First Sentences

Last Saturday during the memoir class at The Loft Literary Center, the teacher, Angela Foster, talked about the importance of first sentences.  I started thinking about how I shop for books.  Usually, I’ve read a review, or a friend has recommended one, or I’ve gotten hooked on an author and want to read everything he or she has written.  I’m not a browser.  Perhaps this is the reason I have a hard time writing first sentences.  Browsers know how important they are to entice and intrigue someone into reading more.

Source: midwestmountainess.com

We all can’t be Leo Tolstoys, but his Anna Karenina provides an example of what I call a “setting the stage” first sentence: “Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  From this sentence, we know this magnificent story will be about an unhappy family and how it’s unhappy in its own way.  If we don’t want to read a 19th century Russian novel about an unhappy family, we won’t buy this book or read it.  Of course, there’s a lot of irony in that first sentence too.

Here are some other first sentence examples that I’ve culled from books I loved that were on my shelves:

• She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.  The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• The news hit the British High Commission in Nairobi at nine-thirty on a Monday morning.  The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
• Moon.  Glorious moon.  Full, fat, reddish moon, the night as light as day, the moonlight flooding down across the land and bringing joy, joy, joy.  Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
• It happened every year, was almost a ritual.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• “Don’t they ever think about anything except killing each other?” Roberto asks.  The Exception by Christian Jungersen
• Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way.  The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Anyone who watches even the slightest amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office.  Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

What do these first sentences have in common?  What do they leave the reader with?  A question.  Each one also suggests an action or situation, and it creates a tension between the two.  In other words, they are dramatic in some way.

Looking at my own writing, I thought first of Perceval’s Secret.  I dug out the draft before the last line edit and rewrite.  The first sentence was “The dark matter of souls leaked into shadows.”  Interesting but there’s no question there, no human drama.  Here’s the first sentence after the line edit/rewrite: “In the middle of the room, the old man’s right hook thumped Agent Higgins’ jaw, but Higgins hardly flinched.”  This sentence has action, two people in conflict, and questions.  Much better.

Next, I turned to my memoir.  The first chapter needs a re-shaping and a rewrite.  Here’s the current first sentence: “After my mother died in 2002, I cleaned out her massive collection of costume jewelry.“  Not terrible, really.  Not if my memoir was of my mother, but it’s not.  She’s in it, especially the first half, but the focus of the memoir is on me and how I learned to be a patient.  I came up with a new first sentence that I showed to Angela Foster.  She made a suggestion that I think I’ll keep regarding how to start the sentence.  Here it is: “The month before my eleventh birthday, the cough nearly killed me.”  Drama, questions, and an illness, so I was a patient.  I think I have my first sentence.

A dramatic first sentence grabs the book browser’s interest, intrigues with questions, and creates a desire to read more of the story.  Sale!  This kind of sentence can be difficult to write, and I usually put off finalizing it until I’ve written the whole book or story.  In the future, I’ll also try reading first sentences in books I’ve read and loved to use as inspiration…..

What’s in a Writer’s Name?

A person takes on an alternate name for reasons both legal and illegal.  I’m talking about the alias or for writer’s pen name, also known by its French nom de plume.  Criminals adopt aliases, of course, to elude capture.  Spies acquire covers or legends that include one or more alternate identities.  They are hiding their true identity and nationality to protect themselves and their mission.  Celebrities adopt an alias or change their names outright because their given name is too plain or is already in use by another celebrity.  Norma Jean Baker became Marilyn Monroe.  Celebrities change their names to stand out from the crowd.

A writer adopted a pen name in the past to hide true identity.  Women writers took male names in order to achieve publication of their work.  Upper class writers or royalty took on pen names to hide their class.  Sometimes a writer whose day job was totally different from the arts, say a nuclear physicist, would write fiction under a pen name to hide from his employer and co-workers what he was doing on his own time.  While all those reasons may still exist, the most common reason in the 21st century involves marketing and sales.

A writer I know published a successful mystery series under his real name.  His family name began with “Z” and his books were then shelved in stores at the back of the fiction or mystery section.  He learned that book shoppers tend to begin their browsing at the beginning of the alphabet; therefore, when he decided to launch a series of historical novels, he listened to his publisher’s marketing staff and he adopted a pen name whose family name began with “A.”  They believed he’d sell more books if shelved at the front of the fiction section.  I have not heard from him if it made a difference in the sales figures for his novels, but I know he’s doing all right.

