Ned Hayes's Blog, page 113
March 25, 2014
The 13 Most Common Errors on a Novel's First Page
Over-explanation. This includes prologues. “Prologues are never needed. You can usually throw them in the garbage. They’re usually put on as a patch.”
Too much data. “You’re trying to seduce your reader, not burden them,” Friedman said.
Over-writing, or “trying too hard.” “We think the more description we add, the more vivid it will be; but we don’t want to be distracted from the story” we open the book for.
Beginning the novel with an interior monologue or reflection. Usually this is written as the thoughts of a character who is sitting alone, musing and thinking back on a story. Just start with the story.
Beginning the novel with a flashback. Friedman isn’t entirely anti-flashback, but the novel’s opening page is the wrong place for one.
Beginning a novel with the “waking up sequence” of a character waking, getting out of bed, putting on slippers, heading for the kitchen and coffee…a cliche
Related cliche: beginning the novel with an alarm clock or a ringing phone
Starting out with an “ordinary day’s routine” for the main character
Beginning with “crisis moments” that aren’t unique: “When the doctor said ‘malignant,’ my life changed forever…” or “The day my father left us I was seven years old…”
Don’t start with a dialogue that doesn’t have any context. Building characterization through dialogue is okay anywhere else but there.
Starting with backstory, or “going back, then going forward.”
Info dump. More formally called “exposition.”
Character dump, which is four or more characters on the first page.
9 Women Who Shaped Science Fiction
Move over, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Everyone knows about the fathers of science fiction, but what about the mothers?
“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our...
“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our camp, around us echo faint sounds of that other hidden world—the one of meadow and forest in the night. The melody of whip-poor-will, the cry of hunting owl, the scurrying rush of vole and chasing fox. It is as if some great razor scraped the life from this sheet of white-edged vellum, leaving only blank.”
March 24, 2014
“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare limbed...
“Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare limbed trees. Far below, the deeping combe with our village in the heart of it. My whole world for nearly a decade has been contained in that place – and now the village of Duns is so small. I hold up my hand, form a circle with my fingers. Now the distant village seems a child’s plaything that I can hold in my own hand, wreathed in gossamer mist.”
PHOTO: magicsystem: (by oscarW.)
March 23, 2014
"Tonight while walking on the waterfront in the angelic streets I suddenly wanted to tell you how..."
- Jack Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg (via rabbitinthemoon)
March 22, 2014
"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh...
"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills." — from the novel Sinful Folk http://sinfulfolk.com
"I began to deeply feel the truth of Alice Walker’s words. Walker once said that she was writing down..."
- Great article in the Seattle University news re SINFUL FOLK —- Ned Hayes references Alice Walker. https://www.seattleu.edu/stm/news-events/news/?id=131959
March 21, 2014
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a...
"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is a crooked line of mud rutted with cart tracks, a rough trough where the dirty snow is stabbed through by the hooves of feral sheep. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country."
PHOTO: briancardinal: Snowy Trails in PA 1/4
