There is a point in every book where the writing goes into superdrive and the pages pour out. For some writers, it’s the beginning. Others hit their strides a few chapters in when all the details are firmly in place.

And almost everyone gets their second wind as the book is coming to an end. A friend shared the term “finishing frenzy” with me, and it’s perfect. It’s the point in a book where the end is in sight, and I don’t want to do anything else — not eat, not read, not watch my favorite TV show…not anything! — except write.  At that point, the story has obsessed me completely, and I feel like I’m the scribe writing down the story before it can escape. This isn’t a time when a Muse comes to call — this is when the author and the book are one in a common goal to reach the end of the story.

I went through that again last night — for what? The 85th time maybe? And the compulsion to finish the book was as strong as it was with my very first ms. Maybe stronger because now I know that once the book is done and I’ve recovered from an utter collapse, I can put the ms aside to rot while I start on something new.

Rot? Yep, that’s what I wrote. I think of a first draft ms as a fine piece of cheese or a new cask of wine. It needs to sit and let time do its work. By the time I come back to it a couple of weeks later, I will have a fresh vision of the work. The final draft will be a true revision — because I will have re-visioned it while I was working on something else. I can look at it with fresh eyes, being more able to see what works and what doesn’t. Each time as I reread, I chance upon something I don’t recall writing — it may be a single word or a phrase or even a whole scene. It’s fun to find those little treasures — not that all stay in the final draft. But those forgotten words/phrases/scenes allow me new insight into the development of the character and the story because they stop me and make me consider what I was trying to say.

Every part of writing is a journey with the destination being something most authors never reach because each new ms presents a new challenge on imagination’s path and a byroad to explore.

I often say — with a laugh — that the only thing writers enjoy more than writing is whining about writing. Okay, maybe that’s not quite accurate. Maybe they enjoy whining about writing more. They definitely enjoy whining about the publication process more!

But I find that writing is an important part of the writing process. When I start whining about my work-in-progress, it often is a first step toward brainstorming a solution.  I took some education classes in college, and one of the comments that has stayed with me is that learning and revelation come more quickly the more senses that are involved in the process. Writing primarily uses two senses — seeing (looking at the screen) and touch (hitting those keys or manipulating a pencil/pen). But when the writer starts whining, s/he is using another sense — the sense of hearing when the writer listens to his/her own words. That opens up more possibilities for learning and revealing information that up until now has been unobtained.

I find whining about my wip is a very healthy process. My husband and I often walk in the evening, and he whines about his job and I whine about mine. We’re not looking for “poor babies”, but instead just verbalizing the roadblocks we’ve found in our work. Usually by the time we’ve gone a mile, we both have the answers we were looking for. Not because the other suggested a solution, but because verbalizing the problem brings in another sense…and opens up possibilities for answers.

There is a fine line between whining and too much whining, but it becomes a problem only if all your friends avoid you or delete your posts unanswered or if you stop writing and focus on whining. Otherwise, whining can be a very useful tool in a writer’s box.

So all writers together — Let the whining continue!

Today I was on a collaborative call with an editor and a few other people on a project that I’ve been working on for the past couple of months — on and off. Some of the ideas I’d proposed for the project were welcomed with excitement. Others were the source of discussion. I love witnessing the creative processes of other people. One person found it best to brainstorm while talking. Another was more hesitant, choosing words with the utmost care. While a third had a real skill for building off the ideas of others — taking those ideas and asking the right questions to refine the concepts into something special. It’s a thrill for me to be a part of an experience like this, even though I usually don’t like brainstorming my work until I have a really clear vision of what I want it to be. However, in this case, the enthusiasm everyone had for the project was like a key into my imagination. I finished the phone call with a stronger vision of what I wanted to do now. My imagination was chugging along full steam ahead, and I couldn’t wait to get some notes written…and get back to my wip with renewed eagerness. It’s always nice when that figment of imagination comes to call just when a writer needs it.

Of course, my favorite Figment is from Journey into Imagination at Epcot.

