Writing Techniques

Lines To Leave Us Hanging

CLIFFHANGERS ARE ENTICING (photo by William Lord Wright, Photoplay Writing, New York City: Falk Publishing Co. 1922)

How do you choose a book? Often by the first few lines right? They either grab you or you move on to the next book on the bookstore shelf that catches your eye.

But what about last lines throughout a book? Those lines that complete a scene, chapter, or THE END itself that propel you to turn the page and read on, or that keep the story alive in your mind long after you’ve finished it. I have to admit that I am one who always flips to the back of a book and reads the last line before I buy. Do you?

I have one author friend, Kathryn Craft, who studies first lines. She roams a library or bookstore and randomly selects books to read their first lines then dissects them based on how drawn in she is. Did it grab her attention? Did it raise a question? Did it introduce the main character? And most importantly, does she want to keep reading?

Those first lines. They either grab you or they don’t. As writers, we only have a few seconds to impress readers enough so they will buy our book. Here are two fun posts on favorite book first lines and last lines on Algonquin Redux.

Recently one reader of book two in my Element Trilogy, A Hidden Element, typed up the last lines of each chapter and sent them to me. She was thrilled how each line ended on a cliffhanger and kept her reading – and she thought they revealed the premise of the story when all linked together. I thought I’d share.

Here’s a sampling of last lines from A Hidden Element:

He remained inside his dark prison and swore someday he would end his father’s rule.
Revenge filled Charlie with a sweet rush.
He could live with that, if only he could be a father to his sons.
The old fear hit him again in the gut.
The words shattered through him like hammer to glass – not from Earth.
He was empty inside, as he had always been.
The first stone flew.
The scars of Rachel and his sons seared his heart forever.
He was just a kid suddenly terrified of his own dad – and his own destiny.
The flagellation began.
After fifteen years the nightmare had begun – again.
Change was coming.
They marched on toward a hidden enemy who watched – and waited.
Killing was useful in so many ways.
The dark took her anyway.
She would do anything to save her family.
And that scared him more than anything.
She welcomed Death, but he did not come for her.
The nothing took him.
She didn’t want to ever let go.
She screamed and ran into a darker hell.
The last thing he remembered was being dragged across cold stone, the wintry air on his face.
And it was not of this Earth.
He drifted away in it.
He looked up at the open door that welcomed him.
He stepped toward his future.

Would you keep reading? Do these last lines in a chapter linked together tell a story to you?

And what about our last lines in life? They are the final cliffhanger words we utter for those we leave behind to wonder about. Could our last line reveal who we truly are and the kind of life we’ve led?

Here are some cliffhanger last lines from famous folk:

I have not told half of what I saw. –Marco Polo, Venetian traveler and writer.

Now I can cross the Shifting Sands. –L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz. The Shifting Sands are the impassable deserts surrounding the Land of Oz

Don’t disturb my circles! – Archimedes. Greek mathematician who was killed by the Romans, while proving geometric theorems in the sand before him

Dammit…Don’t you dare ask God to help me. – Joan Crawford to her housekeeper who began to pray aloud

Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies. – Voltaire when asked by a priest to renounce Satan

Friends applaud, the comedy is finished. –Ludwig van Beethoven, composer

I’m bored with it all. –Winston Churchill, statesman

Goodnight my darlings, I’ll see you tomorrow. –Noel Coward, writer

I must go in, the fog is rising. –Emily Dickinson, poet

Let us cross over the river and sit in the shade of the trees. –General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

I die hard but am not afraid to go. –George Washington, US President

Get my swan costume ready. –Anna Pavlova, ballerina

Go on, get out – last words are for fools who haven’t said enough. –Karl Marx, revolutionary

Why do you weep. Did you think I was immortal? –Louis XIV, King of France

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark. –Thomas Hobbes, writer

It is very beautiful over there. –Thomas Edison, inventor

All my possessions for a moment of time. –Elizabeth I, Queen of England

Do you think any of these last lines tell the story of the person in passing? Would their life story resonate with you? What will be your last line?

Author Khaled Talib: Never Assume, Never Underestimate When it Comes to Spy Novels

By Donna Galanti

Never Assume, Never Underestimate. A guest post by thriller author Khaled Talib.

Imagine a layman thrown into the world of espionage. Would he survive, especially with assassins running around trying to kill him?

With that idea in mind, I began to weave a story about a young journalist who not only is framed for murder, but is chosen to be a scapegoat in a plot to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister during a visit to Singapore.

Unlike most spy novels, my protagonist, Jet West, is an inexperienced individual with no skills. He knows a little bit of martial art, which is part of his workout regime, but he’s not a Kung Fu. He is, after all, a glossy magazine journalist; someone who lives the glitzy life. So, don’t expect a debonair character in a tuxedo or the strong, silent type. My character has a mouth when he opens it. He’s sharp-witted and full of zest.

But I wanted such a character to be thrown into a treacherous and ruthless environment (but thrilling for the reader) with a 70%-30% chance of survival. My reason? So that the reader would be reading a material that is unpredictable, to prevent you from being able to guess the next page.

