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Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

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Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#51

Post by ahartmetz »

isolli wrote: post #40
alleyshack wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In pretty much any writing medium (novels, screenplays, short stories, etc), standard advice involves hooking the reader within the first paragraph or so. This is partly why "in medias res" tends to be such a popular opening technique - it drops the reader straight into the action, which is theoretically more interesting than "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice...…

An interesting example, one of the best-known book openings in French literature ("Aujourd'hui, maman est morte."), and the difficulties translating the sentence in English: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translat...

Interesting article, and I believe I have a better translation: "Today, my mom died." It sounds better than just "mom" and seems to express the right level of closeness.

OTOH I think it's often appropriate to keep "mamma" in Italian movies and texts because it carries a huge amount of connotations, which "maman" doesn't.

Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#54

Post by hinkley »

NickM wrote: post #8

It's interesting to think what might happen if something like this became really popular. I'd imagine many novels might start adding super oddball stuff in the first page, just to stand out from the crowd and pique peoples' curiosity. Kind of the literary equivalent to clickbait headlines.

My friend in college would read a random page from the first third of the book to make his decision. He found the first page to be too unreliable.

My roommate would read the last page of the book to find out if the book was worth his time. We thought he was nuts. Especially since he could read a novel in 3 hours anyway.

Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#56

Post by hinkley »

singingboyo wrote: post #37
IneffablePigeon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar has happened in pop music - because on Spotify (and probably other streaming services, too) a play counts if you listen to at least 30 seconds, there's been a definite shift towards songs that start off with a pared down version of the main hook, or at least start their build much more obviously early on. There's fewer long, drawn out intros (which are normally saved just for videos now).

In fairness, wasn't this also true for radio? I recall quite a number of songs where the full version (from a CD or similar) had an intro that I'd never hear on the radio.

Pink Floyd, for one, released a couple of songs with very quiet intros. If you played the album versions people would think you were broadcasting dead air. Can’t have that. So just jump to the first sound over a certain decibel, and chop out anything longer than a second later in the song.

Which makes that Alannis Morisette song where she’s making a point about people not being able to handle silence pretty weird. The on air version has an “uncomfortable silence” that’s only around a second long...

Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#58

Post by hinkley »

komali2 wrote: post #26
jrumbut wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good. I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually the…

Writer's perspective - starting and ending a book are the top 2 hardest things, in my opinion, especially because editors get all up your ass about beginnings. I suspect this has to do with primacy principle, i.e.the editor is "most aware" during the beginning of the reading, and also aware that readers do the same thing. They will pick up the book in the bookstore and possibly skim the beginning to see if they shoul…

Did you ever see Throw Momma From the Train?

Crystal’s character has writers block because he is fixated on a good first sentence setting the tone for the rest of the novel, and he never gets past line one.

Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#59

Post by pjc50 »

alleyshack wrote: post #19
jrumbut wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good. I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually the…

In pretty much any writing medium (novels, screenplays, short stories, etc), standard advice involves hooking the reader within the first paragraph or so. This is partly why "in medias res" tends to be such a popular opening technique - it drops the reader straight into the action, which is theoretically more interesting than "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice...…

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

- opening sentence of Iain Banks' The Crow Road

Re: Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

#60

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

openasocket wrote: post #47
irrational wrote: post #46

I kept hearing raving reviews of "The Name of the Wind". I started reading it and got a couple of chapters in and had no interest in continuing. I mentioned this to my brother and he told me that I had to keep going. So I figured I'd read a bit more and see if there was anything to the book. I just finished it on Saturday and I have to say it is easily one of the best books I have ever read. But, if I had just read t…

I felt pretty much the same way when reading it. "The Name of the Wind" is rather unusual as a novel because those first chapters are pretty fundamentally different than the rest of the novel. Not just in terms of plot, but I think also the general tone and style. I don't actually have a count, but I think it's a good 50-100 pages before the novel falls into its rhythm. It's not that the beginning is bad (in my opini…

That's really interesting. The first few pages come pretty close to poetry in my opinion.

For me its those interludes that raise TNOTW into a class above the normal Harry Potter Copycat Formula that is so popular now.

I never even considered the possibility that, those bits would be putting people off. It's pretty clear that its those sections were Patrick Ruthfuss strives for perfection, that is taking so long to complete the series. He can churn out pages, once he gets "into the rythm" of more common storytelling.

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