Your First Page: First Pages and What They Tell Us about the Pages That Follow Them: Revised Workshop and Classroom Edition

ISBN-13: 9781554814732 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 360 str.

Peter Selgin

Spis treści

• Introduction
• I. Opening Strategies
• 1. Who Speaks? Choosing Narrators
• 2. Dramatic Openings
• 3. Colluding with Readers / Second Person
• 4. Character Narrator
• 5. Where to Start? Biblical Openers
• 6. Setting the Scene: The Wide-Angle Establishing Shot
• 7. Beginning at the End
• 8. Literary Births
• 9. In Medias Res: The Inciting Incident
• 10. The Covenant: Taking the Leap
• II. Seven Deadly Sins: Common Errors
• 1. Default Omniscience: Failure to Properly Engage a Narrator and Inhabit that Narrator’s Perspective
• 2. False Suspense: Capricious Withholding of Information
• 3. Dramatized Routine or Status-Quo Syndrome: Failure to Distinguish between Events and Routine
• 4. Information vs. Experience: Supplying Abstract Ideas and Conclusions in Lieu of Concrete Evidence
• 5. Imitation Story: Cliché at the Root of Conception
• 6. 6. Disappearing Scenes: Failure to Distinguish between Background, Flashback, Frame, and Present Story
• 7. Sentimentality: Implying or Describing Emotions in Excess of Experience
• 8. Grim Determination: The Deadliest Sin?
• III. First Pages Analyzed
• Introduction: How to Use these First-Page Analyses
• A. Point of View: Who Speaks?
• 1. Song of the Dust Bowl: 1936 (First Person / “Voice” / Style Born of Urgency / Child Narrator)
• 2. The Logging Road to the Cabin (Third Person / Information vs. Evidence / Default Omniscience)
• 3. A Pair of Foggy Sisters (Third Person / Default Omniscience / “Said”)
• 4. Where the Hernandezes Live (Third Person / Subjectivity / Information vs. Experience / Inhabiting Scene)
• 5. On the Couch (Third Person / Free Indirect Method / Dramatized Routine vs. Drama)
• 6. Drive-by Girl (Dramatized Routine / Interior Monologue / Free Indirect Discourse)
• 7. A Woman Bedazzled (Unreliable Narrators & Narratives vs. Unreliable Authors)
• 8. The Curfew (Second Person)
• 9. Narrating from the Great Beyond (Dead Narrator / Gratuitous Narrative Devices)
• B. Structure: Where to Begin?
• 10. Megan’s Life: A Surfeit of Beginnings (Where to Begin? / Inciting Incident / Death)
• 11. Flying with Mum and Dad (In Medias Res / Framing the Question)
• 12. A Fateful First Encounter (First Glimpse / Atmosphere / Framing Device / Authorial Intrusion)
• 13. Living with Lyle (First Glimpse / Mistaken Identity / Whose Viewpoint? / Implication vs. Statement)
• 14. After the Fire (Nested Scenes / Russian Doll Syndrome / Past Perfect / Dialogue Tags)
• 15. The Unwritten Masterpiece (Sleeve Rolling & Throat Clearing)
• 16. Strawberry Fields (Starting Off with a Dream)
• C. Plot/Suspense
• 17. A Stubbed Toe in the Library (Plots A & B, Inciting Incident / Retrospective Narrative)
• 18. Clouds Across the Moon (False Suspense / Trusting Your Narrator / Prologues)
• 19. A Stranger Approaches (False Suspense / Artificially Withheld Information)
• 20. Conducting Olivia (False Suspense / Grounding Scenes / Context / Accident as Inciting Incident)
• 21. Taking the Yoke (Foreshadowing / Implications vs. Statement)
• 22. Hanging from a Cliff (In Medias Res / Premature Climax)
• 23. Romance & Fireworks (False Suspense / Pointed First Sentence)
• D. Characters
• 24. Meeting Ewan (First Glimpse / Evoking Characters / Memoir)
• 25. Painting the Nude (Stereotypes / Fictional Artists)
• 26. A Balcony Overlooking the Bay (Dramatized Routine / Fictional Artist)
• 27. An Opening in Search of Itself (Unreliable Narrator / Mental Illness / Abstraction / Metaphors)
• 28. Finding Jenny (Indolent Character / Mental Illness / Sensational Event Conveyed by Torpid Scene)
• 29. A Self-Conscious Queen (Judgments, Labels, and Epithets / Dramatized Routine)
• 30. Up a Tree (Child’s Perspective / Blunt Sentences)
