"Good people...I missed my introduction!"

We've all heard from agents, other writers, even readers: You have to grab their attention right off the bat. As Miss Snark used to be fond of saying, "Set someone's hair on fire."

Well, I'm going through my WIP, and I can't even get a spark. Not a cinder. Nothin'.

So, I'm looking for inspiration and thought some of you might like the same. I'm going back through those first few lines of some of my favorites (not the prologue, because several agents say those are cheats...so chapter 1 it is). Here are some I always liked, in no particular order:

1) "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

"That's what you said about the brother."

--Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

2) When Edward Carney said good-bye to his wife, Percey, he never thought it would be the last time he'd see her.

--Jeffery Deaver, The Coffin Dancer

3) The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

--Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

4) The Bar at the Ritz-Carlton looks out on the Public Gardens and requires a tie. I've looked out on the Public Gardens from other vantage points before, without a tie, and never felt at a loss, but maybe the Ritz knows something I don't.

--Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

5) Harry cut through the morning rush-hour crowd like a shark fin through water. I was following from twenty meters back on the opposite side of the street, sweating with everyone else in the unseasonable October Tokyo heat, and I couldn't help admiring how well the kid had learned what I'd taught him.

--Barry Eisler, Rain Fall

Okay, now it's your turn. Share some of your favorite intros, whether they are yours or someone else's. And don't forget to tell us where it's from...

y'know, in case it catches our attention, like it's supposed to...

Writing Teachers

Okay, so I've written about this once before, but I'll elaborate here.

Ever had a writing teacher who just turned you off to it completely? I did. Now I'll admit I had a part in the problem, but I had help too. What was my part? I quit. I let it get to me. Stupid and weak, I know. Would that I could take it back....

When I was in High School my senior year, I took a course I was really stoked about called "Writer's Studio". Figured I'd love it. I didn't, for a number of reasons, but the professor was one of them. My laziness another.

It seemed to me that the only people who had their writing praised were those who wrote slice-of-life, mainstream type stuff. I didn't write that because I was a metalhead outsider who didn't read it. I read Sci-fi and Horror, so that's what I wrote. You remember me, I was the kid with the long hair and ripped jeans buried in a Stephen King novel when I wasn't telling you to piss off.

So that's what I wrote. I wanted to be the next SK.


Don't we all.



My teacher told me it was crap. I don't mean she said it in a nicer way, I mean she said it was awful. All of it. And that I needed to focus on more realistic writing. I replied that I was trying to write stuff like Stephen King, and why was that a bad thing.

She said, "Well, when you have published as much as he has, call me. Otherwise I say that trash will never do."

Okay, that's not a direct quote, but it's damn close...especially the first part.

I was crushed. Seriously thought I'd never write a damn thing worth reading. Ever.

I wrote one thing from 1992 to 2003. That's freakin' 10 years I could have been working and improving, and I'll never get it back. Yeah, I quit. Know why?

Because I thought, having been effectively told so by a 'recognized authority', that nothing I ever wrote would rise above the level of the garbage in a land fill.

And you know what? The writing I did in that class was awful. All of it. The premise, the structure, it was lame. But you know what I've learned since I started going to school to be a teacher? We're supposed to TEACH. So what she could/should/here's-what-I-would've-done is freakin' TAUGHT me what was wrong and helped me improve.

I may never get anything but a few shorts published like the one coming out later this spring. But I know this much: Any of my students whose writing is absolutely terrible in their HIGH SCHOOL YEARS can count on me to be honest about what's wrong, show them how to identify it, and encourage them to keep at it and never give up. Oh, and I know that of any book I do get published, I'll have a free signed copy for the lady in question, if she has the guts to claim it in person.

So how about you, readers? Have anybody you're saving a *special* copy of your first published work for, or that you already gave away if you are a published author?

"Do you remember that day?"

Stephen King once gave a lecture on writing, and someone was nice enough to put it up on Youtube for the rest of us. I watched a portion of it the other night, and he said something that stuck with me. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of, "We all remember that first time, when we were reading something that had been published, and we went, 'Wow. That is truly awful...I can do better than that!'"

You know why that stuck with me? Because I can remember exactly where I was, and what I was reading. I had just finished two books I really liked, THE TWELFTH CARD and DECEPTION POINT. And then I read this third one, which I won't name, by a different author, who I won't name, and I thought, "Geez, this is from a NYT Bestseller? Hell, I can do better than that."

I know how arrogant that sounds. And I'm also smart enough to realize that I just finished my first novel while this writer is still hitting that NYT list consistently. Doesn't matter. I still think I can do better (although I've now realized that I couldn't do better my first time around...I think it's good, but I can do better than it, too).

So I guess my question to all of you is this:

1) If you're a writer, did you ever have that moment? I don't want you to name the book or author, but can you remember which specific book you were reading that made you say ,"Yep, I can do better"?

2) If you're a reader, have you ever hit one by a NYT Bestseller and thought, "Man, they mailed it in on that one"? Have you, even if you never intend to write anything, ever read a published novel from a respected and/or famous author and figured you could do better than that effort?

PS - Yes, I'm well aware that I am as yet unpublished, that someone will read this, then see my first published short story in Spinetingler and think, "Pfft, I could do better than that." And should I ever get a book deal, there will be aspiring writers out there who read it and think the same thing. I won't be upset or embarrassed. I'll just be excited to read what they have to write, because my thinking that is what finally got me to do it, and frankly I just think the world needs more good books.

"Where the Hell did that come from?"

All writers (yep, even the unpublished ones) get asked--when it's discovered they are a writer--the same question: "So, like, where do you get your ideas from?" The answer is always a variation (sometimes nice, sometimes smartassed) of the same word:
Everywhere.


Still, as a reader I think people are maybe looking for something more specific. Stephen King once wrote about the "What If?" questions he comes up with, and the books are his answers. I think he talked about it in ON WRITING, but I'm not positive. Anyway, I'm betting that that's closer to what readers are actually asking about--and any readers out there can feel free to correct me in the comments if they disagree.


So I figured this might be a good chance to get people talking specifically about individual stories and books, and from whence the ideas for them came. A good example would be Michael Connelly's THE OVERLOOK. When he was in Greensboro on tour for it, he said that a story he'd been told about radioactive material in North Carolina being stolen had led him to Bosch's next case, and if you've read THE OVERLOOK you see where that wound up.

If you haven't, do it. Now. No seriously, like walk out of your job and go buy the book.

Okay, not really. Wait til after work.

Anyway...I guess I'll start, it being my blog and all that good stuff. My book started with an idea for a villain, a guy who wanted to deflect suspicion from what he was really doing by taking advantage of the recent fears about religious extremism. I thought, "what better way to cover your tracks than to play on what EVERYONE seems afraid of these days. And after the worldwide lunacy over Salman Rushdie, and later Dan Brown, I figured why not create a writer who ALSO likes to play on those emotions (unlike these two, who I've never met, my writer is an unsympathetic jerk about it). This creates conflict for the reader, because he or she is unsure if:
A) the writer is the villain
B) they're okay with him being the villain
C) the writer is the next victim, and
D) they want him saved if he is

I love it when authors twist me up in moral knots like that, so I figured there had to be some readers who loved things like that which made them think beyond the work itself. If I'm wrong, well I guess it'll have to be the next book that starts my career rolling.
Or the one after that, or the one after that, or....

So tell me, if you're a reader, what do you REALLY mean when you ask where ideas come from? And if you're an author, can you pinpoint anything more specific regarding the idea or the original impetus for writing any particular novel or story?