Okay, let’s talk about Prologues. . .
Let’s start with the first question I’m always asked about prologues. No, if you have a prologue, you don’t need to have an epilogue or vice versa.
The two aren’t connected, although they can be closely related. In my work-in-progress, I have both a prologue and an epilogue planned, and the epilogue will echo the events that happened in the prologue, but showcasing all the changes that have happened to the characters in the book. But I’ve got books with prologues without epilogues and ones with epilogues without prologues.

Prologues need to be SHORT! 6 pages is pushing it. If you go beyond that length, you’re really writing a first chapter. Yes, the events may be in a different time and place than the rest of the book, but it still is a chapter, because you are going too indepth and doing too much plot for it to be a prologue.

Show events/people that couldn’t otherwise be seen but have an impact on story. When I wrote Wake Not the Dragon for Herper, I knew the heroine’s husband would be dead when the book opened. Yet his impact on the lives of the hero and heroine needed to be felt and understood, especially because of his part in the hero’s motivation. So the only way I could include him was in a prologue which takes place several years earlier when he sees the heroine after she has been beaten by her father and vows that he will protect her and never let her be hurt like that again. Without that prologue, what the hero does — going to the point of almost betraying his people to protect the heroine as he promised her husband — would seem stupid. But the reader doesn’t learn the truth until the black moment.

Which leads me to the next point: a prologue should create story questions that are answered at the black moment. Again these have to be questions that can’t be created within the chapters. In Mariel: The Foxbridge Legacy, I had a prologue where a child sees someone murdered, but the reader doesn’t know who the murderer or the victim is, only that this isn’t the first time it happened and the child is traumatized yet understands what has happened and why. As in the other example, the heroine — and the reader — will see the full connection at the black moment when the heroine has to face the deepest fears she has hidden even from herself.

It is best to have a single POV/scene. Again, if you do more, you’re inching over into a chapter. Make it quick; make it powerful; make it ask that important question…and then leave it to jump into the body of your book. I’d say as well — go for one strong emotion. Don’t try to evoke multiple emotions, because then you’re revealing more than you want to/need to in a prologue.

I never use names because I want the reader to wonder how this scene ties in with the rest of the book. That’s why a single POV is vital. The “he” and the “she” are clear-cut even without names. You don’t want to give away the ending to your book before chatper one, so focus on that story question rather than character development.

Recently I read a book (not a romance) where the prologue was the protagonist in the midst of a horrible situation. Very powerful, but then the author went back in time to lead up to that scene. Nope. Didn’t work for me. I knew the character would succeed at every challenge up to that moment, because we’d already seen that moment. So be careful about “previewing” an event in a prologue. It seldom works.

But remember that readers don’t always read prologues so keep that in mind if you’re deciding whether or not to have one – it might be better to bring out the information as part of the back story elsewhere in the book. That is one of the reasons editors and agents are leery of prologues. Actually all of the above are the reasons they are leery. Unless a prologue is handled correctly — and it’s a powerful tool for the author when it is — a prologue can be more harmful than helpful.

Continuing the list from yesterday:

7) Begin where your character is facing a change in their world view. That’s the terrible trouble. And it needs to be truly terrible — something that upsets the path they believe their life is on; something that will prevent them from achieving their goal which seemed to be right in front of them; something that will make it necessary for them to work with the other main protagonist. In other words, the terrible trouble has to create a situation that needs both the hero and the heroine to confront in order to achieve their goals. Now that doesn’t mean one of them couldn’t resolve it on their own. It simply wouldn’t be the same result, and it wouldn’t allow the character to face that black moment when they have to come face-to-face and acknowledge that great fear that has been setting up roadblocks in their way.

EIGHT) (sorry, but for some reason, it keeps giving me an emoticon here instead of the number, so I wrote it out)
Make your characters “ordinary.” Make your situation “extraordinary.” There have been many women traveling west in search of a new life. That’s ordinary. What is extraordinary about your heroine and her situation that will propel the story? What if she was traveling with a wagon train filled with secret military equipment or with prostitutes headed out to get a share of the gold in California or with a circus? Take an ordinary heroine and tip her life askew to make a unique story. Same with the hero.