• 31. Mean December Wind (Retrospective Narrator / Strong Verbs / Appealing to Senses)
• 32. Art’s Highest Purpose: To Complicate Our Feelings (Child Protagonist / Humor and Danger)
• E. Genres
• 33. Zechs’s Deal: A Routine Awakening (Sci-Fi or Speculative Fiction / In Medias Res / Dramatized Routine)
• 34. To the Core (Science Fiction / Humor / Tongue in Cheek)
• 35. U’gen Cadets (Speculative Fantasy / False Suspense / Clarity & Precision)
• 36. A Dragon’s Protection (Fantasy / Appealing to the Senses / Metaphysical Elements)
• 37. Celestia’s Last Battle(Prologues / Fantasy / Adjectives / Suspension of Disbelief / Telling vs. Showing)
• 38. A Psycho in the Making (Horror-Thriller Genre / Psychopathic Characters / Muffled Implications)
• 39. Death on the Freeway (Detective Fiction / Clairvoyant Dreams)
• 40. Bases Loaded (Crime Thriller / McGuffins / Dramatized Routine as Harbinger of Violence)
• 41. Hit and Run (Detective Fiction / Noir / Hardboiled Prose)
• 42. Detective in a Department Store (First Sentences / Information vs. Evidence / Dramatized Routine)
• 43. Mommy Get Your Gun (Satire / Spoof / Importance of Grammar)
• 44. Lady Pamela’s Surgeon (Romance / Bodice Ripper / Where to Begin?)
• 45. The Pleasures of Genre (Regency Romance / Strong Verbs / Close Third Person / Feelings)
• F. Memoir
• 46. Tanks & Miracles (Memoir / War / Memoir vs. Autobiography / Theme)
• 47. A Pilot’s Probation (Memoir / Vocation / Memoir vs. Autobiography)
• 48. From “Loss ... But Not Lost”: A Deathbed Scene (Memoir / Death / Show, Don’t Tell / Inhabiting Scenes)
• 49. A Surprise Phone Call (Memoir / Scene vs. Summary / Clutter / “Glance” / Verbs)
• 50. A Rude Awakening (Memoir / Relationship / Judgments / Righteous Indignation)
• 51. The Year of 14 Jobs (Memoir / Implication vs. Statement / Abstract vs. Concrete)
• 52. The Road Train (Memoir / Travel / Flashback / False Suspense vs. Generosity)
• 53. The Substance Abuser’s Wife (Memoir / War / Drug Addiction / Cliché at the Root of Conception)
• 54. An Addict’s Perspective on Addiction (Memoir / Addiction / Reflection / Unreliable Narrator)
• 55. Clinic Caper (Memoir / Humor / Story vs. Anecdote)
• 56. Leaving Jumana (Memoir / Framing Questions Effectively)
• 57. I’m Not Chinese (Memoir / Precision, Sincerity, Humility)
• G. Style
• 58. A Stormy Opening (Writing Up a Storm / Poetry vs. Histrionics / Inadvertent Comedy)
• 59. A Letter from Tehran (Sentimentality / Grounding Scene in Setting / Implication via Action)
• 60. A Lion in the Room (Defamiliarization / Throat-Grabber Openings / Metaphor)
• 61. Back to School Night (Scene vs. Summary / Description vs. Exposition / Show Don’t Tell)
• 62. The First Day of the War (War / Tense / Authenticating Details)
• 63. Gramma’s Death Bed (Framing Device / Perfunctory Adverbs / Death)
• 64. The Sympathetic Medic (Adjectives)
• 65. Home from Fairview (Mental Illness / Abstract vs. Concrete / Similes and Metaphors)
• 66. The Girls in the Band (Modifiers / Statement v. Implication / Less = More)
• 67. A Hole in the Heart (Abstraction / Grounding in Scene / Metaphors / Subjectivity)
• 68. When I Met Lucia (Abstract vs. Concrete / Opinions & Information vs. Evidence)
• 69. Beth’s Wish (Whose Drama? / Overwriting / Implication vs. Statement)
• 70. A Woman of Valor (Genericism / Authenticating Details / Cliché)
• 71. Five Years with Sam (Poetry at the Expense of Meaning)
• 72. Canary Wharf (Overwriting / Sensationalism / Adverbs)
• 73. Kidnapped (First Sentence / Grounding Scene / Flashback / Revision / Past Perfect)
• 74. A Twice-Drowned Narrator (“Titanic Lit” / Dead Narrators / Details / Baroque vs. Austere / Devices)
• 75. Meatloaf Night (Child’s Perspective / Dialogue / Constraint = Style)
• IV. Some Exemplary Openings
• V. Some Exemplary First Sentences
• Afterword: Artistic vs. Commercial Success
• First Page Analyses: Subject / Category Index
• Works and Authors Cited Index