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Romancing
the Editor: You need a great opening line Picture
the scene: You meet someone – well-dressed, good-looking, nice ears (or
whatever turns you on). You are strongly attracted. You get closer, your
Heartthrob leans over and murmurs huskily, "What’s a nice girl like you
doing in a place like this?” Oh,
puh-lease! Your hopes are dashed. What went wrong? It all looked so good, and
then Heartthrob had to come out with this dumb opening line. Not even interested
enough in you to find something original to say. Far from falling in love, you
are already moving on, hoping the next prospect won’t be so disappointing. The
singles dating scene is a lot like submitting a romance story. You put
everything you’ve got into getting your manuscript looking hot, you put it out
there, and hope an editor falls in love with it. If
everything looks good, the editor is certainly interested. Crisp white pages
with readable typescript free of mistakes will always catch the editorial eye.
She decides to take a closer look, turning back the title page with care,
admiring the effort that went into such an attractive package – and she reads,
"It was a dark and stormy night…" That’s
the end of that little love affair. The manuscript goes straight into the slush
pile, and the editor moves on, hoping the next one will have more lasting
appeal. No
matter how much care you take with presenting your story, it’s that opening
line that matters. That is the point at which an editor decides whether your
story might be worth more than a passing glance. A
cliché opening line like the one above won’t get you a first date – an
opening line that labors to make its point, that doesn’t relate to the rest of
the story, or is part of an expositional paragraph that takes up most of the
front page before the story even starts, won’t have them coming back for more.
Even worse is an opening that sets up a grammatical tripwire for the unwary
reader. Here’s
an example of what I thought was a very lame opening line from a horror story: The
room sat and waited. I
tripped over that opening line and couldn’t get up again. Sat where? On what?
Eventually I read on, but the story disappointed me when the room failed to find
a spot on the veranda where it could curl up in a rocking chair. Lets
look at some better examples. A great opening line can set the scene: The
past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. It
can introduce the main character: Scarlett
O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as
the Tarleton twins were. It
can set a mood: I
write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of
me is on the draining-board.
But
what it must do is give the reader a smooth entry into the story, it must invite
and seduce, so that the reader cannot just shrug it off and turn away. My
story Spelling For Mr. Right
(published in Arabella Magazine February 2004) was inspired by friends talking
about a 'soulmate' spell. Apparently, you have to list everything you want in a
man, and ask the universe to find him. With my writer’s mind, it sounded more
like a great story idea than a way to waste half an afternoon, and after a bit
of fiddling with the scenario, I soon had a plot of sorts. But
I couldn’t get that opening line. It was driving me crazy. I turned on the
radio and heard Leanne Rimes singing Commitment.
That was what my heroine wanted, that was why she was desperate enough to try
the spell. Suddenly I had my opening line: I’ll
be quite upfront about this. I am looking for commitment. The Big C. This
isn’t the greatest opening line ever, but it fulfilled my criteria. It
established the breezy tone I wanted and launched me into the rest of the story.
And hopefully, it would do the same for the editor who met up with it over
coffee one morning in the future. Sometimes
you just have to start writing, and then look over to your story to see where it
naturally starts. For
example, suppose your story begins: Julie
was running late for work. She had lost her favorite lipstick, burnt the toast,
spilt her coffee, missed the bus and to cap it all, the heel on one of her new
Manolo Blahniks got stuck in a subway grating and came off. "Here,
let me help you." He
didn’t look anything like a knight in shining armor... As
an opening, this catalogue of mundane disasters wouldn’t raise editorial
interest. But if the reader stayed awake long enough to get to the third
paragraph, interest might spark. Who is this helpful stranger? This is where the
story actually starts. Finding
a great opening line doesn’t just impress editors and sell stories. It keeps
your story haunting readers forever. But don’t just take my word for it. Learn
from a master: "Last
night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron
gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was
barred to me." That’s
what a great opening line does – it intrigues, it entices, it makes us want to
know more. If
you want an editor to fall in love with your story, wine it and dine it and make
a commitment, brush up on your opening lines. "Do
you come here often?" and "What’s your star sign?" just don’t
cut it any more. Gail
Kavanagh is a freelance writer living in Australia. Gail has had short stories
published in Arabella, For Me (an Australian publication), Fables and Romance
Ever After. Her articles have been published in Dollar Stretcher, Every Writer,
Women’s Independent Press, and Brady Magazine. Her true story No
Place Like Home will be published by Atriad Press this year. Her ebook The
Five Writing Questions and How To
Answer Them is available at Lulu.com. Gail’s website is at http://www.geocities.com/gailkav. |
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