Lucky 7

Yay, I've been tagged in the lucky 7 meme! Thanks, Maggie. :)

The rules are:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next seven lines as they're written--no cheating!
4. Tag 7 other writers
5. Let them know

So, it turns out my seven lines are a little boring... sorry 'bout that. You should go read Maggie's if you want some actiony awesomeness!

Far off in the forest of stone came the soft dripping of water. To my right the cave wall arced around in a near perfect half circle, and dotting the wall were hundreds of tunnels.

They spread out like spokes on a tyre; some only large enough for a mouse, others would fit ten men walking abreast with ease. Many ventured straight into the rock, while others veered steeply down, or rose sharply. I knew that even with supplies to survive and light to see by I would never be able to find my way out alone.

This place was never designed for escape.

Now as to the nominations, I'm going to cheat a little and nominate everyone who reads this post! Please let me know if you do participate as I'd love to read everyone else's entries.

Now go forth, and post!

How well do you know your world?

So, we know setting is important, right? Whether we spend days or weeks world building, or pants it as we go, it needs to be real. It needs to support the story, and make it richer.

I have a confession: setting is not one of my strong points. I wouldn't say that I'm awful at developing settings, but I guess like everything else writing related, I'm still learning. I knew setting was important, but only on a theoretical level. Until recently.

A few weeks ago I read the first book of the Kate Daniels series, Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews (who is actually a husband and wife team). Since then I've read the first five. I love the characters. I love Kate. I love the plots. I love the romance.

I love the world.

I've never consciously thought that about a setting before. I'm sure I've admired settings. Enjoyed them. But they've never been one of the stand out factors that have made me love a story.

The world that Kate lives in is so unique, so well thought out, so interesting and detailed, it adds an extra layer of awesomeness to everything that happens in the story. It's a source of so much conflict, before the bad guys even appear on the scene. It's even the cause of many of the badies.

I wish I could explain why it's so amazing, but I'm still trying to figure that out for myself. So instead, I'll just say, read Magic Bites. It's a great story, and so are the rest, and you might just learn something while you're at it.

Are you like me, and don't usually notice the setting? Or can setting make or break a story for you?

How are your June goals going? I'm on track, but I have a house full of guests and they're here until next week, so it's hard to find time without seeming antisocial.

A very unscientific look at first pages - part two

On Friday, I did a post about first pages. If you missed it, you can check it out here. I got to have fun with making graphs and pretending I was a real statistician and just generally procrastinating to my heart's content. The conclusion I came to?

A successful first page needs Intrigue, Setting & Character to fully hook the reader (me in this case) and give them the Desire to Read On. If you only have space for one, better make it Intrigue.

Some of you may have noticed there were a few outliers in the graphs of last weeks post, so today I'm going to have a look at the first pages I studied and see what caused those.

Before I go on, I'd just like to reiterate that the ratings I gave these pages in no way reflects the quality of the book. I haven't read all these books, but even some of the ones I have read (and enjoyed) got mediocre scores for their first page. Just goes to show that the first page isn't the only way to hook the reader or I wouldn't have read them!

Let's start with Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. It had a prologue so I did both the first page of the prologue and the first chapter and I gave both a 2/5. Both very clearly stated the setting as a heading before the rest of the text.
   First sentence (prologue):

Chauncy was with a farmer's daughter on the grassy banks of the Loire River when the storm rolled in, and having let his gelding wander in the meadow, was left to his own two feet to carry him back to the chateau.

The first sentence of the prologue is quite long (42 words) and has more details about the setting, including the weather and repeating details from the heading. The length of the sentence slows the pace down from the word go. There is no urgency or questions raised in the first page, unless you can count the details of a storm as setting an ominous tone, but it didn't really work for me.

   First sentence (Chapter 1):

I walked into biology and my jaw fell open.

In chapter one the first sentence is quite short. It shows setting, and to a certain extent, intrigue. I didn't count the intrigue in my analysis though because I felt like the rest of the page didn't live up to that intrigue. The 'jaw fell open' was due to Ken & Barbie stuck to the board at the front of the class with a note saying 'welcome to human reproduction (sex)'. While this is cute, it didn't make me need to read on to have a biology lesson. There was also some characterisation in the first page, which I again didn't count, because it was for the MCs best friend, not the MC herself.

Overall, neither page grabbed me, hence the score of 2/5. The first page of Chapter one was cute, but all it showed was a 'teenager' (no other details of the MC given on the first page) who is in high school and has a quirky biology teacher and a friend who doesn't like biology. Great. I don't care. At least not on the first page. Give me a reason to keep reading first, then give me the cute details.