9) Balance romance plot with story plot. Each book has multiple plot lines.
* Story plot (external plot – what you say your story is about when someone asks)
* Romance plot – the developing story of two people falling in love
* Heroine’s GMC discovery and resolution (internal conflict)
* Hero’s GMC discovery and resolution (internal conflict)
* External conflict
External conflict is defined simply as where the heroine’s GMC and the hero’s GMC interact (usually with fireworks). Remember they can have the same goal, but different ways of getting there because of their internal fears. That alone will create an external conflict.
Do you need all of these in the opening scene? Again, in a perfect book in a perfect world, the answer would be yes. In the real world with a real book, the answer is try to get as many as possible. It might not be possible to get both characters’ GMC in that opening scene because you’ll be in a single POV. However, both need to be clear within the first couple of chapters.

10) Don’t start with a lot of exposition. The reader wants to be sucked right into the story. Descriptions of characters, etc. can come later. Think about what you would notice if you were in these circumstances. Don’t add more.
Okay, this is what I tried to do with Anita’s questions from yesterday. We don’t need to know why the heroine is lost and how she’s dealing with it — we know as human beings the frustrations and fears of being lost — what we don’t know and what intrigues us as readers is what happens then. Notice I said “then” and not “next”. Because with the opening of a book, we need to be in that moment with that character so initmately that we know exactly how the character feels because we’re bringing our own emotions into the story.
I think that’s a very important issue that we seldom address — the reader’s part in the story. As writers, we don’t need to tell them everything. We need to leave some spaces to let them react and feel and bring their own experiences into the story, so they can feel an intimate part of it.
My current release — Lost in Shadow written as Jocelyn Kelley — starts with:
“It was murder. Murder most foul.”
At the whisper, Jade Nethercott glanced up from the book she had taken from a shelf.
I wanted an ordinary woman to have something extraordinary happen to her, and I set the tone and the expectation with a whisper you normally don’t expect to hear when you are standing by a bookshelf. Also I hoped to create a frisson of eager, kind of creepy excitement in the reader who wants to now find out what’s going on.

11) Make the characters consistent. A strong woman won’t stand by and let the hero fight her battles for her.
Okay, this is one of my pet peeves. Writers talk about writing kick-ass heroines, and then they have her stand to one side and do nothing any time there is a threat to the characters. You can start with a heroine that needs to find her inner tigress, and that’s okay, but at some point, the heroine has to stand up on her own two feet and face her fears. That’s not something the hero should do for her. She has to do it herself — no matter how hard it is. Having his love can help her do it, but she needs to do it herself. So in your opening, we have to see either that she’s already kick-ass or she has the potential to be. Ask yourself why any amazing hero other than Dudley Do-right (okay, he’s not amazing, but let me finish the point) would want a heroine who just stood to one side and wrung her hands or screamed like a character in a teenage horror flick while he’s getting the stuffing beat out of him (either physically or emotionally)? A strong hero deserves a strong heroine and vice versa. And those strengths need to be visible right from the first sentences.

12) Avoid using secondary characters. If you do have a secondary character in the opening, that character needs to be of prime importance to the resolution of the plot.
In the example I used above from Lost in Shadow, the speaker is the ghost of a murdered man who asks the heroine to find his murderer and bring him to justice. I could bring him in at the beginning of the book in the opening scene because I knew he’d be a plot device throughout the book and would be there at the black moment. Otherwise, he shouldn’t have appeared until later. Of course, then it wouldn’t have been the same book. And that’s okay. In my local writing group, we once did an exercise where everyone was given the same type of heroine/heroine, same opening setting, and the same external conflict. Eleven of us brought in eleven very different beginnings. So do what works for your ms.

