First Page of Your Novel

I’ve been so involved with final editing of “The Underbelly,” subtitled “Dr. Jacquelyn and Mrs. Hyde,” I have neglected this blog.  (I’m apologizing to myself.)

Also, I’ve been reading first pages of novels most like mine and listening to advice on first pages, opening lines.  “Call me Ishmael”  has been taken.  Perhaps I should start with “Call her Dr. Jacquelyn” during the day and “Mrs. Hyde” on the nights of the new moon.  But she’s not the main character.

I believe the rules of including a catchy opening line, setting, emotional desires and hint of conflict on the first page are valid, but they should include the genre of the novel.  Crime stories need a crime.  Appropriate indicators are needed for romance, erotic,  philosophical and science fiction novels.  What’s difficult for me still is deciding on my genre.  I call it adult fiction, whatever that is.  Most of my readers are women, but it’s not chick lit.

So I am re-writing my first page for the umteenth time.

What do you do?

Comments anyone?

Evy

Evelyn Cole

Facing the floor every day for two weeks after retina surgery

Tom Robbins on the Intimacy of a Good Novel

Tom Robbins is my hero.  I chuckle happily at his puns and outrageous similes and metaphors, but I whole-heartedly embrace his philosophy that life can be joyful and free.  Ignore the nay-sayers, he seems to say.  A parrot in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates repeats, “Peeples of ze world, relax.”

In an introduction to Wild Ducks Flying Backwards, a book of his essays, he writes, “Serious Reading is hardly a social activity and every halfway serious reader is perpetually subject to a form of coitus interruptus.  Family members or friends who lack the desire, the courage, or the opportunity to burst in on you when there’s some indication that you could be sexually entwined will seldom hesitate to interject themselves between you and a page, even though the act of reading is often as intimate and intense as a full-fledged carnal embrace.”

This supports my thesis in an earlier blog on the purpose of sex scenes in literature.  Reading a really good novel is an intimate experience.

When asked, “What is the Meaning of Life?” by Life Magazine in 1991, Robbins answered, “Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among wild apple trees.

“Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution—a melding into the godhead, into love—is our true task.  Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to acknowledge that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial.  Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.  Or, barring that, to turn out a good, thin-crust pizza and a strong glass of beer.”

Notice he didn’t write “pizza and a beer.”  He specifies with adjectives, always.

I know I can’t write like Tom Robbins does.  But reading him encourages me to write like I do.

Theme

Often the directions for submitting a novel proposal to an agent or publisher tell you to state your theme. That can be the hardest task. You’ve written a synopsis, chapter outline and blurb. How best do you state your theme?

Since I have a fascination with the power of the subconscious mind, I usually create characters who come face to face with the forgotten childhood that shapes their adult decisions. The theme for my novel on teen suicide touches on various levels of hidden shame in an affluent community: Teenagers are particularly susceptible to shame. Shame is a silent killer.

For my novel about a woman addicted to buying stuff from catalogues, the theme is: “We earn, spend, hoard, and share money not so much as we were taught, but as we see ourselves subconsciously.”

The theme of my recently finished novel, The Underbelly, subtitled Dr Jaquelyn and Mrs. Hyde, comes from a quote in the Los Angeles Times by Martin T. Riggs: “Anger unvented becomes pain unspoken, becomes rage released, becomes violence.”

Now, reading a critical companion to Tom Robbins by Catherine Hoyser and Lorena Stookey, I find several examples of Robbins’ theme. Hoyser writes, “A rejection of organized religion and return to the worship and appreciation of the female principles of sexuality, generation, and connection are two of the themes that recur in Robbins’ novels. The remaining five of the seven veils of Skinny Legs and All outline the other themes that Robbins favors in his work. The veils of political illusion, commerce, human omnipotence, Armageddon, and reliance on others must all be stripped away. People must understand that no one else will live life for them or take responsibility for them.

“Gurus, shamans, priests, and ministers can only point a direction for relating to the divine and the universe, but individuals must discern for themselves their role in the universe.”

If you have ever read a Tom Robbins novel, you realize his major themes revolve around joy that is too often killed by the oppression of women and by male-dominant religions, politics and business.

What are your themes?

Naming Your Book

I named my last novel, “Good Mail” because it’s about a woman addicted to catalogue shopping.  She craved good mail every week without knowing which packages would arrive on any given day.  The intermittent nature of gambling provides its appeal.  Instant gratification won’t fly. If you knew the roulette ball would land on red every five times, you would not be at all excited about playing roulette.

