The First Hundred Words

Look! I found my missing blog post (it's a long story I won't bore you with), so here it is:

I attended a great workshop called ‘First Hundred Words Challenge’, given by the wonderful Julie Cohen at an RNA South East Chapter meeting. Most of us took along the first hundred words of our work in progress and Julie read them aloud and we discussed them (constructively and respectfully, of course).

We looked at whether those first hundred words conveyed the type and genre of book, who the main character was and even that short paragraph or so hinted at the coming conflict. And most of the time it did. It was amazing just how much you can pack into such a tiny word count.

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure about my first hundred words even before I (ver bravely) took my print out to the workshop. I’d dithered between writing my current book in the third person and the first person, and my beginning reflects that. And while I usually start my stories right in the middle of the action with one of my main characters, this time I haven’t.

I tried that approch with the very first version of scene one and it just didn’t work. It felt as if I’d arrived with a bump in an alien world, rather than getting a tantalising glimpse of a character I wanted to know more about. Too much all at once. So I tried something different: I imagined it a bit like a movie scene, where the camera starts off wide and then zooms in slowly on the heroine. (Yes, already I can hear some of you tutting and murmering ‘newbie mistake’, but even slightly more experienced writers can fall into the same old pot-holes – but that’s a whole ‘nother post…)

Here’s my first hundred words as they stand at the moment:

Deep in the heart of Greenwich, under the watchful eye of the Royal Observatory on top of the hill, is a neat row of cream Georgian buildings. The ground floor of each boasts a shop or a boutique of some sort that caters to the diverse local population.

Right on the corner, near the park, is the all-organic coffee shop where the Yummy Mummies hang out. If you go there mid-morning, the floor space is cluttered with high-tech pushchairs and the air is filled with lively debate on the merits of the local private nurseries.

It’s okay. It does what I’d intended it to do. The next couple of hundred words describe the other shops in the row until we finally focus in on my heroine. It gives a good sense of setting, a hint at my narrator’s personality, but the more I listened to other people’s beginnings, I realised the one I had wasn’t the one I wanted. I wanted a first line that grabbed. I want the first paragraph to be bursting with my heroine’s character because, for me, Coreen is this story.

Interestingly enough, as we discussed each other’s beginning paragraphs, sometimes we found that a perfect first line was hiding away further down the page. I mulled over this for a few days and then went hunting in my first chapter to see if I had a zingy first line. I found a few that might have potential:

A girl’s gotta keep herself in lipstick and stockings somehow.

In my opinion, a pinkie finger isn’t properly dressed unless it’s got a man comfortably wrapped around it—and I always make sure I’m impeccably dressed.

I discovered early in life that an ample chest and a well-timed pout can get a girl just about anything she wants.

Much better. There's a real sense of who my heroine is, and just how many men she likes to eat for breakfast, right from the get-go. Am I going to use one of these? Maybe. I’m going to go back and tinker with my beginning once I’ve finished my first draft. But whatever I end up with, I want to try and zap readers with a beginning, brimming with personality, that hooks them in and refuses to let them go.

No pressure, then. Sigh.

Edna

My husband has a nickname for me. Every time he sees me reading he says, "Alright, Edna?" Edna being short for Edna Book. (If you're scratching your head and saying 'huh?', let me elaborate: if you say this with a broad London accent it could be translated as 'head in a book'.)

Since I've started writing as well as reading, however, I find I am two different kinds of Edna. There's the Edna who can't hear/see anything because she's absorbed by the story she's reading, and there's the Edna who is living so much in the fantasy world of her own book that real-life details starts to get fuzzy and all jumbled up.

I know I've turned into Edna 2 recently because I've started doing stupid things. There are a couple of incidents that have already drifted into the memory fog, but I clearly remember jumping up from my desk one afternoon in the middle of a writing session, and reminding myself out loud that I must not forget to pick my youngest up from school. (Guilty as charged on previous occasions, your honour.)

