Category Archives: Opinions

About the hook at the beginning of the book

By admin Posted in Opinions, Writing Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Reply

Because I’m starting to write a new book of my own, I’m particularly interested in beginnings at the moment. This week I decided take a closer look at the first paragraphs of ten middle-grade fantasies I’ve read recently. I wanted to check out two things. First, how many of these books had beginnings I consider intriguing? Which would I have continued reading if I wasn’t on a mission to dissect middle-grade fantasies to improve my own writing? Second, I wanted to get a feel for whether or not books live up—or down—to the promise of the first pages. How often did I like books with ho-hum openings? How often did books with clever beginnings feel like a letdown farther on?

What follows this isn’t scientific analysis, just personal opinion. I don’t think even my most analytical scientist-friends would have an easy time figuring out something like this scientifically; there’d be too much variability in what people think of the beginnings of books and what they think about the books overall.

When evaluating the beginnings of these books, I discounted the prologues, if any. Three of the ten books had official prologues; that is, sections labeled “Prologue.” One book, The Lightning Thief, had a sneaky little well-written half page that was actually a prologue but wasn’t labeled as such: a closet prologue, so to speak. I was generous and counted that as the actual beginning of the book, even though it wasn’t fooling me, not even for a minute.

One of the three out-of -the-closet prologues was truly execrable, in my opinion, and seemed to be there only to tie together a funky structure. Here’s the beginning of it, from The Ruins of Gorlan: “Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed.” Seriously? Yikes. The other two prologues were well written, but I discounted them anyway and skipped right to the main dish.

I had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the openings of six of the ten novels. First paragraphs and first pages of books as varied as Liesel and Po, Saavy, Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers, A Tale Dark and Grimm, The Lightning Thief, and My Very UnFairy Tale Life all hooked me. They did it by raising questions in my mind, tickling my sense of humor, reeling me in with a great voice, or doing more than one of these at the same time.  In my opinion, only one of these books, My Very UnFairytale Life, failed to fully live up to the promise of its first pages. It wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t as good as the other books with intriguing beginnings. To summarize, if these books are representative, I’d have to say that good first pages usually mean a good book.

But do less-than-stellar first paragraphs or even un-thrilling first pages mean a mediocre book? Maybe not. The openings of four of the ten books elicited a lukewarm or less-than-lukewarm reaction from me, but I read on, and ended up liking three of the four (all but The Ruins of Gorlan). I liked one of them so much I read it twice. That wonderfully funny book, The Wee Free Men, was the only one that had a beginning that would have stopped me cold if I didn’t have another reason for reading the book. Here’s how it opens: “Some things start before other things. It was a summer shower but didn’t appear to know it, and it was pouring rain as fast as a winter storm. Miss Perspicacia Tick sat in what little shelter a raggedy hedge could give her and explored the universe. She didn’t notice the rain. Witches dried out quickly.” My reaction was: Huh? And I only got more confused when I learned that Ms. P wasn’t really a main character. However, this was an utterly fantastic, laugh-out-loud book by a writer who could keyboard circles around the rest of the best. Just goes to show, you never can tell.

So what are my conclusions? As a reader, I learned that good first pages mean odds are better than even that the rest of the book rocks, too. But non-hook openings—especially old-fashioned first chapters that slowly introduce you to a character and his or her surroundings—are not necessarily a sign of yawns to come. So I’ll be keeping the faith and giving writers a chapter or two of grace before putting the book down and switching on NetFlix.

As an unpublished writer, though, I’m afraid the lesson is that only awesome first pages will cut the mustard. I better aim for great voice, intriguing questions, and if possible, a smile or two. Terry Pratchett can afford to give a puzzling first chapter to a secondary character. His thousands of loyal fans will forge on. Most of the rest of—including me—don’t have that luxury.

A book-by-book breakdown of opening pages follows.

Positive reaction – intrigued, definitely keep reading

“On the third night after the day her father died, Liesel saw the ghost.”
–Lauren Oliver, Liesel and Po
My reaction: Whose ghost was it? Her father’s? If not, then whose? What was the encounter like, and what happened next? Keep reading.

“When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.”
–Ingrid Law, Savvy
My reaction: Wow, a kid started a hurricane? How? Why? Keep reading.