I checked my working title on a website that rates various titles in sales draw.  “Good Mail” didn’t fly, but a title with “gambling” in it did.  I renamed my novel “Gambling for Good Mail.”  It’s a bad title, I’ve since discovered from the many rave reviews I got for the novel and pans for the title.  I no longer trust that web site.

Naming non-fiction is easier.  To make a title work, write one that gives your reader what he wants immediately. Not what he needs, but what he wants.  People don’t want advice even if they need it.  They want specific results fast.   Steve Harrision of BookMarketing gives the example of Dr. Leman’s latest book on parenting.  Instead of  “How to Discipline Your child,” the subject of the book, he titled it, “Have a new Kid by Friday.”  This is followed with the sub-title: “How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior, and Character in Five Days.”

I named my current novel, “The Underbelly” to indicate the story is about social classes but sub-titled it, “Dr. Jacquelyn and Mrs. Hyde” to show that the story contains an obsessive character as well as humor.  I can’t figure out how to include “Be thoroughly Entertained in Two Days.” When it’s published I’ll let you know if my title works.

What works for you?

Publicity–another way to get it

I just came home from the hospital with a new knee and realized I hadn’t posted here since February. Sometimes I spell “new knee” as “knew nee,” accidentally. However, before I left, I hired a company for $175 to send out a news release about one of my novels on Amazon.com

Almost immediately I received eighteen requests for a copy of the novel to review in various publications online and off, in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and The Netherlands. So far one rave review came in from a blog. The others are still reading, I guess.

I’m not sure if the money was well spent, but I will let you know. I was surprised by the initial response.

Evy Cole

Aristotle and Us

How do you begin a new novel or a play?

Do you think word length? Do you outline the plot or think characters first?

I start with theme and then characters before plot because I started out life as a day-dreamer, then a philosopher, then a psychologist, and eventually a story-teller.

I’m ending up life as a poet of small things. Here’s how far I have fallen from Aristotle:

READ THE RECIPE FIRST

She poured in a whole quart of love
before the man was warm
didn’t save enough sugar
to sprinkle on anyone else

She melted all of the butter, too
There wasn’t enough left
to grease the pan
let alone the kids

or the skids

She whipped up a frenzy
without separating
the juicy bits
from the facts

She set her oven
too high
let her edges burn
her middle sigh

Next life she vowed
she’d read the recipe
all the way through
measure before she began

The next life she came back
as a pile-driving man

Aristotle gave us story writers a way to plot our dramas. I first learned it as the W diagram. Your main character wants something very much, but slides down the first side of the W, unable to get what he wants. He struggles and gains ground in the middle of the W. Then a rug-pull dumps him to the bottom of his quest. He crawls up the last pillar of the W after he has learned something profound about himself and life.

I can trace my own W. Can you?

Pedants Anonymous

I was 34 when I first discovered that money does not grow out of bureau drawers. I had no career. I did have a bachelor’s degree even though I wasn’t a bachelor. But it help me get a job as a copywriter in a small ad agency. I loved the job until the owner of the agency hired two hot-shot copywriters from L.A.

One month in, the owner made me re-write their copy in addition to handling my own clients. I asked to be paid the same salary as the hot-shots. He said, “No way. You’re a woman.”

I gave him two weeks notice and then discovered, by substitute teaching, a career–teaching high school English. I realized from one expensive mistake in Yachting Magazine
that I needed to learn English. There’s no better way to learn anything than by teaching.

However, the writing I learned by teaching was non-fiction. Sure, I taught literature and showed my students how to write essays about literature, but I didn’t teach the minor details between pedantry and poetic writing. (A pedant myself, I didn’t know them.)

I’m ashamed to say that I taught my students to vary sentence structure with dependent clauses and to vary their tags in dialogue.

For the last week I have been painstakingly removing all words such as “painstakingly” from my novel manuscript, all paragraphs that open with a clause such as, “For the last week,” and adding “said” to dialogue.

Habits are hard to break. Note to English teachers: want to join my group of pedants anonymous?

Writer’s Block is a Lie

Have you ever heard of “Chatter’s Block?”

I have been Amtrak Ambling from San Luis Obispo, CA to New Orleans and back, four days on the train, five in the French Quarter.  And I’ve been listening to people from everywhere.  Some spoke to me directly.  Others were unaware that I was listening to their conversations.  I eavesdrop a lot.  It fuels my fiction.

