Mastering Stylistic Tension

Hey everyone! Last week I did my first post on Writers Helping Writers. So instead of doing another new post on here today, I want to send you guys to that one. In it, I talk about mastering stylistic tension. Here is the beginning to get you started:

One of the first things writers learn is to start a story with conflict. Some writers have bombs go off. Others start with a death. Or a break-up. But over the years, looking at unpublished material, I’ve learned and relearned that how such conflicts are rendered on the page stylistically can often be just as important as the conflict itself, and sometimes even more important.

I’ve seen a lot of stories start with the dead or dying—a topic that is universal to the human experience. And yet, stories that promise a content-minor conflict on something like, say, a character losing her job, seem to have more tension. Why is that?

Often it’s based on how the writer handles the conflict stylistically. In some ways, it’s not the conflict itself that draws readers in, it’s the promise of conflicts. A story that opens blatantly with death often isn’t as interesting as a story that opens with the promise of death—whether that death happens on the first page or last page of the story.

When you begin a story with a death itself . . . that’s it. It’s all there, on the page. But when you begin a story with a promise of death, the reader feels the need to read on to find out about the death and discover whether or not is actually happens.

 . . . Keep Reading

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Please Don't Write this Sentence in Your Opening

I regularly read unpublished work. A lot of writers have a cool idea for their protagonist's backstory, one that is meant to create a sense of mystery for the reader. I love stories like that. I love backstories. I even love a good flashback. But I cannot tell you how many times I've read sentences similar to this one in an opening of a story:

Jasper pushed the memories away from his mind.

To the average person, there is nothing wrong with this sentence. But when you read a lot, and you read that sentence a lot, you start realizing the problems in it.

There are many variations to this sentence, or at least lead-ins to this sentence. Here are a few others:

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How to Write a Good First Sentence

internraven said: I'm working on a novel now, and I've got everything planned out- outline, characters, a playlist, etc. I just can't find a first sentence. Do you have any tips for coming up with a good first sentence for a novel?

Coming up with a Good First Line for a Novel

Method 1
For some people, it's easiest to just start writing and come back and look through what's been written to see if any of it would work as a good first sentence. Then the writer rearranges the first few pages to accommodate that. He finds his first sentence by writing.

Method 2
This is similar to Method 1. The writer just starts writing, and it might be a bunch of rambling stuff that's actually not that important to the story. The writer is just trying find the beginning of the story. When she discovers it, she chops off the starting, where all the rambling is.

Method 3
If you want to start with a good first sentence right off the bat, think of some sort of hook you could begin your opening scene with. The first sentence usually needs to grab the reader somehow. Keep reading for how to do that.

A Great First Sentence
The main elements of a story are character, setting, conflict, and theme. Pick one of those elements and come up with an interesting first sentence to introduce it.

The best first sentences usually promise conflict or intrigue us somehow. A lot of people think they need to start with something life-threatening, like a bomb going off. That can work, but it can also get old, if it's not told in an interesting way, like this:

The bomb blew apart the grocery store down the street; Grandma Smith listened to the sirens and went back to knitting with a smirk.

The opening sentence doesn't have to contain life-altering information to be a great one. It just has to be interesting and make us want to learn more. One way to do this is to create interesting contrasts. Here are some examples I came up.

Mom handed me my Birthday present, and my stomach dropped.

We usually associate birthdays with happy emotions, but the narrator feels sick about this present, so immediately, we want to why, so we keep reading. It's an interesting contrast.

I took twice as long as usual to brush my teeth because Dad always preached the importance of looking your best at funeral.

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