“It was a typical, sunny summer afternoon on Karloff Avenue. A woman was watering plants in her garden. A mailman was making his daily rounds. Two mothers with strollers chatted on the sidewalk. And high above them, balanced precariously on the chimney of the oldest house on the block, Benjamin Franklin was disco dancing while mooing like a cow.”
–Matthew McElligott and Larry Tuxbury, Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers
My reaction: Oh, fun! Benjamin Franklin disco dancing on a roof in modern times? How? Why? Keep reading.

“Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome. I know, I know. You don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. A little while ago, I wouldn’t have believed it myself. Little girls in red caps skipping around the forest? Awesome? I don’t think so. But then I started to read them. The real, Grimm ones. Very few little girls in red caps in those. Well, there’s one. But she gets eaten.”
–Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark and Grimm)
My reaction: Fantastic voice. Speaker likes violent action, so this isn’t going to be your average fairytale. Keep reading.

“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.”
–Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
My reaction: OK, maybe not my thing, but I bet kids would eat this up. I’ll keep reading.

“You know all those stories that claim fairies cry sparkle tears and elves travel by rainbow? They’re lies. All lies. No one tells you the truth until it’s too late. And then all you can do is run like crazy while a herd of unicorns tries to kill you.”
– My Very UnFairy Tale Life, Anna Staniszewski
My reaction: Fun voice, murderous unicorns. Keep reading.

Lukewarm reaction – OK, I’ll keep reading

“I’m going to die of boredom here, Sabrina Grimm thought as she looked out the train window at Ferryport Landing, New York.” Then comes a description of the town, the weather, the kids, and how they’re on a train. Then one of the kids speaks: “Do they have bagels in Ferryport Landing, Ms. Smirt?”
–Michael Buckley, Prologue, The Fairytale Detectives
My reaction: Right, I liked that thing about the bagels. I’ll keep going for a few pages on the strength of that. (Turned out to be a really fun book.)

“Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parents’ house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were very large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her and flew to her window one evening just after her twelfth birthday.”
–Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making)
My reaction: Reluctantly lukewarm, verging on less than lukewarm. OK, I’ll bite: What’s the Green Wind? What’s so important about May, the mole, and the feet? What happens to the little girl? I’ll keep reading because I’ve heard this is a good book.

“’Try to eat something, Will. Tomorrow’s a big day, after all.’
Jenny, blonde, pretty and cheerful, gestured towards Will’s barley touched plate and smiled encouragingly at him. Will made an attempt to return the smile but it was a dismal failure. He picked at the plate before him, piled high with his favourite foods. Tonight, his stomach knotted tight with tension and anticipation, he could hardly bring himself to swallow at all.”
–John Flanagan, Ranger’s Apprentice
My reaction: Meh. But this is the first book in one of my son’s favorite series, so I’ll keep going. (I am leaving out the excruciating prologue, which my son admits he also skipped.)

Less than lukewarm – I’ll read this because I trust the author based on previous work or because I’ve heard the book is good

“Some things start before other things. It was a summer shower but didn’t appear to know it, and it was pouring rain as fast as a winter storm. Miss Perpsicacia Tick sat in what little shelter a raggedy hedge could give her and explored the universe. She didn’t notice the rain. Witches dried out quickly.”
–Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
My reaction: Huh? Keep reading because I read another book by this writer long ago and really liked his sense of humor. Maybe it will get better. (It did.)

Plot structure review: The Wee Free Men

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Instead of writing a review this Sunday, I spent my day analyzing the structure of The Wee Free Men, a book I reviewed several weeks ago.

About a month ago I decided to analyze the structure of the books I review on this blog as one of a number of steps I’m taking to improve my writing. I’ve been using thriller writer Larry Brooks’ four-part plot structure as a guideline. You can read a summary of that structure here.

To my delight, The Wee Free Men follows Brooks’ structure well, deviating only at the very beginning, where there’s supposed to be an immediate hook. The first several pages of The Wee Free Men may hook for readers familiar with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, but the rest of us need to read on in faith, trusting that things will soon get interesting. They do.

So far I’ve analyzed the structure of three books. This is the second that generally matches the guidelines I chose to investigate, which please me because it confirms the guideline has practical value for me as a writer. I’m also feeling good because it’s taking me less and less time to analyze the structure of the books I read. Progress!

Next week I’ll be taking an intensive Friday-through-Sunday course on three-part plot structure, so I probably won’t have time to blog. The week after that I’ll be back with a review of Liesel & Po by Lauren Oliver.

Does The Ruins of Gorlan fit the standard plot structure model?