Like a good little mummy, I put on my coat, picked up my keys and dashed round the corner to the local primary school. It was only as I came to halt in the playground that I realised I no reason to be there. Yes, my daughter needed picking up - but not for another two hours, as she was attending an after-school club. See what I mean? Edna.

Now I've stumbled on another blip in the space-time-writing continuum. I wrote a blog post about book beginnings after attending a 'First 100 words challenge' workshop taken by Julie Cohen. Thought of a sequel just now, so I went back to look at the origninal post. Is it up on my blog? Is it heck! I have no idea what happened to it! Swallowed by a black hole probably. And not the one in my head.

Sigh. I know it's not going to get any better before deadline day, so the rest of you might as well just call me Edna too.

RWA 09: Washington DC - Wednesday part 2

The Readers For Life Literacy Autographing is the point at which the RWA conference starts for me. I know that the official programme doesn’t get going until Thursday morning, but from this point on, I’m remembering that I’m an author, not just a tourist visiting a new city.

There were so many authors taking part in the signing that it had to be held in the largest space in the hotel – the Exhibition Hall. Tables are laid out in rows and every author has only a few feet to spread out her books and have space to sign them. The amount of organisation that must go into the event just boggles my mind.

When I arrived at my desk I found a cute little glow-in-the-dark bracelet and a note from my friend Julie Cohen, who I hadn’t bumped into yet. Here’s Julie with Kate Johnson, part of the UK contingent there at RWA. I know Julie isn’t actually British, but American, but she lives in the UK and she’s one of my RNA buddies, so she counts! And on the right is Harlequin romance author Donna Alward, experiencing the rush of her first RWA Literacy Signing. And below is me, ready to wear my pen out:

When the doors open to let the public in, I swear you can feel the floor rumble. There’s a stampede as eager readers rush to get a book signed by their favourite authors. Unfortunately, I’m not in the ‘stampede-worthy’ league yet, but one day—maybe.

I want to say a huge thank you and a big hi to everyone who stopped by my table and asked me to sign a book. I’m really bad with names, and I was still pretty jet-lagged, so I won’t embarrass myself by trying to mention you all individually. I know some of you said you read my blog so you get an especially big wave! One last picture is my roomie for the conference, Harlequin Presents author Kate Hewitt.

The two hours allotted for the signing sped by and afterwards I headed over to the Booksellers’ Best Awards, feeling a little nervous. Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses was a finalist in the Traditional Romance category. It was lovely to have fellow Romance author Donna Alward there (who was standing in for Jessica Hart) and Kim Young and Joanne Grant from Harelquin’s London offices (looking very glam on the left here). Even though the award went to Myrna Mackenzie for her wonderful story Her Millionaire, His Miracle, I had a really great time. It was a fun, friendly, low-stress kind of awards ceremony - just my thing!

Conference is no place to slacken off, even for a second, so the next stop was the bar where Donna and I met up with some of the other Harlequin Mills & Boon authors. Below is a photo of new Harlequin Presents (M&B Modern) authors Lynn Raye Harris, Kimblerley Lang with top-selling author Sandra Marton and another new Presents author Janette Kenny.


Here's a pic of Presents authors Kate Hewitt and Jennie Lucas.

By this time I was hungry – and when I say hungry, I mean hun-gry! I decided to order buffalo wings. We don’t have them in the UK, but I knew they were chicken wings (ever seen a buffalo fly?) and the sound of them has always appealed to me. ‘They’re spicy,’ Donna warned. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. 'I love spicy. I eat spicy all the time.' Which I do - I'm certainly no wuss when it comes to a little heat in my food. No, siree.

Well it seems fated for me to have at least one food-related mishap each time I come to RWA (see here for the story of the pancakes in Dallas 07) and this was it. Spicy was not the word. They BLEW MY HEAD OFF! I mean, they tasted as if they’d been smothered in neat Tabasco sauce. If buffalo wings went up against a respectable Chicken Madras in a contest, they would whoop its ass! I will be remembering this if I ever get brave enough to order them again.