Category: Monday Sparks

Taking a Break

I’ll be taking a break from blogging until June 11. I have a family vacation and my mind is burnt from editing my latest manuscript. But I’ll be back June 11 with tips on how to write the middle of your novel because writing the middle is the theme for JPC Allen Writes this month. However, I won’t have Monday Sparks this month. I just couldn’t think of a way to create writing prompts that have to do with the middle that I haven’t posted before.

Click here f you would like to see previous writing prompts concerning the middle of a story.

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Write the Opening Lines for This Scene

Writing prompt for beginning a novel

My photo prompt today actually worked in reverse. I had opening lines that I wrote five years ago and found a photo to accompany them. I would love to write a story to fit these opening lines because I think it sets up the protagonist, antagonist, setting, and main problem in a compelling way with just a few lines. If this photo inspires you, write the opening lines for this scene. Or tell me where to take this story from my opening lines.

The sun rose over the still-quiet city, a haze already gathering above the maples and oaks in Nelson Park. I crunched along the crushed gravel path. A few birds tossed out some notes, either early risers warming up their vocal chords or night ones wrapping up their nocturnal activities. Turning right, I followed the path that led to the building with the mayor’s office. A jogger trotted past. I smiled, but of course, he didn’t smile back. You don’t in this city. 

I wiped at the sweat on my lip and pulled my damp shirt from my back. The humidity climbed with the sun. It sidled up to you and sank in, just like Mayor Nelson’s words when he wanted to win you over to do something for him. 

He thought he finally had me, had finally hooked me, and could play me however he wanted. But he didn’t have me. He couldn’t get me.

Picking up my pace, I grinned at the next grim-faced jogger. 

But I was going to get him.

Here are more writing prompts to inspire beginnings.

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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 plane, 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.” fromFantastic Voyageby 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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