Smokescreen is a thriller-action-packed-suspense. The bulk of the story takes place in Singapore. There are also scenes in Cairo, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, Indonesia, and Australia.

I always had the idea for the story, but it was not until I spent some years in Egypt working for a magazine that I felt more inspired to complete the manuscript. It’s been an adventure writing it.

While I enjoyed writing the novel, I found the reaction among many people in Singapore to be funny. Some people were afraid of the storyline because it touches on the island’s relationship with Israel. In fact, they were more afraid for me. One person said to me, “The government may not like it” while a reporter, before interviewing me, asked, “Is the novel politically sensitive?”

Then there were those who didn’t bother to read the novel, but assumed they know what it’s all about. Do they?

I spent years writing this novel. It wasn’t an easy road, but through a process of trial and error a publisher said yes. Obviously, I would have taken steps to ensure the novel is peppered with the unexpected. Surely, there’s a reason why I called it Smokescreen.

Perhaps when you’ve finished reading it, you’ll share your thoughts with me.

ABOUT SMOKESCREEN

Jethro Westrope, a magazine journalist in Singapore, stumbles onto the scene of a murder: the beautiful Niki Kishwani directs him, in her last breath, to a digital recorder, evidence that puts Jethro’s life in danger. And, much worse, he is framed for Niki’s murder. Jethro sets out to find Niki’s killer and is drawn into a web of deception and intrigue involving officials from the Singaporean, Israeli, and American governments, each with a complex, competing, and potentially deadly agenda. Against this pulse-pounding backdrop, Jethro races to find answers and save himself —yet nothing is as it seems. He finds himself at the center of a political plot while being set up not only as a murderer but as an assassin, and something much larger than his own fate is in his hands.

Buy Smokescreen

ABOUT KHALED

Khaled Talib is a former magazine journalist and public relations practitioner. His second, thriller novel, Incognito, is scheduled to be released this year by World Castle Publishing. The novel tells the story of three mysterious specialists dispatched by the international hacker group, Anonymous, to find the Pope who is missing. Khaled is a member of the International Thriller Writers and Crime Writers Association. He lives in Singapore.

Connect with Khaled:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Do You Need Help Rewriting Your First Draft?

By Donna Galanti

I’m excited to have author and marketer extraordinaire Kristina Stanley back on my blog! Instead of sharing her bestselling alpine mysteries today, we are talking about writing help for authors – something Kristina knows much about. Her new app Feedback For Fiction does just this! Writers, find out how you can participate in this exciting new app.

Today Kristina is talking about rewriting that first draft.

Whether you’re a plotter or a panster, you’ve completed a first draft. Congratulations! Now what?

If you’re anything like me, you’re asking yourself:

Where do I start my manuscript rewrite?
How do I keep track of all the writing tips I’ve read and apply them to my story?
What should I change to make my story better?
Am I ready to share my manuscript with others?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an app that would help you through the rewriting process?

But First: What is Rewriting?

A comprehensive rewrite is the first step in the self-editing process. I’m not talking about copyediting or proofreading. You can do that after you’ve completed your rewrite.

Rewriting your first draft means analyzing your story from a high-level perspective and fixing any weak areas. You want to make sure that the story structure makes sense, the scenes are tense, there are no plot holes, and you haven’t left any subplots unfinished.

During the rewrite, you also take a hard look at your characters. How often do they appear? What are their goals? What gets in the way of their goals? Characters will drive the tension in your story, and tension is what keeps a reader reading.

Finally, the rewrite should examine your settings. Do you make the most of your settings? How often do you use the same setting, and is it too often? Do your settings help with the tone of your scenes? Settings are key to keeping your reader engaged, so don’t ignore them.
How can we help you?

We’re building Feedback, an app for writers that provides a guided approach to tackling comprehensive rewrites.

With Feedback, you can focus on plot, character, and setting. You can evaluate on a scene-by-scene basis or on overall novel structure. Feedback will show you the most important structural elements to work on first.

Feedback will guide you through the rewriting process by asking you questions specific to your manuscript, enabling you to evaluate your own story.

Once you import your manuscript, Feedback automatically captures information such as word count, number of scenes per chapter, character names, and chapter and scene breaks, using this information to create the first set of reports. Any updates to your manuscript will still need to be completed in the writing app you used to create your first draft.

Feedback helps you visualize your manuscript. Forget about yellow stickies or white boards. Feedback will draw character arcs, provide reports on scene evaluation, and show your rewriting progress.

Feedback is a learning tool. If you’re having trouble with a certain element of fiction, just click on the rewrite tip associated with that element and find out how to improve your writing. There’s no need to search through dozens of writing books to find the piece of advice you need.

On the technical side, Feedback will be a secure, web-based app. This means you will be able to access Feedback from any device you use.

Find out more:

Our goal is to launch Feedback in the spring of 2017. In order to create an app that is valuable to writers, we’d like your input on building Feedback. Sign up, and we’ll send you updates on the development progress and ask you the occasional question to help define the product. As a bonus, we’ll send you rewriting tips available only to our subscribers.