Now let's look at Timeless by Alexandra Monir. This page had all three: Intrigue, Setting & Character. But it only got 3/5. Either this is a matter of taste (quite likely) or some ways of including all the elements don't work as well as others.
   First sentence:

Michele stood alone in the center of a hall of mirrors.

Straight away we have setting, character and intrigue. Why is she standing in a hall of mirrors? The first thing, I think, that lets down the intrigue is the fact that the whole first page is in italics. The first question I ask (instead of 'why is she standing in a hall of mirrors') is 'Is she dreaming?' Probably not the best question you want your reader to be asking when you're setting up intrigue, because it means all the cool things you're writing about aren't real.

The first page goes on to show even more character and intrigue. Michele's physical appearance is described in detail, including what she's wearing, in the context that while the reflections look like her, they don't move when she moves. They also have a key hanging around her neck which Michele doesn't have around her own neck.

The next paragraph is devoted to describing the key, with details like 'The key looked weathered and somehow wise, as though it weren't inanimate, but a living being with over a centuries worth of stories to share'. I'm a sucker for fantastical elements, but I have to question how she gets that much info from seeing an image of the key in her reflection.

The page has some great elements for creating intrigue (the hall of mirrors, the reflections that aren't actually reflections, the strange key) but I think it's let down by a number of factors. If it is a dream then the cool elements don't matter anymore, anyone can have a dream about strange things. Also, the page is split into two paragraphs, the first mostly entails description about what the MC looks like, the second describes the key. There's a lot of description here, and that doesn't help with pace. And lastly, the details about the key didn't quite get me to suspend disbelief, which is important if you're writing anything fantastical.


Now let's look at the three that got 5/5, to see what was done right. Unearthly, by Cynthia Hand, is the only one that got 5/5 that didn't have all three.
   First sentence:

The first time, November 6 to be exact, I wake up at two a.m. with a tingling in my head like tiny fireflies dancing behind my eyes.

Straight away - Intrigue. Why does she have tingling in her head? What does she mean by the first time? What is happening? Already I'm hooked and want to read on.

The first page goes on to describe the MC smelling smoke but finding nothing burning in her house. Then she goes to the kitchen for water because she can't sleep and the page ends with this:

... with no other warning, I'm in the middle of the burning forest. It's not like a dream. It's like I'm physically there. I don't stay long, maybe all of thirty seconds, and then I'm back in the kitchen...

Of course I'm going to turn the page to read the end of that sentence! And keep reading. I want to know what's going on. The intrigue was strong enough on this page to make up for the fact that it didn't have all three elements.

I didn't count this page as having character because, even though it's told in first person, I still don't know anything about her (I only know it's a her because I did read on and because of the cover).


Next, The False Princess by Eilis O'Neil.
   First sentence:

The day they came to tell me, I was in one of the gardens with Kiernan, trying to decipher a three-hundred-year-old map of the palace grounds.

Intrigue and setting straight away. Came to tell her what? Who are they? Why are they trying to decipher a 300 year old map? The setting alone is a bit intriguing. A story set in a palace? Cool.

In the rest of the page we learn the MC, Nalia, is a princess (character), and she and Kiernan are searching for a secret door in a wall in the gardens. This page has given me enough, and more, to make me keep reading. Not only do I want to know who 'they' are, and what they're going to tell Nalia, but I want to know about this secret door (which is revealed in the last sentence of the page).


Last one, Eon by Alison Goodman.
   First sentence:

I let the tips of both of my swords dig into the sandy arena floor.

We've got setting and we've got intrigue. The intrigue is a little subtler here, but I still want to know why she's fighting with swords.

Next we learn that she's in pain and she's training with her swordmaster (who despises her). Why is she in pain? Then we lean it's 'the bleeding pain': she's a 'she'. This is followed by the swordmaster calling her a boy. Whaa? Why is she posing as a boy? Lastly, we learn that she's considered the 'school cripple'.

Ok, I want to read more. Now. Luckily for me I have this book on my current TBR pile ; ).


So, have I bored you all to tears? Is there anything you disagree with me on? Agree? Are there any other titles you'd like me to give my reasoning on? What books have you read with first pages that forced you to keep reading?

A very unscientific look at first pages (with charts!) - part one

It took me quite a long time to realise the beginning of my story needed a lot of work. Then when I finally figured it out, it took me even longer to realise it needed to be scrapped and rewritten.

