Alex on Writing the Opening Scene

I think it's very hard to decide definitively on how to open your novel. It's very important, because you're setting the scene for the rest of the story, and you're trying to hook your reader. If you lose their interest on the first page, chances are pretty good that they won't read the rest of the book.

I used to always want to start at the beginning and go straight to the end. I have a hard time keeping track of flashbacks and other methods of non-linear story-telling (not when I'm reading them, but when I'm writing them). That can be really boring. Not only to read, but for me to write, as well.

So I thought, what opening scenes do I like to read? Well, I'm a big fan of being dropped right into the action. I like not knowing exactly what's going on from the beginning. It's great if, in the first sentence, our hero is bleeding profusely, or we're wondering where somebody went, or the protagonist is mid-thought. So that's what I started doing.

But it's still hard to choose where I'm going to drop my reader into the story. One great option is: the end. I think this is really great from a first-person perspective, because you can have your protagonist recall how they got to where they are now. Reserve a couple chapters at the end to resolve the ending (by putting them at the end, I don't mean in the very last scene... I mean close to the last scene).

Or somewhere before the climax of the story is good, too. You have some time to catch up to where they are, but then you follow them in a linear path toward the climax.

But it totally depends on your story, obviously. This year, for NaNoWriMo, I am doing a linear story. But I might finish the story and go back to make it start at the end. Who said you have to write the beginning first?

Favorite Holiday Book

The holidays are coming, folks! Christmas music is on the radio, Thanksgiving foods are taking over the endcaps at the grocery stores, and grinches are gearing up their complaints about how they hate all of that and so much more. So this week, we're talking about our favorite holiday books!

I'd like to tell you about The Polar Express, which we both picked for our favorite Christmas story last year. Or Little Women (which is by this week's author!) but that was my favorite book-to-movie. So instead, I'm going to tell you about my favorite version of Twas the Night Before Christmas.

(Forgive the photo; the best one I could find was from eBay.)

First of all, what kid doesn't like a SHAPED book? Sure, this is an old poem, that everybody hears approximately twenty thousand times each Christmas, with lots of outdated terminology and phrasing, but it's so much more interesting in a triangle-shaped book! Plus? It's pop-up. There are a lot of pop-up books of this story, but I liked this one. Is it because it's shaped like a triangle? Maybe. That just really tickled me as a kid. Here's an action shot:

Omg reindeer!

Picking a favorite Holiday book is a little tricky, especially since, like Alex, we both put the Polar Express as our favorite Christmas book.  The favorite I'm picking this week is A. kind of depressing and B. one that we've actually reviewed.

I don't know what it is about this story that makes me think, "HOLIDAYS!!"  I mean... she dies.  But she dies in her Grandmother's arms and it takes place on Christmas Eve (or... New Year's Eve.  I think Christmas Eve).  Either way it's around the holidays and in incorporates things like big Christmas dinners and family and SNOW. 

It just reminds me of the Christmas season and I think it's a great story and well told.

Cassy on Writing Opening Scenes

Someone, somewhere, told me that your opening scene should be dramatic and catch your reader's attention.  Which is true.  But I guess, in my mind that meant it had to be BIG!  EPIC! CRAZY!!

Ok, so maybe it doesn't, but I still kind of feel that way.  Your opening scene should be powerful.  I remember one of the first novels that I wrote, my opening scene was Avalon burning to the ground and the last of the gargoyles fleeing the scene.

Powerful, right?  Well, it should be.  It's the beginning.

But I've also done some more subdued beginnings.  My book, I see (which you can buy on Amazon!  Please forgive my shameless plug; I have a wedding to pay for.) starts out with the main character's history.  It tells about her childhood, her visions, and then, in the last line, drops the bombshell that she will be going to public school for the very first time.

I think that an opening scene of a book should be confusing enough for you to want to continue reading, but straightforward enough that a reader isn't completely lost.

For example, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies is REALLY good at integrating the slang and making you understand what's happening.  On the opposite end of the, Wuthering Heights, Bronte just threw you into it and gave three characters the same name, and if you couldn't figure it out, well, you just weren't sophisticated enough.

On Thursday, Alex will tell you how she handles her opening scenes!

Author Bio - Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott is a name that should sound familiar to everyone:  she wrote Little Woman, a pretty famous book (and if you remember, Alex's favorite book into movie.)