On this trip I heard a novel’s worth of dialogue.  Some of it will show up in an article, blog, poem or novel.  Two men on the train discussing their adventures with women gave me some good juice.  Street car driver said his girlfriend moved to Austin after Katrina hit and didn’t come back.  “It’s hard to get used to new lips,” he said.

Today I’m so full I haven’t been able to choose where all these “bon mots” will fall.  But some will hit paper.  This is why I say that writer’s block is a lie.

If you like to write stuff and do write a lot of stuff, why would you suddenly moan, “I have writer’s block!”

I suspect a true statement would be, “I am not able to write anything as well crafted and gorgeous as my snobby internal editor deems worthy.”

There are two good ways to end perceived writer’s block: Fire your egotistical internal editor and then write until your pen, pencil, computer and heart breaks.

Then re-write ans sell it.

More on Critique Groups

I’m in a critique group, one of the San Luis Obispo, CA Nightwriters’ groups.

We have three men and five women currently attending. The gender mix

works very well. When I use feminine words to depict a fight scene, the

men suggest much more effective terms. When one of the men includes

a sex scene in a chapter, the women agree that it lacks foreplay and female

motivation.

Recently we formalized a new procedure that I describe for you here so you

can reject or adopt according to the make-up of your group.

We agreed on the following:

1. Notify the leader if we’re going to be absent.
2. Mark the work to be critiqued with it’s genre and your intent with

the piece submitted.

1. Do not submit first drafts.
2. Attend even if you have nothing to be critiqued.
3. Email your submission to the other members six days before the

next meeting

Critiquing

1. Bring emailed and edited copies to the meeting. Be honest and brief.

2. Wait for your turn before speaking. When finished, wait until the

end to add a new comment

3. Focus on important aspects of the piece. Leave minor editing for writer to read.

4. Critique the writing only, not the writer.

5. Be specific in your critique.

6. Don’t ask the author questions. If the writing evokes questions, point to that.

7. Look for strengths in each piece as well as weaknesses.

8. Don’t repeat others’ critiques.

Being Critiqued

1. Submit by email one to twelve double-spaced pages.

2. Forego preliminary explanations or excuses.

3. Do not interrupt or defend or clarify your work.

4. Take notes as others critique your work so you may ask for clarification at the end.

5. Ask questions at the end

Know that it is difficult to follow all of these rules, we use them as a guideline to work toward.

Sometimes It Pays to Pursue a Complaint and How to Write a Love Letter

Because I thought it would help me publicize my novels I paid for a listing in Madison’s Who’s Who a year ago. Since then they have been calling me and seducing me with a special page in the 2009 edition by saying I was selected as outstanding poet. Note passive voice. I never found out who did the selecting. I agreed to pay $218.00 for this special promotion.

When my December bank statement came in I saw that Madison had taken out $718.00 for search engine placement. I began a series of weekly calls asking for someone who had the authority to refund five hundred. I sure got tired of that routine. But now that the beautiful inauguration day is over I decided to start calling again. Before I did, however, a young spokesman for Madison called me to re-check my information and, I suspected, to try to sell me a cdrom of the directory.

To my great surprise I had a delightful conversation with him and taught him how to write a love letter to his new wife. He ended the conversation with the news that my funds will return to my bank account in seven days.

I danced.

Here’s what I taught him, in case you want to know for special birthdays.

Just follow these simple directions:

1. Quickly write a list of everything that endears this person to you. He or she could be a parent, child, cousin, friend, lover, spouse, teacher—or your boss (in extremely rare cases.)

2. Be specific. You will be writing so fast you may include traits you don’t like. That’s okay. You can cross those out later.

3. Include physical characteristics that you know your recipient likes. For example, if he has a full head of white hair that he cares about enough to have a special barber, mention how you admire it.

4. Add specific humorous moments in your life together, not embarrassing ones, but those that you know he or she definitely enjoyed.

5. When you have a really long list, write your first draft. Begin with a general phrase such as, “I love you,” or “Je taime, je t’adore, mon petit choux.”

6. Arrange your paragraphs from your list and end with a general phrase such as “I love you.” It’s the details you include that make it a zinger!

7. Type, spell-check and wait a couple of days.

8. Make changes if needed, print and mail. (or roll into a fancy bottle and gift wrap.)

Evelyn Cole, MA, MFA

The Whole-mind Writer