I usually let novels pile up until they begin to spill under the table before sitting down on the pink couch to read. The spillover takes a surprisingly short amount of time. Surprising or awesome, depending on how you look at it. More than anything else around here, we get novels. Considering that the buyer’s market supports 85% nonfiction to 15% fiction, you have to wonder if there are more people writing novels than reading them. Either novelists are the consummate overachievers, or the folks with the most time on their hands.
So, I sit on the pink couch to read. I read the first paragraph. If it doesn’t do anything for me, I toss the novel into the rejection heap. Here are some first lines that didn’t do anything for me:
From here in Naples, Florida, in our new house, in my new bedroom with its window screen that always has a bright colored lizard crawling across it, I have wondered when my problems started.
First of all, when I got to the end, I felt a little confused by the grammar. Second, I don’t believe that there’s always a “bright colored lizard” on anyone’s screen.
“Sophie opened the door, then stood, reluctant to enter. There was a smell, a scent in the air…
There’s a fine line between too much information and too little in opening paragraphs. This one has too little, and what it does have is cliché.
I met Bryan Hillary on the back byways of the vast Nebraska plains in the early summer of 2006. We had both just experienced strange events in our lives and separately decided to take to the road and travel the dark backwater of the country, the place from where all good stories flow.
And this one has too much. That, plus too many adjectives—take them all out. And oh, that pedantic last clause.
Finally, this one has too many adjectives (contrary to what you may have learned in elementary school, adjectives do not make writing more interesting…it’s the contrary) and 100% cliché.
Her heart was pounding as she sat in the car. Before her was the house, a giant white colonial with black shutters, a quaint portico and the three-car garage set off to the side where she now found herself wondering, What have I done?
Now here are a few that caught my attention:
The people of Rio call their city, “the most beautiful place in the world.” A choir reciting in unison: “The most beautiful place in the world…” This sentiment has been expressed in a variety of tongues in various forms, from tourist handbooks to exotically spiced films, from the conquistadores of the past to the carnival tourists of today who come to visit in package tours. And I agree — although I don’t really know how they conceive of this thing called “the world,” I do believe I’ve seen enough of it.
The first two sentences had me. It’s the sound sense coming in so quickly, then words like “spiced,” “conquistadores,” “carnival,” followed by a certain attractive weariness.
Let me tell you about the time your grandfather took a sledgehammer to the car.
Not “Let me tell you how MY…” but “how YOUR…”
All right, so I listened to my wife. After all, I’ve been doing it for nearly forty years, I should have stopped now? Boy, is she going to feel guilty.
Instantly, a familiar style of speaking, and along with that, certain expectations. I’ll read on.
And finally,
Women only have to come into contact with me to fall ill. They catch colds, they sneeze, sometimes their throats are affected…. For them, it is the first time. Their healthy days were before my time.
Pretty funny. Nothing like a sneeze sixteen words into a story. I’ll keep reading this one too, and so can you. See you soon. Let’s talk. H