13) Forget the back story. If you start your characters in terrible trouble, they don’t have time to find out if they went to the same high school – they need to deal with the problem at hand.
There are many examples of this in the movies. Steven Spielberg does it best. We didn’t get any backstory in the opening of Jaws or Jurassic Park, but we got sucked into the story anyhow. If your opening is strong enough, then the reader will get drawn in and you can provide that background informaton when it’s most important to the story a la the Roger Rabbit rule.

Today, I’m going to give you the first part of a long checklist for your opening pages.
1) Your hero and heroine are defined by the reader’s first impression. Don’t confuse the reader by having another guy appear heroic at beginning, because reader will “attach” to him. Same for heroine.
This we discussed on Monday. I hadn’t seen much of this until the last few contests I judged. When a reader can’t tell which guy is the hero, your ms is in trouble. A romance isn’t a reality show where possible heroes (or heroines) are voted off until only one is left. The reader should be cheering right from the beginning for this one hero and this one heroine to get together for their happily-ever-after. That’s the heart (pun intended <g>) of a romance novel — only this man and this woman can share this amazing love.
2) A critical situation is absolutely necessary. It should be a potentially life-changing situation, especially because the h/h are in it together. They don’t both have to be present in the scene, but the decisions made in that first scene will have an impact on both of them.
I think the last part is what a lot of aspiring authors miss. The decision made in those first few pages can’t affect just one of them — it has to affect both of them. Why? Because they are — even before they vow for better or for worse — in this together from the beginning of the story. So unless you raise the stakes for both of them, the story tension won’t be there. The best book for learning how to raise the story stakes is Donald Maass’s Writing the Break-out Novel. Bounce your first draft off the questions at the end of each chapter to see if you’re raising the stakes with every plot turn.
3) Establish mood. Will your book be dramatic? Humorous? Gothic? Sexy? Start the story with that tone. . .and stick with it.
This is so important. How many of us have picked up what we thought was going to be a light, funny read and had it turn dark? Yes, a ms needs to have a variety of moods, just as a person does, but it needs to have an overall tone. What you have in that opening scene is what you promise the reader throughout the book.
4) Establish pacing. Like mood, what you set up in the first page or two should remain throughout the book.
See #3 above. Pacing has to remain the same. Yes, you need resting places where your reader (and your characters) can catch a breath, but if you start with supersonic pacing, you’d better stick with it. If you start with a calmer pacing, you will need to use other aspects of writing — story tension, GMC, etc — to keep the pages turning. Neither way is better than the other.
5) Either the hero or heroine should be the “opening” character, even if the other doesn’t show up for a few pages. Don’t make first meeting a cliché.
Sorry…we don’t need any more heroines tripping over something and landing in the hero’s arms (or vice versa). Nor do we need to have them nose-to-nose arguing across a business desk. Nor do we need the heroine pulling up in a coach to a house where she’s been hired to be a companion/governess/whatever because her last living relative died leaving her penniless. We’ve all seen those scenarios (and a bunch of others) way too often. There’s nothing wrong with the scenarios, other than they are over-used. The good news is that you can still use them, but you need to put a spin on them. In my traditional Regency Guardian’s Angel, I had the heroine coming to be the governess, but I put a spin on it. The carriage broke down, so she had to walk, and she meets the hero (and the kids she’s going to watch over — not his, btw, which was another change) when one of the kids drops a butterfly net over her head. Same old, same old, with a brand new spin. Make your own spin on the same old, same old, and you’ll catch an editor’s/agent’s attention.
6) Know the black moment of the book. Plots are circular – a book’s end comes back to its beginning. The story questions asked at the beginning must be confronted at the black moment and resolved for the ending.
Okay, I can hear the grumbling before I even post this. The grumbling about I don’t know what the end of my book is. But you do know the end of your book. If it’s a romance, there’s a happily-ever-after ending. If it’s a mystery, the murderer is unmasked and the mystery solved. It’s the same with all genre fiction. As well, if you have spent time developing your characters’ GMC, you’ll know what their goals are as well as their fears, so you know what has to be confronted at the black moment.
I know GMC is going to be discussed as part of this month, but I’m going to give you a quick and easy exercise to get enough of the GMC to get your book started and a direction for you to write in.
Hand’s on exercise: Take a sheet of paper and draw a stick figure in the middle. On the left side, write down three physical characteristics — for example: male/female or tall/short or dark hair/blond. Don’t make it any more complicated than that. On the right side of the stick figure, write down what the character likes doing, what the character wants more than anything else, and what scares the character. Don’t make it any more wordy than what you wrote on the left side. When I do this exercise with kids, they use:
Likes: Computer games
Wants to be: a Beta tester for computer games
Scared of: spiders (or the dark or whatever)
Make your comments just as simple.
Now, you’ve got everything you need to jumpstart a character’s GMC. Not the depths you’ll need as you go along through the book, but enough to know where the character is at the beginning of the book and what the character has to face at the black moment at the end of the book. Once you know that black moment, you know where you need to start….with the goals and the fears that will drive the motivation through the book.
Still with me, but confused or not sure it’ll work. Okay, let me give you a romance example:
My stick figure is a female, blue eyes, black hair.
Likes: Any kinds of plants
Wants to be: A tree surgeon
Scared of: Heights
What she is scared of is what will keep her from achieving her goal (the conflict), and coming to terms with that is what will drive your story. So it is vital that the reader knows that conflict and goal in the very first scene. You need to know some of the layers of that fright which creates the conflict, even if your character doesn’t. The reader doesn’t need to know everything on the first pages — she doesn’t need to know the heroine is afraid of heights because she fell as a child when her sister pushed her out of a window because the sister was jealous of the heroine’s new dress because… (and the process of writing the book digs down all those layers) All the reader needs to know is that there is something that is keeping the heroine from getting her heart’s desire — and the hero is going to help her face the truth at the black moment.
And then you do the same thing for the hero, so the reader is drawn into the story and turns the pages to find out how these characters fall in love and overcome what seem insurmountable odds.