She lived in Boston with her parents and three sisters.  Her parents were transcendentalists, which is why she probably decided to write.  She was in constant contact with writers like Thoreau and Hawthorne.  Due to financial strains on the family, she was a teacher, seamstress & governess to bring in money.

However, as Alcott got older, she began writing for the Atlantic Monthly during the Civil War.  Alcott was also an abolitionist, and even helped with the Underground Railroad.  She wrote Little Women in two parts in 1868 & 69.  The book is semi-autobiographical, and you can tell that "Jo" is based on Alcott herself.

Alcott never married, nor had any children.  However, her youngest sister died from complications from childbirth and Alcott raised the child herself.

Little Women is easily her most famous books (followed by Little Men & Jo's Boys), but she's written other books, like this week's An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving and Eight Cousins.

Scrivener Giveaway Winner!

And our winner of the one-sentence story contest, and a free copy of Scrivener, is...

Natasha York!

Her winning story submission was:

They didn't say not to drink the water; I guess they haven't noticed it yet.

There were many wonderful submissions from so many awesome readers! Thank you to Natasha and everyone else for your participation; this was a great contest!

By Its Cover - Ashes by Ilsa Bick

I actually really love this cover.  It looks like of like a  finger print to me, which I think is the point.  It's a book that has a lot to do with identity and genetics, which a finger print kind of represents.  Also, the idea that each person reacted differently to the pulse.  It's that idea that no two people are exactly the same.

But then you look closer and it's OMG CREEPY FACE!!!  Which, you know, works well because of the Zombies.  And Bick's zombies are zombies that LEARN, which is kind of different for zombies (plus, let's not forget the addition of super powers for regular people.)

It's a great cover and I think it works wonderfully with the book.

Everything Cassy said is basically what I had to say about this cover. The only thing I have to add is the color scheme... "Ashes" obviously evokes the idea of grays and black, so those are our predominant colors, with a touch of red because red and black is the horror palette. Very effective.

Review me Twice - Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick

So, for one, I had no idea this was a zombie book until I started reading it. The back doesn't really give you that much of a clue.  It just says that people change, some for the better, some for the worse.  So I was expecting some sort of super power something, but not zombies.

Which... I liked, because a lot of times you go in with a lot of preconceptions when you realize something is a zombie story.  I like that I didn't really have those for Ashes.  It really let me see Bick's zombies as she wanted, I think (which were animalistic, but adaptable creatures.)

She's also really good at making you turn pages.  I constantly was picking it up, reading it, wanting to know what happened and not being able to handle the cliff hangers.  Alex (our main character, not my co-blogger), was a well fleshed out, likable character.  I really like Ellie (an eight year old girl she kind of gets stuck with) and even Tom, our love interest.

But... halfway through the book, it's not about Tom and Ellie anymore.  They're not even in that part of the story and Alex... she's not the character that I fell in love with in the beginning of the book.  She becomes very complacent and stays in this place that she had been ready to run as fast as possible from when she first got there.

It ended with a TREMENDOUS cliff hanger that you kind of saw coming (in the sense that you knew something was wrong), but kind of didn't.  It made me want to read the second book, if nothing else, but I hope that we see more of Tom & Ellie in book two because the book was kind of dumb without them.

There are two almost-separate stories in this book. We start with Alex, who later meets up with Tom and Ellie, and then somewhere between halfway and 2/3 of the way in, it's just Alex. I usually hate this writing tactic, because I rush through the part with the lone character hoping to hear about the others again. I did not do that this time, and I think it's just because I liked the second half just as much as I liked the first. (Usually I don't, because you build all this great momentum with the first and then BAM here's a totally different pace and new group of people, deal with it. That still happened, but I was given fair warning and it didn't just suddenly happen.)

Only once before with this blog was I so entranced by a book we read that I was compelled to read the next book in the series (that was with Divergent). I have already read Shadows and I'm now reading Monsters.

After a while, you see a very heavy writing pattern emerge. (I didn't notice it until I was about 1/3 through Shadows, but in retrospect, it was there in Ashes too.) It's hard to describe, though. It seems like, with every single chapter (after a while), our characters have more and more awfulness piled upon them. I mean, I've barely begun Monsters and with every page, you expect everyone to just drop dead because how could any of them possibly take any more?

But, my favorite thing about these books is that Bick is down-and-dirty. There is some sick, twisted stuff in these books. The first time you see one of the changed kids? I just suggest not eating while you read this one. It's awesome.