Good morning readers and writers!
Last Saturday I was fortunate enough to take in Mary Buckham's pacing workshop with the FRW group, and if you haven't seen Mary or taken one one her workshops, you are missing something big. She is the best. It was an all day event, and Mary was kind enough to give us all her latest book, BREAK INTO FICTION. (11 steps to building a story that sells) It has all kinds of wonderful information, like characters, conflict, powerful openings and so much more.
Powerful openings - now that was the mornings agenda. Mary showed us the importance of hooking your reader, editor, right from the get-go. We all know the power of the opening sentence but the first paragraph must be a grabber, and the last sentence of the third page because that is where most editors stop reading! Of course every chapter must end with a hook, and start with another grabber. And we so thought this would be easy, right!
If we all want to sell like James Patterson, we could learn from him too. Shorter sentences, shorter chapters, very little description and narrative. Writers like Hemmingway might never break into fiction in today's market! Learn from the modern masters if you are a commercial writer. Every scene should have conflict and raise a question. Once that question is answered, it's imperative that you raise another, until at the end all questions should be happily resolved.
More on the BREAK INTO FICTION book. This can be used as a tool while first stage plotting or during the editing process. I am just finishing up on a book now and will use it as I go through my final draft.
After more than a decade of writing, it's amazing how much I still have to learn.
Enjoy your day and hope to hear from you!
Patrice