Okay, that’s the first half of the list. Tomorrow I’ll post the other half. Â

I’m doing this a bit backwards, because I usually start with characters when I’m creating a book. Writers talk about the average of three scenes for most chapters, but that is not a hard and fast rule. You have to know what a scene is and how to use it effectively, so you can make that opening scene so seductive a reader can’t put the ms/book down.

What is a scene?
A scene is a miniature book — it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you don’t know where to begin, begin at the end. What do you want the scene to do?

The perfect scene provides information for the reader which complicates the plot and/or the romance in some way. The information forces the protagonist to make a decision — the result of that action is the scene’s sequel that leads into the next scene. Think of it as a train — all the cars are the scenes and they’re hooked together by transitions, but because it’s a train, they’re all going in the same direction.

Never forget the basic physical law: Cause and effect. If a character makes a decision in one way — then he/she must live with the results. What if they made a different decision? Think of the story of The Lady or the Tiger. What would happen if the protagonist picks the right door? What if he picks the wrong one? Either way, the story progresses. Cause and effect.

But that’s an ending. Let’s start with a beginning. A romance example would be a couple who are having problems because he’s never there for her. Or so she feels. When she’s about to deliver their baby, she calls him and he promises that he will definitely be there with her. On his way to the hospital, he sees an accident right in front of him — an accident with injured people. Now he has to make that choice that will drive the rest of the book. What happens if he stops? What happens if he doesn’t? There’s no right answer except what works for your story.

Always look at the consequences of your characters’ decisions as you plan the next scene of your book. “What if. . .” is still the very best tool, but don’t use it as “What if this happens. . .?” Use it as “What if my character decides this and then this will happen. . .?”

Start with a powerful opening line that sets the stage for your characters and your book – again first impressions count.

Should it be dialogue or narrative? Again, there is no right answer except what works for your book. I like to start with dialogue, because that instantly draws the reader into the story. However, there are times when dialogue doesn’t work.

What you shouldn’t start with is a wonderful description of the setting and the times. It may be the msot beautiful writing in the world, but your reader is going to put it down and look for something that grabs her.

