forum Ask me about your plot developments

Started June 21, 2018 by IvyMarieHudson

tune

I'm open for questions, and great with making people want to bang their heads on tables. Do you want a romance stopper, a plot thickener? I can help

Do you have any advice for starting a book, ie the first line?

The fun thing about the first line is that it's almost never where you start writing, or rather, the first line you first write is almost never the one that makes it to the final draft (so basically don't get too hung up on it while your trying to write the rest of your story) but everyone seems to have their own opinion about what makes it good. One piece of advice you've probably heard is to never open with the weather but personally I believe never is too rigid a requirement. In my personal opinion I've always found the worst opening line to be things that open with something like gunshot or immediately watching something bloody and tragic happen, personally this often comes off as sign of an author more concerned with edge and shock value then story and its a bad cold open because, it being the first line and all, your reader who just opened the book really doesn't care about your main character or their mother you just murder because they have no build of connection that.
The afamed Pixar method of storytelling is "One day there was a __, and everyday they ____ untill __ happened, so they ___." The key to this is it starts with the normal for the character, lets you get your grounding a bit before they shake everything to hell. Anyway I don't know, all that might be irevent depending on what your writing but if that helps and you need more Hmu.

Don't start in exposition, is my best advice. In my experience I get most engaged in a story when the first line is something: 1) humorous. IE, "You wouldn't dare." drops stuffed animal on the floor. 2) action packed. IE, "I'm bleeding out slowly, but I'm running faster. They won't get me this time. And if they do, all they'll catch is a dead body." 3) Twisted and basackwards. The Tangled method. "And this is how I died."

But I'm just an adrenaline junkie, so

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but my opening sequence is from a spaceship's computer's POV when it detects a object that reads as a earth spaceship on it's scanners and decides to begin the process of waking up the crew from cryostasis. I was wondering if you had any tips for that.

Just my own opinion, you may want to start a paragraph before that, as in take a moment to capture the empty ship and the oppressive silence and your MC sitting quietly alone or doing whatever they've been doing while the others sleep then have the ding of the monitor displaying earth or however you want to play it happen and go from there.
Idk

Okay, I'll keep that in mind. All the crew will be in cryostasis though.

Ah man ha see I read "Ship's computer" but my mind thought "Ship's Captain" Sorry yeah that was my bad I just misread it, you can ignore all that, lol, yeah I thought we were talking about a human.
( I mean if the computer is AI then I guess you could still do that but like, eh)