Author: closeupediting

Editing & Assessment Services

Stephen King on First Lines

On By closeupeditingIn Tips and Advice

Here’s a great article from a while back where Stephen King discusses some of his favourite opening lines, as featured in The Atlantic:

Here’s how he starts the conversation:

Stephen King: There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It’s tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don’t think conceptually while I work on a first draft — I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.

But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

How can a writer extend an appealing invitation — one that’s difficult, even, to refuse?

Read on here – Stephen King on First Lines

Reading Aloud

On By closeupeditingIn Tips and Advice

Some of the best advice is truly simple.

Read your work aloud.

This is classic, and a great technique for hearing the rhythm and flow of your sentences. It can also help you pick up repeated words or identify places where you’ve missed a word or a typo has crept through.

But there’s only one problem with this method – since you, the author, are reading the work, you may sometimes read what you intended, as opposed to what you wrote.

And so typos may slip through, missing letters or words too.

The easiest way around this is to have someone else read the work aloud – and the more unfamiliar the voice, the better. Some authors use their Kindle for this, others a variety of apps and Adobe Acrobat also has this feature for PDFs.

Obviously the voice that reads your MS will not sound truly human, but it will read exactly what has been written, allowing you to catch errors you might usually miss.

Body Language ‘Cheat Sheet’

On By closeupeditingIn Tips and Advice

Writers Write have put together some advice and a great table of body language/physical cues you can use to reveal emotion.

For instance, if you were attempting to show awe you might consider showing your character:

slack-jawed, unable to move, stare etc

Of course, try not to overuse such cues, otherwise your characters will start looking like flailing cartoons.

Most importantly, context will do most of the work. For example, a shrug might suggest: confusion, disinterest or disregard, the same way a frown might show a variety of emotions.

What will really sell a scene to the reader is the whole picture.