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I’ve spent large chunks of the past two days trying to figure out if the successful first book in the Ranger’s Apprentice series, The Ruins of Gorlan, fits into the plot structure described by writer Larry Brooks.

It doesn’t.

Let me back up a bit. I’m on a mission to learn more about how to structure a middle-grade fantasy that appeals to readers, so I’ve set out to compare the structure of the books I’ve reviewed so far on this blog with the structure described by Larry Brooks on his website. I chose that particular structure because I think I understand it fairly well, and most other descriptions of plot structure leave me as baffled as the question of why people buy and eat marshmallow Peeps.

My hypothesis was that although most books probably wouldn’t fit the structure like hand in glove, they wouldn’t deviate by much, either. There might be a chipped fingernail here or there, but no actual missing fingers. This was true of the first book I analyzed, The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. However, no matter how I slice and dice The Ruins of Gorlan, I can’t make it fit the glove, not even a little bit.

The attempt was a fail from the word go. There’s no hook at the beginning of The Ruins of Gorlan unless you chop off the prologue. If you axe the prologue, though, you can argue there’s a hook at the outset of chapter one. There the reader learns the young main characters must choose their future occupations the next day, and there’s a chance the applicants will be rejected, in which case they are doomed to become . . . electrical engineers! No, I kid you. I put that in for my husband. They’re doomed to become farmers, which irritated me a lot because I grew up in a farming area and consider farming a noble and worthwhile occupation.

There are one or two candidates for an inciting incident and a big midpoint event in The Ruins of Gorlan, but after that, things really fall apart. I even tried looking at the book as two different, sequential stories: one about two boys finding their paths in life and defeating three bullies, and the other about dispatching the evil Kalkara monsters. That didn’t work either.

Nevertheless, many readers adore this book, and those readers include my son. He first read this book two years ago, at the age of twelve. Since then, he’s read every other volume in this series. Why? He likes the characters, the descriptions of apprenticeship training, the ordered society described in the book, the slow build to action, and the thorough descriptions of battle in a later volume in the series. “Most writers build up to battles,” he says. “They make it really suspenseful, but then they only give you a little action before they switch to the aftermath. Here you get the whole battle.”

So what about the prologue? I strongly suspect these few pages would have garnered the manuscript an instant form-letter rejection from most if not all agents in the United States.

“Tell me about that prologue,” I said to my son. “What did you think of that?”

“Oh, I didn’t read it. I never read his prologues. I skip right to the first chapter.”

Interesting. Next I’m moving on to a third victim, The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett.

Successful middle-grade fantasies: how closely do they stick to plot-structure formulas?

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Underwood typewriter. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

This week I set out to test the idea that commercially successful middle-grade fantasies stick fairly closely to a certain plot structure. If that turns out to be the case, I also want to learn how closely they stick to the structure. In other words, what’s the range of variation?

My reason for doing this is simple. I’m a writer, and plot structure is my Achilles’ heel. Test readers and other writers tell me I’m good at creating engaging characters. I’ve learned to put these characters in peril, my action scenes are healthy enough to pass muster, and dialogue is my greatest strength. However, something’s still lacking. Two of the nine people who have read my middle-grade fantasy did so quickly and enjoyed it. The rest are slogging through as a favor to me. They find it easy to put the story down for weeks or even months, and some never pick it back up. So what gives? How is my work different from the world of writers who successfully engage a large number of readers?

It took me a month of intensive work to figure it out. I talked with my test readers and with other writers. I bought a one-month subscription to Writer’s Digest online tutorials and listened to as many tutorials as I could. I searched the Web for advice and started reading and reviewing one middle-grade fantasy a week to learn more about the genre. Gradually the mist has cleared, and even I–not the brightest porch light on the block–can now see the crux of the problem is structure. My plotting deviates from traditional plotting, and not just by a little. It lives in a galaxy far, far away. I’m not saying everyone has to stick to traditional structure to succeed, mind you, but I figure the folks who successfully color outside the lines probably know where those lines are. I don’t.

It’s clear that I need to get a better grip on plotting. Unfortunately, most descriptions of story structure frustrate me. I just don’t get them. I can generally follow the writer or speaker until they’ve explained what an inciting incident is. After that, they lose me. The rest either sounds like magic (too vague) or rocket science (too complex).