Be wary of the crime of TMI — too much information at the beginning. Start with your characters in the midst of “terrible trouble” — a place that’s a turning point in their lives because the decision they make in the opening scene will change them in ways they can’t imagine at the beginning of the scene.

Do the hero and the heroine have to be in the opening scene? That old rule of thumb has fallen by the wayside, but if they aren’t physically in the opening scene, the reader needs to feel their presence — they can be talked about, for example. Often the opening scene is used it introduce one or the other, so the reader can attach to that point of view character and dive into the story.

I’m going to give you some examples from my books. I’ll start with the first book I sold (and the editor said she bought it because of the strong opening and characters):

** Dead drunk. With a moan, he grasped his head. He understood the phrase too well. He was the latter and wished he could be the former. His head felt as if a tombstone ground down into his shoulders. – Nothing Wagered (creates character for hero – and things he must change during the unfolding of the story)

** “Are you leaving us, Quinn?”
Lord Marlesquin had long ago taught the ton to address him as Quinn. It had begun when he was known as “Sir Alexander Quinley” before his uncle died, leaving him the family’s title. He had hated the name he shared with his late father almost as much as he had despised the cur who had sired him, but he had become accustomed to being called Quinn by his friends. He knew keeping the name made no sense, save that he still heard her whispering it in his dreams. — Marry Me, Millie (sets up the hero, his conflict with his father and the fact that he’s missing a woman he once held in his arms — the whole crux of the story)

** Why didn’t they just kill him and have it over with?
He had never liked waiting. Not even now while he waited to be executed.
He sat with his back against the cold stone wall and tapped his fingers impatiently on the clammy floor. He ignored the other prisoners. They were just shadows in the thin light from the single brand set in the wall beyond the barred door. If his impatience disturbed them, they would not argue about it. In the barbaric world beneath the Tiria’s palace, he had carved out a niche with his bare hands. He was not afraid to kill to keep what was his, and they knew it. – Dreamsinger (introduces hero and world conflict – This was a prologue because hero doesn’t appear in opening scene of the body of the book — we’ll discuss prologues later this week)

** The first scream came from the kitchen. — A Rather Necessary End — to set the mystery feeling for the first book of my Regency mystery series. The openings of the other books in the on-going series with Lady Priscilla Flanders and Sir Neville Hathaway are:
** “Do you want to tell her, or should I?” Mrs. Moore looked up at the butler who was trying to avoid her eyes. The housekeeper crossed her arms in front of her and planted herself in the middle of the laundry room doorway when Gilbert tried to make his escape. — Grave Intentions
** Some days, Lady Priscilla Flanders wanted to strangle her Aunt Cordelia. Other days, she preferred the idea of boiling her father’s sister in oil or stashing her away in an iron maiden. This afternoon, she was wondering if it would be possible in the seaside village of Stonehall-on-Sea to rent a coliseum, a blood-thirsty crowd, and a hungry lion. — Faire Game
** “Mama, tell him to stop!”
Lady Priscilla Flanders looked up from the list she was preparing for the cook. Since their arrival at Thornycroft late in the afternoon, she had been busy making arrangements for food during their first week at her aunt’s house just outside Bath. — The Greatest Possible Mischief (By now the readers know the heroine’s children, so this is a sign to them that the youngsters will be important in solving the mystery)
** Trouble was easy to find. How many times had Lady Priscilla Flanders said those very words to one of her children? Now her aunt was saying the same thing to her. — Digging Up Trouble
** “Blood,” she whispered. “It is everywhere. Blood and death.”
She lifted an upset chair, but froze when a hand paralyzed with death dropped to the floor with a heavy thump. The man lying on the floor had a red spot in the middle of his chest where a knife with a bone haft had been driven into him. An answering echo came from the doorway she had passed through only moments before.
The sound was not another dead man’s hand, but the unmistakable rhythm of footfalls. — The Wedding Caper

Right now, I’m thinking up a dynamite opening sentence for the next book in the series. Until I have it, I can’t begin the book.

