JPC Allen

Welcome to my writing pages!  The main focus of this website is to offer writing tips, prompts, and inspiration to writers, no matter what their genre or skill level. You’ll also find information on my published works and the ones in progress. My schedule for posting is:

Monday Sparks: Writing prompts to fan your creative flame.

Thursdays – Writing tips based on a monthly theme

You can sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar. You will also find me on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Bookbub, and at my publisher’s site, Mt. Zion Ridge Press.

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Best Openings Lines from Your Favorite Novels

Bookish question Love to read

On JPC Allen Writes this month, we’re all about how to write the beginning to your novel. So my bookish question for Monday Sparks is what are the best opening lines from your favorite novels?

When I look at the first page of my favorite novels, it’s a bit of shock to realize that most of them don’t have memorable first lines. Most of my favorite novels are older, so there wasn’t the push that there is now to grab readers’ attention with the first sentence. Authors could take a couple of chapters to slowly reel in readers.

First line of the The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is the one memorable line among my favorite novels:

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”

But here some other opening lines from my favorite novels:

“It was an old plan, a four-engine plasma jet that had been retired from active service, and it came in along a route that was neither economical nor particularly safe.” from Fantastic Voyage by Issac Asimov

“The primroses were over.” from Watership Down by Richard Adams

“Grant lay on his white cot and stared at the ceiling.” from The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

“Don’t talk droopy talk,” Archie Carstairs said. “Mother can’t have lost a twelve-pound turkey.” from Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice.

These are all great novel, but they don’t have the hooks contemporary novels expect. So let me hear from you. What are the best opening lines from your favorite novels? And if your favorites don’t have a great opening line, tell me why you like the novel despite a less than stellar hook.

Here are more bookish questions for avid readers.

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How to Make a Novel Great with Subplots

How to write subplots for a novel

I’ve written a lot this month about plots but haven’t addressed subplots. Subplots are unique to novels because short stories aren’t long enough to handle them. How do you make a novel great with subplots? Below are three ways subplots improve a novel.

Reflect the theme

In my Halloween mystery,A Riddle in the Lonesome October, Rae deals with fear and how to handle it as a Christian. Her cousin and uncle also struggle with fear after a terrible riding accident. Her cousin and uncle’s battles allow me to explore the theme with different characters, who have different responses to it, making the story richer for readers.

Complicate the main plot

Subplots in mysteries can help obscure the solution. Many times in the novels by Agatha Christie, a lesser crime is woven into the murder, which complicates discovering the identity of the killer. Subplots can add layers of complexities to the main plot, but they must support the main plot. For example, let’s say I’m writing a mystery about the owner an old local theater getting killed in it. So a lot of the mystery has to be set in the theater. My amateur sleuth is a retired teacher who volunteers at a community garden. If I have several scenes where my sleuth talks to friends and strangers at the garden and the only things readers learn is gardening techniques, then my subplot of working at the community garden isn’t supporting the overall plot of the murder mystery.

Inject fun

Subplots can add humor, if that’s appropriate for your novel. In each of my cozy mysteries, my protagonist’s younger brothers, who’s ten, is always working on an invention. It malfunctions somehow, attacking their father, and somehow, I always make the invention a component in solving the mystery. Since I’m writing about a close family, and my teen protagonist has a sense of humor, this subplot works.

Here’s all my posts on plot this month. If you have a question about writing plots, drop it in the comments.

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What are Your Favorite Plot Tropes for YA?

Love reading YA novels

What are your favorite plot tropes for YA novels? An underdog story often will hook my attention. One trope I’m tired of is the poor, deserving teen who is attending an exclusive boarding high school on a scholarship. Since I’ve never met a teen who’s attended any boarding high school, I think this trope is beyond most teens’ experiences and makes it harder for teens to relate too. But my main objection is that this trope is overused.

So let me know your favorite plot tropes for YA.

Here are my previous bookish questions on plot tropes. Join the conversation!

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How to Balance Plot and Character Development in Your Novel

Writing compelling plots and characters

My good friend author M. Liz Boyle posed this question: how to balance plot and character development in your novel. I had to give this a lot of thought because, although I know how I do it, I wasn’t sure how to explain my approach in a way others will understand. I’m a very instinctive writer. So when my story is veering off the rails, I rely on my gut to warn me. Since other writers can’t rely on my gut–and that might get messy anyway–here are some guidelines for balancing plot and characters.

Story Is King

When you write genre fiction, the rules of the genre set the boundaries for your novel. I write traditional mysteries. If plot twist or a character arc doesn’t serve the point of the a detective solving a mystery, I should examine it and either change it into something more supportive or eliminate it.

How do you know if an aspect of your novel is serving the story? You should be able to sum up the main problem of your novel in one to three sentences.

For example, I can sum up my third Rae Riley novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, this way:

A hidden inheritance, a family feud, a riding accident, a fake medium and rumors of bigfoot all lead to murder as Rae Riley tries to solve the riddle that will allow her great aunt to inherit a fortune and uncover the secret of the deputy she’s fallen for. 

All those elements have to support solving the riddle because it’s the main engine of the story. All the plot twists and character development need to feed that engine.

But how do you strike a balance?

The best way to strike a balance between plot points and character development is to combine them. In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, Rae is getting to know her father and learning how he feels about her and how she feels about him. I can show those feelings through their interactions as they try to figure out who is stalking Rae threatening letters vandalism. If your fantasy novel features a quest, then your characters develop as they meet challenges on their adventure.

But you can still add small tangents.

What do I mean by “small tangents?” Short additions of dialogue or action that aren’t directly tied to the mission of your novel but deliver some flavor to the mix.

In Riddle, rumors of a rogue black bear circulate around the county. Rae’s ten-year-old half brother Aaron invents an alarm to blast music if anyone gets too close to the family’s farmhouse. Now the alarm provides a clue to the mystery, but just for fun, I added that every time the alarm catches a family member, Aaron interviews him or her to see how scared they were to judge the alarm’s effectiveness. As he tells them, he can’t interview a bear if it triggers the alarm.

It’s short, funny, and reveals something about Aaron. Keep your tangents brief and few to increase their impact. The more often you combine a plot point to reveal character, the more compelling your novel will be.

Here are all of this month’s writing tips on plotting a novel.

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