloor tilted into a great escarpment, leading into light. (Peter Watts - Maelstrom, 59 words)
I cheated with this one, because it's not actually the first scene in the book, but I love it with a hot and ugly monkey love. The rhythm hits you, relentless with weight and dark. You have a character, and her determination, her sense of purpose. And then the light, and a sense of payoff, of accomplishment.
A window burst open high above the market. A basket flew from it and arced towards the oblivious crowd. It spasmed in mid-air, then spun and continued earthwards at a slower, uneven pace. Dancing precariously as it descended, its wire mesh caught and skittered on the building's rough hide. It scrabbled at the wall, sending paint and concrete dust plummeting before it. (China Mieville - Perdido Street Station, 62 words)
Another cheat. This is my least favorite of the selections. You have a scene, but it's not as vivid as it could be, and I have no sense of character or narrative voice yet. But I do get a strong sense of movement, the frenetic energy of the basket and the implied energy of the market below it. Something is going on, and we're about to see what it is.
And because this is all about me, after all, I'm including my novel's opening bit too. Feel free to rip it up. I'm not sure what it does, anymore.
In her dreams she drowned.
Liz fought the current but it rolled her, swallowed her down into the dark. The abyss blinded her, stole the heat from her bones. Her lungs strained, but there was only water, blood-thick brine searing her nose and mouth.
Help me. Blake's voice, nearly swallowed by the thunder of the waves, the thunder of her heart. (61 words)
Thoughts from my brilliant writer buddies?
Last night
cpolk mentioned book openings and what they set up at the very beginning. She found four books that did a lot in the first 57 words. (I never got the full explanation, but maybe she'll drop in and share.) So I found four nearby books and looked at their openings. I didn't come up with the magic 57 each time, but that's a good average number. It's interesting to see what a writer can do in just a few lines.This is the worst story I know about hocuses. And it's true.
Four Great Septads ago, back in the reign of Claudius Cordelius, there was a hocus named Porphyria Levant. The hocuses back then had this thing they could do, called the binding-by-forms, the obligation d'ame. It happened between a hocus and an annemer, an ordinary person, and it was like an oath of loyalty, only a septad times more. (Sarah Monette - Melusine, 70 words)
What does it do? We have a character and a voice. We have a sense of history, and an implied sense of place. We have magic, and things it can do. We have a story, and we know it will be bad. That's pretty darn good for 70 words.
The Montreal has wings.
They unfurl around her, gossamer solar sails bearing a kilometers-long dragonfly out of high Earth orbit and into the darkness where she'll test herself, and me. She's already moving like a cutter through night-black water when Colonel Valens straps me to the butter-soft leather of the pilot's chair and seats the collars. (Elizabeth Bear - Scardown, 56 words)
Again a character and a voice. A gorgeous opening image. And we have the hints of conflict--testing; authority figure; strapping down; collars, and everything they imply. Shiny, nicht wahr?
The Pacific Ocean stood on her back. She ignored it.
It crushed the bodies of her friends. She forgot them.
It drank the light, blinding even her miraculous eyes. It dared her to give in, to use her headlamps like some crippled dryback.
She kept going, in darkness.
Eventually the seafloor tilted into a great escarpment, leading into light. (Peter Watts - Maelstrom, 59 words)
I cheated with this one, because it's not actually the first scene in the book, but I love it with a hot and ugly monkey love. The rhythm hits you, relentless with weight and dark. You have a character, and her determination, her sense of purpose. And then the light, and a sense of payoff, of accomplishment.
A window burst open high above the market. A basket flew from it and arced towards the oblivious crowd. It spasmed in mid-air, then spun and continued earthwards at a slower, uneven pace. Dancing precariously as it descended, its wire mesh caught and skittered on the building's rough hide. It scrabbled at the wall, sending paint and concrete dust plummeting before it. (China Mieville - Perdido Street Station, 62 words)
Another cheat. This is my least favorite of the selections. You have a scene, but it's not as vivid as it could be, and I have no sense of character or narrative voice yet. But I do get a strong sense of movement, the frenetic energy of the basket and the implied energy of the market below it. Something is going on, and we're about to see what it is.
And because this is all about me, after all, I'm including my novel's opening bit too. Feel free to rip it up. I'm not sure what it does, anymore.
In her dreams she drowned.
Liz fought the current but it rolled her, swallowed her down into the dark. The abyss blinded her, stole the heat from her bones. Her lungs strained, but there was only water, blood-thick brine searing her nose and mouth.
Help me. Blake's voice, nearly swallowed by the thunder of the waves, the thunder of her heart. (61 words)
Thoughts from my brilliant writer buddies?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 08:01 pm (UTC)I'm forgiving of slow openers that only set up a place or mood. With at least 800k more words till the conclusion, I'm okay with scenes unfolding slowly.
I think it's probably much more important to grab the short fic reader by the short hairs and set them up with a full immersion, whatever the style of the opener. Moody and tonal openings have their place, too, especially for those "quiet" stories.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 08:52 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/community/ink_aficionados/8604.html
no subject
Date: 2005-08-09 09:13 pm (UTC)First Words' Power
Date: 2005-08-10 04:58 pm (UTC)I look at this, the first paragraph from my WIP, and while it does some of what Chelsea pointed at in her posts, I can see what she means...because the second paragraph is where the real meat of the story begins, and I need to get the two working together better.
I wish I had handy the story I finished before starting work on this one; I'll have to look at that opening paragraph once I get back to my home computer. My recollection is that it works better to pull it all together than this one does. But recollections are known to be flawed. >;-]
Chris