As you can see, there is a mixture of dialogue and narrative in my opening lines. I’d say I use about a 50-50 mix. Whichever serves the story best.

I’m doing the class on romancenovel.tv, but I thought I’d post the lessons here as well in case anyone has comments or questions.

As Maria says in The Sound of Music, let’s start at the very beginning. You have only seconds to capture an editor/agent/reader’s attention, so you must start with a strong opening. We’re going to be focusing on the first 3-5 pages. It’s rumored out there in writer-land that a ms has 45 seconds to gain an editor or agent’s attention. I don’t know if this is true, but let’s face it — you don’t have much longer than that to gain a reader’s attention when there are hundreds of other new titles surrounding yours on the shelf.
So for the next five days, we’re going to focus on what you need to have in those vital first 3-5 pages (and all the rest of the pages of your ms).
For beginnings, the basic rules of journalism apply. It is a rule of thumb for all journalists that there must be 5 elements in the first paragraph of an item/story. Jouranlists know that many readers skim articles, so they have to get the facts — and the enticement to read on — in that first paragraph. As a fiction writer, you don’t have to get them in the first paragraph, but you’d better have them appearing in the first couple of pages. To be honest, I’d say the first page because again, if you don’t capture that reader’s attention ASAP, you’ve lost him or her to other mss or books.
These are the important things you have to have at the very beginning:
Who? – hero/heroine
What? – The story problem/conflict/question
Where/When? – Place/time period
Why? – motivation
Hook? – The opening that sets story in motion.

Let’s go through those one at a time (and we’ll be dealing with each of these more during the week):
*WHO — it is vital that your reader “attach” herself to the main characters immediately. The reader has to care about these characters as soon as the story starts. Make certain you don’t bring in a strong secondary character right at the beginning because the reader may attach to him/her and believe s/he is the hero(ine). When it’s revealed a few pages later that s/he is not, it jerks the reader out of the story and the book out of the reader’s hand to go smashing into the wall. So make sure the first strong female and male characters your reader meets are the hero and the heroine.
* WHAT — What’s the story about? It’s amazing how many aspiring authors can’t say in a sentence or two what their stories are about. A writer needs to know (at least by final draft!) what the story is about — what these two people are aiming for with their goals.
* WHERE/WHEN — It is vital that a reader knows exactly where and when the story is taking place. Some writers drop the easy clue of putting the setting and date at the beginning of the first paragraph. Even so, you must make certain your reader knows immediately — even without that clue — where you are. You don’t want to use paragraphs of description to set the stage at the beginning, but a couple of quick clues — style of language, a few words of description, clothing — can set a scene enough to get the book rolling.
* WHY — Motivation — why are these people in this place at this time doing what they’re doing. Don’t make it complicated at the beginning — the story is where you dig through the layers to find the truth of what the character wants and why. Just make it important. The characters have to care deeply enough about their goals even on the first page to do whatever it is they do (rob the stagecoach, cut someone direct at a Regency ball, refuse to sign the merger papers) to get the story rolling. And the reader has to believe it is so important to the character that the character is willing to go through all the life-changing events that will unfold as a result of that action.
* HOOK — The thing that draws the reader into the story. The fabulous opening line and the compelling characters with real life motivations and conflicts that will keep the reader reading through the rest of the pages.

So think about these five elements and see if you can list them (in just a few words or a couple of sentences) for your current work-in-progress.

I’ll be doing a session on Romancenovel.tv this week (August 6-10) on Beginning Blunders — how to get your book off on the right foot without shooting yourself in the foot! If you’re interested in stopping by (and there will be a couple of hands-on for you to try), go to http://www.romancenovel.tv/forum/ and page down to the August is Start Your Book section. You’ll find Beginning Blunders partway down the list. Come and chat!

Thanks to everyone who responded both on the blog and in email. The dragon on the weathervane now has a name. His name is Windchaser.

I hope you had fun, too, with playing with ideas for the names.