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!

Memory

At Netflix, to my delight, I found a made-for-TV movie I had not seen in years but I’d loved when I’d seen it on TV, The Man in the Brown Suit (IMDb doesn’t do it justice, really).  My memory had held onto specific scenes and I was excited to see this movie again.  I watched it last night.  Wow.  My memory had held on to those moments, not scenes, that I remembered but not as much as I thought.  At least my memory accurately remembered those moments.  I felt like I was seeing the movie for the first time, noticing things I’m sure I didn’t notice before because I would have remembered them.  Or would I?

How memory works is very much on my mind now as I work on the first draft of my health memoir.  I knew venturing into this form that I’d be working under certain constraints; e.g. I do not remember anything from my first year of life and now rely on what my mother told me about it.  Of course, it’s highly unlikely anyone could remember her first year of life.  My mother, however, created a “scrapbook” for me that documented my life through college.  I also have my journals which I began at age 11, and all the personal letters from others that I’ve saved along with some that I wrote.  I’ll be delving into these resources as needed.

As I watched the movie last night, I noticed that my mind was filling in things from memory in each scene.  It was like putting together a puzzle.  I remembered major plot points but forgot some of the story.  I could not remember the mystery’s resolution, but I recalled in vivid detail the scene after it.  Watching the movie again helped my memory to remember.  I am hoping that my resources about my life will help my memory remember health details, whether I wrote them down or not.

I know, too, that I will need to address the memory issue in the book’s introduction.  For example, I do not remember every cold I suffered through during elementary school, nor do I need to in order to describe that experience and how my mother cared for me.  There are certain “medical rules” that my mother followed that I remember very well, however, because I live by them myself.

One thing I know for certain about memory: the events we experience that are connected with intense emotion are the events we remember the best.  Our relative position among the people in any situation will also affect how we perceive the situation and therefore how we remember it.  My position in my family was the youngest child, without any power whatsoever.  Feeling powerless and vulnerable can also intensify memory.  But emotion does not make memory as accurate as we would like.

And what about “false memory”?  This became a huge controversy years ago regarding childhood sexual abuse and how therapists helped patients retrieve memories of it.  And then there are the false memories that the mind will create in order to protect an individual’s self-image (often used by sexual abusers).  Or sometimes, the individual destroys the memory through denial.

My chosen memoir topic deals with how I learned to be a patient, to take care of myself, to deal with medical professionals and medical institutions — my experiences from birth to the present, my major influences (parents), my teachers (nurses), and how everything came together to make me the successful, proactive patient I am today.  I don’t need to remember every moment I was sick throughout my life, only those from which I learned something, or that I can remember now and realize that I learned from them.

As for the movie, I plan to watch it several more times before sending it back.  It’s a fun, enjoyable mystery movie and one I want to remember….

Wrestle the Demons

Imagine you smell it through the trees before you come to it: the smell of plant decay, of an algae bloom, of dead fish.  Through the trees you see the clearing.  As you emerge from the forest, you stop at the edge of what appears to be a pond edged by tall cattails.  Then you realize the extent of this pond — it stretches to the left, the right, and beyond the swamp grass across from this open section.  A silvery snake slithers away to your right.  A small frog on a lily pad eyes you as if you might be lunch.  A crow caws behind you somewhere in the trees.  Welcome to The Swamp.

Writers prefer not to talk about it, or visit it, but The Swamp inhabits a part of every writer’s mind.  Inside The Swamp live the phosphorescent demons Inadequacy and Doubt.  Inadequacy resembles a slimy hairless cat that slinks through the swamp grass, and likes to rub up against your legs and meow in a pathetic tone as if to say, “You don’t have what’s needed to write this,” or “Give it up!  You aren’t good enough.”  Doubt whispers on the light breeze, a scent of slime that invades your nostrils and clings to your skin.  It says, “You know this could be above your capabilities,” or “Why try?  You can’t do it.”

I’ve been wrestling with these two demons all week.  Ironic, after writing about my creative integrity hero last Saturday.  But seeing his work in the movie Lincoln, his brilliance, I felt totally inadequate and full of doubt.  This can happen.  Daniel Day-Lewis could be sitting next to me right now, assuring me that I’m talented, capable, that I can stretch my writing muscles and create the stories I want to share with readers.  Nothing he could say will convince me, however.  The problem with these demons is that they are impervious to external influences.  Not even the Nobel Prize in Literature could make them retreat far into The Swamp.

They don’t like fire.  Not the kind of fire that burns down forests, but the fire of passion, emotional fire and drive.  In order to stoke the fire enough to drive away the demons, I first must trick them into thinking I’ve given up on them, that they’ve won.  How?

Reading helps.  Watching movies can also help as long as I stay away from movies that could give them more power (no Daniel Day-Lewis movies).  I read The Writer this week, and found a lot to think about, reassurance that I at least understand what they’re talking about.  This morning was particularly rough — I read The Atlantic.  Rather than read fiction and invite the demons to stay, I read nonfiction — works better for me.  A good night’s sleep helps, too.  Once I’ve begun to feel better, I can use classical music to give my imagination power again, to invite her out to play.  The passion begins to smolder….

How do you wrestle your demons of Inadequacy and Doubt?