Let’s be clear: a pen name is not a legal name change.  It is an alias.  The writer I know does book signings as his alias, which usually cracks me up.  I’ve known him for years and know that outside of books, he still exists and does business under his legal name beginning with “Z.”  But when he’s signing books written under his pen name, he signs his pen name.

Years ago, I decided that I would write fiction under my legal name, and write nonfiction under a pen name.  The pen name I chose back then was unusual and I felt uncomfortable with it.  I phased it out of use — fortunately, I hadn’t been using it long.  For several years I wrote everything under my legal name.  Then, in the last 2-3 years, I’ve decided to write nonfiction as well as fiction books.  I want to keep them separate, both for readers and for my record-keeping.  How to choose this pen name?

As I did with the first one, I decided to simply translate my family name.  Yager is an Americanized spelling of Jaeger, the German noun for hunter.  Obviously, my German ancestors were hunters.  So, the last name of my pen name is Hunter.  The first name was more of a challenge.  I actually went to the Social Security Administration’s website section about names to do my research.  There, I could type in the year and up came a list of the most popular baby names for that year.  I chose 3-4 different years and picked names from each that I narrowed down to three.  These three names I put to a vote on Facebook.  The winning name became the first name of my pen name: Gina.  Under Gina Hunter, I started a commentary blog that now also covers subjects relevant to patients in support of the nonfiction book I’m working on under the pen name.

I like this pen name.  It suits me and the writing I’ll be doing under it.  For whatever reason you decide to use a pen name, I suggest choosing that name with care, and for long term use.  Your alias may turn out to be just as successful as you!

Dystopia: A Bad Place to Be, Part 2

“I lost all my experience,” my Russian friend told me, his eyes flashing.  “I cannot live in this country.”

“You haven’t lost anything,” I replied, smiling and shrugging.  “Your experience is still there.  You just have to learn how you can apply it here.”

This snippet of conversation has stuck in my mind for over 20 years.  My Russian friend and his family came to the United States expecting to find, I think, everything run the same as in the USSR, only now they were free.  When you’ve been born into a society in which everything is done for you and decisions about your life are made for you, then the absolute worst that can happen is to end up, as an adult, in a society in which the individual is responsible for his actions and must do everything for himself, include make his own decisions.  I began Perceval’s Secret with this concept in mind, thinking that Evan Quinn, having grown up in dystopian America, ends up in free and democratic Europe.  How would he react?

I began with superficial things.  The abundance of goods in stores open to anyone.  Computers available for anyone to buy and use as he wishes.  A free flow of information with many, many media outlets and television channels.  From his memory, he compares Europe with his American experience, his observances of Underground opposition activity, and the flourishing Black Market in everything from baby shoes to life-saving medications.  So much individual activity had to occur in secret in America.  His father teaches him: Don’t let anyone know what you really think and feel.  I realized that Evan may have left America, but America had not left him.  He just didn’t realize it.  This would become a challenge for him.

Writing this novel became an education for me.  As I learned more about Evan, I learned more about his family background and America.  Society influences the individual far more than he realizes through its institutions: family, church, schools, government.  Then I had an epiphany about dystopias: they are abuser societies.  Evan’s psychological life is that of someone who’s been abused all his life: no concept or understanding of an authentic self, no self-worth, no internal empowerment, but instead, Evan sees himself as almost unreal, alienated from the physical, isolated emotionally, worthless and powerless.  Wow.  This was a major leap in my thinking about his character.  So, what happens to Evan psychologically when he escapes the dystopia?  He may physically escape America, but he’s definitely carrying some heavy-duty baggage that will affect his life in freedom, and not only from his family background.  Evan will feel that he’s lost all his experience.

Research into survivors of abuse helped me as I wrote.  I read books by survivors as well as by medical and psychology professionals.  I talked with therapists about ranges of behavior, what is plausible, what not.  When they heard that Evan had had a positive relationship as a young boy with his Uncle Joe Caine and his family, they told me there was real hope for Evan overcoming his past if he chose.  The Caines would have given him love, support, acceptance, mirroring his self-worth back to him, showing him how psychologically healthy humans live.  But there was still the overwhelming effect that dystopian American society had on him.  An internal conflict for Evan then seen in his memories of Uncle Joe and his reality in music vs. abuser society influences.

A lot of near future speculative fiction focuses on advanced technology, and dystopian fiction is no exception.  I wanted to focus more on the human, however.  It took me months to realize that Europe in 2048, while enjoying technological benefits, had also decided to make all technology voluntary, and to make ranges of technology available.  Cell phones are ubiquitous.  Computers run cars and houses.  But photo/video capability on cell phones has been outlawed due to abuse and illegal use, for example.  People carry identification cards that tell authorities that their DNA, fingerprints and retina scans are on file.  It can be difficult to be a criminal in this society, but murders still occur as well as white collar crime.  And espionage.