Afraid of making the same mistakes again, I decided to do some research. And here it is, in the hopes that someone else will find this useful too.

I went on Amazon and went through the first pages of thirteen books in the YA paranormal & fantasy categories. For each, I read the first page ONLY. If I wasn't hooked by then, too bad. If the book had a prologue I did the test on both the prologue and the first chapter (since I know a lot of people don't read prologues, and those that do might get turned off by the prologue before getting to the first chapter).

The three categories I had were: Setting, Character and Intrigue. I classified Intrigue as leading me to ask a question, wanting to know more. I only counted character if it was details about the main character, and it was more than just their name.

If I was on the fence about putting a book in any category, I left it off. Each book had to be clearly in each category.

The numbers of books that fell into each category, or multiple categories.

Based on this pie chart, Setting is the most common component of first pages. 88% of the pages I surveyed had details about setting. Usually they set up the MC's 'normal world', whether it was a fantasy setting or the real world. Kristen Lamb has a good post on why you want to start with the normal world, if you're interested.

Intrigue was the second most common at 56% and Character last with 37%. I think it's interesting that 44% of the pages didn't have Intrigue.

I also gave each book a rating out of five based on my 'Desire to Read On'.

Before I go on, I'd just like to say that these ratings in no way reflect how good the book is. It's only based on the first page and how badly I needed to turn to the second page to know what happens next. It's also, obviously, very subjective. Some pages I gave a five for that others may have given a two, and vice verse. Also, I didn't count words, so some books (if there chapter headings took up most of the page) had fewer words to capture me in.

Clearly, for me, Intrigue is the most important factor in getting me to read on. Which brings me back to the pie chart, 44% didn't have Intrigue!

Lets have a look at what groupings of these elements made me want to read on the most:

Because the sample size was so small here, it's probably best not to drawn conclusions from the data, but as I've already said, this is a very unscientific study, so I'm going to anyway.

Intrigue is the single most important thing to have on your first page. Probably also in your first sentence.

The differences between Character and Setting are marginal, but carrying on the unscientificness (it's a word) I'm going to say that Character is second, and Setting last (the most common element in first pages).

I'll break it down one more time, in the interests of transparency, and so you can disagree with me about various pages if you would like:

* Fallen does have a prologue but I was unable to get the first page from Amazon

So, what do you think? Agree with my very unscientific study? Disagree? Have anything else to add?

Next week, in part two, I'll break down the first page details, and what about each page lead to them getting a higher or lower 'Desire to Read' score.

A call for help from my writerly friends

As a bit of background, I call myself a Kwozzie. I was born in Australia but I have spent my life thus far split between Australia and New Zealand, although not in two distinct chunks. The only place I've been to outside of Australia or NZ is Rarotonga. Yes.. I need to get out more.

In the past I've only written fantasy and I think a big reason for this is that I get to make up my worlds. I'm not constrained by the world I know.

Now as you know, I've started a Sekrit Projekt. It's not actually secret, I just like the name. Or I guess it's like cheating on my other WIP so maybe that's how it got that label. Anyway, I digress.

The Sekrit Projekt is a YA paranormal. The only paranormal elements are vamps and angels (pfft.. come up with something more original) and... it's set in America. Do you see my problem?

So being a good little researcher I turned to the ever faithful Wikipedia. I know next to nothing about the United States (other than what I've learnt on TV... don't look at me like that... don't worry I plan to rectify this as soon as possible, I will be visiting you soon) so I chose a bunch of states at random.

Why yes, I do imagine Ben Barnes as all my hot male characters. Can you tell I'm a little obsessed?
Also, I spent far too long making this..

So much information on demographics and history and geography and economics and whoa brain overload! What I really want is personal insight. A reason to go 'that place sounds cool, I want my story to be set there!' And that's where you guys come in.

If you're in the US can you tell me about your favourite places (or any place really) and what you think is cool about them? Anything from big cities, to little towns, to the wilderness. And even if you're not in the US feel free to pitch in. Can always do with some inspiration for future stories.

Vicki has pointed out that this could be a little too broad. I've had a bit of a think about where I think this story is going (I'm a pantster, so no in depth plotting here, but I am trying to expand my planning horizons). I'm not sure that this is going to narrow down the search by much, but I'll need a city with a good mix of middle class suburbia and crime (a place where vampire killings can be written off as some other vicious crime, but there are still classy places to live). And an area of woodland nearby, which maybe has a kinda creepy feel to it. Umm... I'm not really being much help am I?