Hope and Inspiration on the Writing Road

My friend Laura just showed me the new-new-new-new-new beginning for her YA novel Bone Temple. It’s the result of much soul-searching (and head-banging?) after reviewers at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference pronounced the old opening unsatisfactory. (I disagreed :).)

The new opening—the one I didn’t think she needed to write—is magical. It’s engaging, curiosity-inspiring, and absolutely perfect.

Laura is one of my favorite YA fantasy writers, which is unfortunate for most of the world because she hasn’t yet “broken into” the YA publishing scene. Luckily for me (and my kids, who occasionally kidnap her manuscripts when I bring them home for critique), I’m in her critique group and get to enjoy her stories. I’ve gotten to watch over the years as her writing—always very good—deepened and became more magical.

In case you haven’t guessed it yet, I’m an avid Laura fan. If her books were in print, I’d own every single one…and this latest surpasses them all, with words, character, setting, and story twining together like strands in a cord. It’s the kind of book that makes your heart ache with both sympathy and joy, the kind of book that takes you for a gripping ride and ultimately satisfies.

Laura exemplifies the many reasons that my writing friends are so dear to me. It’s not just that we get each other (which we do) or that we’re crazy in many of the same ways (which we are); it’s also that, as I watch Laura’s writing journey, her ups and downs along the way and her amazing growth as a writer—it gives me hope as I travel my own writing path.

:) Cheryl

On Beginnings: WAKE by Lisa McMann

Yesterday, I blazed through Lisa McMann’s YA paranormal, WAKE (Simon Pulse, 2008). It’s a fun, fast-paced, gripping read about a girl who gets sucked into others’ dreams—which turns out to be problematic when students nap during classes.  

This book is worth checking out, though, because of the author’s unique (and successful) approach to the book’s beginning. Know how you’re “not supposed” to dump backstory in the opening chapters? McMann does exactly that—and makes the reader love every second of it.

The book opens with a scene in the present:

December 9, 2005, 12:55 p.m.

Janie Hannagan’s math book slips from her fingers. She grips the edge of the table in the school library. Everything goes black and silent. She sighs and rests her head on the table. Tries to pull herself out of it, but fails miserably. She’s too tired today. Too hungry. She really doesn’t have time for this.

And then. 

And then we’re pulled into the dream with Janie. The first chapter covers six minutes in just over two pages of text.

The next chapter is titled “Where It Begins” and it takes us through Janie’s dream experiences from age eight to the present. Backstory, presented in a series of scenes titled with dates and times. Twenty-four pages of it before we return to present-day Janie on the first day of school, August 30, 2004.

Why does it work? I think it’s because McMann adopts a style that reads almost like a series of incident reports: terse, but so packed with compelling information that it draws you ever onward. She writes in present tense, lending immediacy to every page. The third person narrator feels just distant enough to add to the incident-report feel of the book.

This style choice lets McMann pack key stories from Janie’s past into a relatively short amount of space. Sure, she presents a ton of backstory in the second chapter, but she does so by flashing the reader through one intense scene after another. The short scenes continue, resulting in a book that (for me) was surprisingly difficult to put down.

Check it out!

:) Cheryl

Studying Beginnings

I’m working on a new type of writing project right now. A memoir. (No, it’s not my own—I’m working with someone who is MUCH more interesting than I am on THEIR  memoir.) But since it’s new kind of writing for me, I’ve been reading and taking notes on a LOT of memoir to see how other authors handle it.

In the process, I’ve stumbled upon a wonderful tool for studying book beginnings: the Kindle. In my case, the Kindle for iPhone.

Did you know that the Kindle allows you to download sample chapters from most, if not all, available books? I knew this, but it wasn’t until I was sitting in a kid’s orchestra rehearsal, wishing I had a pile of memoirs with me so I could check out how various authors begin their stories, that I put two and two together. With the Kindle, it’s incredibly simple to download and compare ten or twenty of fifty book beginnings.

As a fellow writer, I did, in fact, wrestle with whether it was fair to the authors I was reading to download their book openings for free. I decided it was. First, I could have accomplished the same thing by picking up the books at my local library and spending a few afternoons at my local bookstore. I’d already done the first and was planning on the second—the Kindle just made the browsing process a bit easier.

Second, when I scan through 20+ book beginnings, I inevitably find a must-buy title that I would not have found otherwise, just like I go out and buy the best of the library books I read.

Meanwhile, I was able to peruse a wide range of memoir openings from the relative comfort of my folding chair during orchestra rehearsal. What more could a writer want?

:) Cheryl

PS: For those of you who do not own the Kindle or iPhone, many books are available to “browse” online through author websites, Amazon, or other bookselling websites.

Great beginnings

Now that the holidays are over, conference season is picking back up again...and with conferences come those fun first-pages sessions where would-be authors read their manuscript openings to editors and agents across the country in return for a two minute mini-critique (in front of other would-be authors). So what makes a good page? Andrea Brown says that the first page shouldn't have any grownups because, see, kids books need to focus on the kids. Erin Murphy (way back when I began my books with lengthy descriptions of setting or other non-essential info) says that first pages should NOT contain piles of back story.

No doubt about it: that first page is often your one-and-only chance to hook your reader--be he editor, agent, or bookstore browser. I thought I'd take a look at some first pages--some first lines, really--that really grabbed me:

Skin, by Adrienne Maria Vrettos: "These are the things you think when you come home to find that your sister has starved herself to death and you have dropped to your knees to revive her...."

The Wizard Hunters, by Martha Wells: "It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door."

Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo: "My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog."

How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell: "Long ago, on the wild and windy isle of Berk, a smallish Viking with a longish name stood up to his ankles in snow. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the Hope and Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, had been feeling slightly sick ever since he woke up that morning."

The Boyfriend List, by E. Lockhart: "Before anyone reading this thinks to call me a slut--or even just imagines I'm incredibly popular--let me point out that this list includes absolutely every single boy I have ever had the slightest little any-kind-of-anything with."

What do they have in common? Some have such an intriguing situation that I want to know what happens next. They ALL have that nebulous quality of a distinct voice. Sometimes I think that my best writing happens when I manage to sound the most like myself. Hmm. Does that mean that Cressida Cowell speaks with Frequent Capitals?

:) Cheryl