Are you as excited about Feedback as we are? Show your support by helping us spread the word and share this post.

You can find us at www.FeedbackForFiction.com and follow us on Facebook.

Your support means a lot to us, so thank you!

ABOUT KRISTINA:

Kristina Stanley is the best-selling author of the Stone Mountain Mystery Series. Her first two novels garnered the attention of prestigious crime writing organizations in Canada and England. Crime Writers of Canada nominated DESCENT (Imajin Books, July 2015) for the Unhanged Arthur award. The Crime Writers’ Association nominated BLAZE (Imajin Books, Oct 2015) for the Debut Dagger. Imajin Books published her third novel in the series, AVALANCHE, in June 2016.

Her short stories have been published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Voices From the Valleys anthology. She is the author of THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES.

As the co-founder and chief creative officer of Feedback Innovations, a company started to help writers rewrite better fiction, she made up her own job title because she thought it sounded cool!

Find out more about her and Feedback at www.FeedbackForFiction.com.

Watchers in Fiction: Guardians to Help the Hero

By Donna Galanti

Watchers. My favorite fictional figures that hover on the sidelines weaving in and out of the story. They change lives.

You may know them as guardians, guides, mentors, or allies. They help the hero on his journey by blocking them, guiding them, or even saving them. They can be a mysterious and dark overseer or a jolly and light eccentric. They ultimately save the hero or motivate him to save himself.

Photo by Pixabay

In my suspense novel, A Human Element, I created The Man in Black as a watcher. He is a guardian, a guide, and a hero. He connects to both the earthly and the other-worldliness in my characters. Sometimes he is there, like a lifeguard, and sometimes he’s watching and you simply sense his presence, more like a god. In the end he suffers and is a martyr-like figure for the greater good so his people can go on.

How did The Man in Black evolve and how do I perceive his function? He evolved as an instrument of light to help others survive so his own world would survive. His presence allows me to push the protagonist truly beyond the brink and eventually be saved. He also represents hope and acts as a catalyst to keep hope alive. He is like a god because he changes the destiny of others for a greater good (an entire people). And, like a god, he chooses not to always interfere unless it’s for the greater good. In a way he is a mythical figure.

My favorite mythical watcher in fiction is Merlin from the Arthurian legend. He’s a man of mystery and magic with roles as a sorcerer, prophet, bard, adviser, and teacher. In Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy, Merlin is an ordinary mortal but one with intuitive intelligence and clairvoyance. He has foreseen that Arthur will become a great king who will unite all of Britain.

Just as The Man in Black’s mission in A Human Element drove him to facilitate a child’s creation to carry on the line of his dying people, Merlin’s vision led him to facilitate Arthur’s creation as well. I like the idea of connecting medieval to modern times knowing that Merlin and The Man in Black share the same mission. They both originate as earthly and mystical watchers who change destinies so their people may conquer. And don’t we, as authors, often look to the past to create something new in the present?

It appeals to me that often the watcher figure is a hero too, willing to sacrifice his life for the one he oversees. He gives the protagonist what he needs to finish his journey and outwit death, and in doing so may need saving himself.

Literature is full of such heroes whose actions require that they, too, be saved. Like Arthur “Boo” Radley in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s a mysterious character we slowly get to know. At first, perceived as a dark, ghostly figure he ends up saving the children, Scout and Jem. He’s a self-exiled loner who appears as needed to save the children from evil. In the end Scout and Jem save him back, providing justice for Boo.

One of my favorite authors, Dean Koontz, is known for his watchers. In his book, Lightning, Stefan Krieger is a watcher hero who needs saving himself. He’s a time traveler and a guardian of Laura since she was born. He interferes when necessary to save her life many times. In doing so he changes the course of her destiny for good–and bad. His fate eventually interweaves with hers until they are caught in a life or death situation. He saves Laura, but in the end she saves him too.

I can’t forget my beloved animal watchers in fiction. In Watchers (great name!) by Dean Koontz, Einstein is a genetically altered golden retriever with human intelligence. He’s also saved by the couple he watches too. Escaped and on the run, Einstein acts as a guide to bring these two lonely people together and transform them. He becomes their guardian inspiring them to save him from his nemesis, who in turn watches him. Check out other fictional dogs in literature including my favorites, Buck and White Fang.

I didn’t realize I had an obsession with watcher figures until pulling book after book out from my shelves. And then I knew why. I adore tormented characters and that’s often what watchers are. And that’s why I write them. They are wounded heroes that travel with us to the dark side and help draw us back. They may not always save the hero by their own hand, but at that critical moment they drive the hero to take control of his own destiny. And sometimes the watcher needs saving right back.

Do you have favorite watchers from other books or movies? What “saves” you, as author, when you’ve spent too long on your dark side? Do you have a “watcher” to help pull you back from the dark side and save you?

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**originally posted on The Kill Zone**

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originally posted on The Kill Zone