Evan, a former citizen of a dystopian society, understands the advantages of a low tech life.  But is he free now in Europe?  He believes he is, but he still has a lot to learn about himself and living….

Dystopia: A Bad Place to Be, Part 1

Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by things called “dystopia,” or anti-utopia, or cacotopia.  I was also fascinated by all things Russian.  Dystopias seem to be all the rage in pop culture right now, especially with the success of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, and the first movie based on the first novel in that trilogy.  Dystopias have been a staple of speculative fiction, especially science fiction, for almost a century.  Since I envision America in the Perceval novels as a dystopia, I decided to lay out my vision of its dystopia.

From Wikipedia: Novels set in dystopias would include George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Piano Player, among others, plus short stories.  Of those listed, all but Vonnegut’s novel have been made into movies, and other movies set in dystopias include Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Brazil, The Hunger Games, Soylent Green, and Blade Runner.

Credit: Deepak Nanda/Wikipedia.org

The way dystopias are envisioned in literature, they occur as a consequence of some cataclysmic event, like a nuclear war or major natural disaster.  My own thinking leaned toward one that evolved out of a democratic political system, prodded by an issue affecting life negatively, much as Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich evolved out of the German Weimar Republic.  Hitler was voted into power by the German people.  It makes perfect sense to me that Americans would vote into office the person or political party that would change America into a one party dictatorship.  Can’t happen?  Anything’s possible in America.  Dystopias are not democratic systems but usually totalitarian with all power and control in the hands of an elite, whether a religious, economic, social or political elite.  Joe Blow on the street becomes a number, his freedom gone, his self-worth questionable, his value to his country measured in his ability to produce or fight.  If you’re not a member of the power elite, a dystopia is a really bad place to be.

In the America of the Perceval novels, a society in which we have the Rich and the Poor and little in between, the major cataclysm is a global economic depression triggered by much the same factors that triggered our recent Great Recession.  Factions from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party break away and form the New Economic Party, predominantly of the wealthy elite, with a platform of social stability, economic prosperity, and security from terrorism.  They gradually consolidate power from the local level to the federal until they control American government at all levels and opposition has gone underground, both literally and figuratively.  They revamp the government’s structure, partnering with business and industry to run the country.  By the time of  Perceval’s Secret, America has become a totalitarian dictatorship, although it still clings to the country’s democratic heritage and its superpower status, and the New Economic Party controls all aspects of life.

While America addressed its economic issues politically, European countries, Asian countries, and many others took action to stabilize their economies in other ways, and to put safeguards in place to ensure they could avoid such a cataclysm in the future.  By the time of Perceval’s Secret, the European Union is the bastion of democracy in the world, joined by various African, South American and Pacific nations.  Russia is much as it has become today – a shadow of the former USSR and not the democracy that was hoped for – and China schemes to become the world’s sole superpower, especially economically.  At the present time, China is perfectly positioned to do just that (it’s replaced Japan at the No. 2 position), and recent revelations about Chinese hackers stealing trade secrets from American corporations also supports that.  In 2048, tensions have been building.  China decides to call in all its loans to America and cash in its American investments as a signal of no confidence in America.  Russia and the European Union intervene and sponsor talks in Vienna, Austria between the Chinese and the Americans.  It is this Vienna, in June 2048, in which Evan Quinn arrives.

Evan has grown up under the New Economic Party’s control and leadership – he’s never known anything else.  His father, and his father’s best friend, however, grew up under democracy in America and they are leaders in the Underground, the opposition.  Some of the American states have seceded, and civil war has raged for almost 30 years as a result.  Compared with past dystopian novels, Evan would be “the outsider” who would oppose the status quo, lead the revolution, dare to love, if he were to remain in America.  But I decided to engineer an “escape from dystopia.”

As a result of my deep fascination with all things Russian, I have met and gotten to know Russian émigrés during the years that the Soviet Union was closed, communist and totalitarian. Observing their reactions to American life and culture, and their openness about their criticisms, I began to wonder what would happen to “the outsider” in a dystopia who escaped and landed in a country of freedom, a place that valued the individual as well as community, where his movements weren’t restricted and he was no longer poor.  An American.  Would it be a “pure escape,” i.e., he would assimilate with no problems at all; or would it be an escape in physical location only?

In part 2, I’ll wrestle with that question….