This week’s “beginning” comes from Chapter One of Greg Keyes’ The Briar King, the first book in his The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. In my view, this a compelling opening passage that quickly hooks the reader: Aspar White smelled murder. Its scent was like a handful of autumn leaves, crisped by the first frost…
The word “cliché” makes some readers shudder. Others gag. It brings to mind something so overdone, so stale, so lacking in originality it makes you roll your eyes and mutter, “not this again.” Since at least J.R.R. Tolkien, fantasy fiction has been the Fertile Crescent of clichés. I’ve read numerous articles pleading for authors to…
For this week’s “beginning” I’ve chosen the opening passage from Frances Sherwood’s The Book of Splendor, a novel set in 1601 about the legendary Golem of Prague. I highly recommend this novel for anyone who hasn’t read it! Creating a Golem requires patience, brilliance, study, prayer, and fasting. The creator must be worthy in character,…
According to Wikipedia, “an antihero … is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero.” This character is usually the antithesis of the “knight in shining armor.” But what makes him work? In my view, the antihero has to be someone…
As I noted in my previous post on Great First Lines, the first sentence in a novel can often be its most important. But not always. Some stories need longer to develop. Still, it’s hard to underestimate the significance of the story’s opening passage. This is the “beginning” of the tale, a chance to hook…
The trailer for Season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which will air in April 2012, was released this week (you can watch it here). Season 1 was fantastic and, from the trailer, Season 2 looks equally promising – as it should be since it depicts A Clash of Kings, the wonderful second novel in…
This is not a new phenomenon, but for authors of short stories the market for their work seems to be forever shrinking. This past November, we saw the demise of one of the higher-end publications for speculative fiction, Realms of Fantasy magazine, and now there is news that Zahir, A Journal of Speculative Fiction, is…
Holidays are tough on writers. Even when you think you’ll have time to write, something gets in the way. Agent Rachelle Gardner recently suggested that writers should plan out how much time they think they’ll have to write during the holidays – and then divide that in half. This year, I should’ve divided that number…
Yesterday I stumbled across a little known fact about Dwarves. I say little known, when in fact it may be widely known. But it was news to me. This month I started reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit to my daughter, and we’re still at the scene where Thorin Oakenshield and all his Dwarves are invading…
Because I was traveling for the past five weeks, I had little time to conduct research on Vikings for my next novel. But I did have enough time to re-read another of my favorite stories about Vikings, Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead. The book is short (about 175 pages), and it has probably been…
To the Celts, October 31st was Samain, a harvest festival that many believe became the inspiration for Halloween. I could write more about Samain, but today I’d like to simply quote the great opening passage of Bernard Cornwell’s Enemy of God. Cornwell, who reimagines the Arthurian myth, writes about a time when the old Celtic…