Finally, though, I found a description I understand, although I had to read it several times before I even comprehended the basics. The description is by thriller writer Larry Brooks, and you can find it here, on his website. In brief, as I understand it, the structure goes something like this:

  • 0%, page one: a hook that gets you interested. Could be an intriguing voice, mysterious or otherwise fascinating bit of information, humor, or action big or small. Something promising, anyway. In the section that follows, you learn about the hero’s status quo, their story to this point, and what they have to lose. You get some foreshadowing of things to come.
  • 20%, inciting incident (also called plot point one): A change in the hero’s status quo caused by the antagonist, be it a storm, bad guy, or whatever. The hero’s circumstances shift and s/he now has a need, quest, or goal but doesn’t yet know how to take effective action. If the hero tries to take action, s/he’s thwarted by an inner demon or demons.
  • 35%(ish): a reminder of the serious nature of the antagonist.
  • 50%, midpoint: Reader, hero, or both get information that changes their understanding of what’s happening. The hero can now be proactive rather than reactive.
  • 60%(ish): another reminder of the serious nature of the antagonist.
  • 75%, plot point two: Hero gets final information needed to fully succeed. No new information or characters after this point.

This structure isn’t universally accepted as the gold standard, but because I more or less get it, I decided to use it as my baseline. That is, I’ll map out the structure of the middle-grade fantasies I’ve reviewed on this blog to date and compare them with this structure to see whether, how much, and in what ways they deviate. If nothing else, I figure this will give me a better grasp of this specific way of structuring plot, which by golly is more know-how than I have now. The next step will be to come up with a nice, trite plot of my own and see if I can actually put the technique into practice. Knowing me, it’ll take a try or two . . . or twelve.

I’ve structure-mapped one book so far: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. As usual, it took me donkey’s years, but I’ve learned a lot. The Lightning Thief deviated from the baseline plot structure, but not by much. For one thing, the writer included all the basic structural elements, and for another, each element appeared in the correct order and in approximately the place it should be.

The biggest deviation was the length of the second third of the book–the part between the midpoint (when the hero starts being proactive) and the second plot point (when the hero gets the last bit of information needed to complete the quest). This section was twice as long as is standard according to the baseline structure. Mr. Riordan seems to have realized this and gives the reader two reminders of the terrible nature of the antagonist during the section instead of the standard one.

I also learned something else: I read too fast and miss stuff. During this second, slower reading of this book for structure, I found I’d missed a ton of humor in this book. I bet the book’s target audience, reading at less than warp speed, would not miss this humor. I will now revise my review of The Lightning Thief to give the humor a much higher mark than I originally did.

I’ll keep dissecting the structure of middle-grade fantasies and I’ll keep you posted about what I find. If I manage to do this with a nice, large sample of books, eventually I might even be able to check whether a book’s Amazon.com sales ranking is higher if it sticks closer to the formula–another of my hypotheses.

By the way, a couple of weeks ago I promised to write a list of middle-grade fantasy subgenres, and I haven’t forgotten that promise. It’s going to take longer than I thought, though, because I haven’t read widely enough to have a good grasp of the wide range of middle-grade fantasy that’s out there–everything from mermaids to steampunk. I’ll keep reading, though, and I’ll keep blogging.

Happy New Year!

What’s with all the dead parents in middle-grade fantasy?

By admin Posted in Opinions, Writing Tagged , , , 2 Replies

One of many well-known characters with a missing parent. Image, from Wikipedia, is in the public domain.

Does it seem to you that most heroes of middle-grade fantasies have parents who are missing or dead? It’s not just your imagination. It’s a real phenomenon with a longstanding history that’s as old as fairy tales—maybe even older.

There are a number of good reasons for getting parents out of the way in middle-grade fantasy. The first is simple. Main characters in fantasies need to go on dangerous quests and adventures, and at the end of the road, they must face their antagonists alone. Your average parent’s goal of protecting his or her kids from harm is diametrically opposed to your average storyteller’s goal of putting those very same kids in harm’s way. For instance, if mom is so worried about stranger danger that she won’t let eleven-year-old Betsy Bravington walk two blocks to ballet school, you can bet your brass tutu she’s not gonna let Betsy cross the Sitherous Sea to slay Malwar the Malevolent, a dragon who gouges out people’s eyeballs, spears them with toothpicks, and uses them to stir his breakfast martinis. Betsy’s especially grounded if Moms finds out that the plan to get to Malwar involves a homemade raft, two 500-year-old dwarves with questionable personal hygiene, and a cute teenage elf who wears a diamond stud in his nose and keeps fifteen daggers hidden on his person.

Second, orphaning your hero opens up a treasure chest of opportunities for internal conflict. Betsy’s sad her mom’s dead, see, and even worse, they parted in anger that last day. Betsy actually used the F word because Moms wouldn’t let her wear meat-colored Lady Gaga eye shadow to Anita Smithson’s twelfth birthday party. Just after Betsy stomped off to the yellow walk-in closet that is her sanctum sanctorum, Moms set off for the strip mall. At the mall, Veronica Vanitas dropped the Poison of Periset into Moms’ spirulina smoothie so she (Veronica) could sneak into the Bravington’s McMansion, snitch the Nail Polish of Power, kidnap Betsy’s little sister Belinda, and deliver the feisty eight-year-old to Malwar the Dragon in exchange for the Earrings that Eliminate Eyelid Droop.

Third, killing off the parents equals instant room for character growth. Just to pick one obvious thing, Betsy could learn that contrary to what she thought at the beginning of the story, Anita Smithson’s opinion of eye shadow is not as important to her as the safety of her little sister. She could discover that if she doesn’t look deeper inside herself than her Burberry outerwear, she could easily start rolling down that slippery slope to Veronica-land. On the other hand, if she can just keep her vanity in check, she can enjoy the Nail Polish of Power and save Belinda, too.

Fourth, there’s the sympathy/empathy factor. Even readers who haven’t experienced deep loss like the death of a parent have experienced loss and loneliness of some kind, so it’s easy to imagine yourself in the shoes of the orphaned main character. As a writer, you want readers to sympathize with your hero, especially if she has some not-so-likable traits, as Betsy does at the outset of our hypothetical story.

In a stunning move that may well parallel the apparent worldwide drop in violence (see Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature), more and more middle-grade fantasy writers are moving away from classic murder to disappearance and abduction. The missing parents in the Sisters Grimm series are a good example. They vanished into thin air one day, the only clue a red hand print on the dashboard of their abandoned car.

Parents that are not dead but merely AWOL free up the main character for adventure and excite readers’ sympathy. They also give writers the opportunity to inject extra action and conflict into plot and subplot, because when Mom and Dad are missing, the kids want to find them. For example, if Veronica Vanitas doesn’t poison Moms’ smoothie, but uses the Calamitous Cuticle Scissors of Cathor to give Moms a haircut that sends her spinning into another realm, then Betsy can star in a trilogy. Finding, saving, and reconciling with Moms can be the goal that Betsy and her writer aim for at the end of Book 3. Neat, huh? Or Moms could become like Obi-Wan Kenobi and the parents in the Kane Chronicles, influencing events in Betsy’s books from afar even if she (Moms) can never escape from the Parallel World of Prada or the Blissful Bay of Balenciaga.

Some writers open Door Number Three and create parents who are too busy, too wrapped up in their work or life or whatnot, to pay attention to what the kids are up to. This is what Terry Pratchett does in his Wee Free Men books. A cool variation on this theme is to make it seem like the hero’s parents are oblivious and neglectful, whereas in reality the parents know all about what’s going on and are keeping an eye on the kid the whole time. This is what happens in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Just to be safe I better warn you that although Foer’s book stars a nine-year-old, it’s not a middle-grade novel. I highly recommend it for adults, however.

Whew. That was fun. Next time: a run-down of middle-grade fantasy’s many subgenres.

Middle-grade fantasy chick lit?

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I’ve been reviewing middle-grade fantasy for four weeks now, one book a week. Each new review is published on Sunday.

One of my goals has been to read as wide a variety of books as I can, and I’ve already been surprised by the number of subgenres out there. For instance, in addition to traditional middle-grade quests and adventures, there are comedy-adventures, steampunk fantasies, and more, including a genre that’s hard to name but is written mainly with an audience of girls in mind.

This week I ventured into girl territory, which the authors themselves seem to call “classic fantasy.” OK, maybe . . . but I think it’s a special kind of classic fantasy.

I don’t think this subgenre existed when I was a girl—at least I never found and read it. And I have only one child, a son. He hasn’t chosen to read this subgenre. Thus, until this week, all I knew about this subgenre was that the authors include Anna Staniszewski (writer of this week’s book, My Very UnFairy Tale Life) and Hélène Boudreau (author of the “Mermaids Don’t” series). I am sure there are others, and I’m looking forward to reading their books.