Tag: Monday Sparks

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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Using Holiday Folklore to Inspire Your Story

Writing stories with folklore

If you want to combine Christmas or New Year’s Day with speculative fiction, or to give any story a touch of magic or wonder, you can accomplish this by using holiday folklore to inspire your story.

Many, many superstitions are attached to these holidays at the end of the year. This is probably because Europeans held on to some pagan beliefs as they converted on Christianity. In Celtic lands, the winter solstice was a time to be on guard against evil spirits, who were said to roam the long nights. Ancient Celts lit bonfires and made noise to scare them away. (Side note: Celts also believed evil spirits were out and about during the fall celebration of Samhain, the holiday from which Halloween derives its origin. I get the impression that it was no picnic to be ancient Celt.)

This fear of evil spirits may have led to the English tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. I believe that may have influenced Charles Dicken’s decision to use ghosts to haunt Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

The Christmas Encyclopedia by William D. Crump (the link is to a newer edition than I have) lists many superstitions from various countries. Here are a few.

“A child born a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day will have good fortune.”

“A child born during the twelve nights of Christmas may become a werewolf. (Germany and Poland)”

“From cockcrow until dawn on Christmas Day, trolls roam the land. (Sweden)”

“A windy Christmas Day brings good luck.”

In my YA mystery, “A Rose from the Ashes”, I refer to a Christmas legend. Early Christmas morning, under an almost full moon in the clear, frozen dark, Rae Riley confronts the three men who are the only candidates to be her father and her mother’s attacker. The moon gilds everything, giving the land and everyone under it a magical appearance. Rae says she believes animals could speak on a night like this.

I couldn’t find a country of origin for the legend, but it states that because the animals in the stable were kind of Jesus at his birth, he granted them the ability to speak at midnight on every Christmas Day since then. I use the legend to underline the wonder Rae feels when she solves the mystery of her mother’s attack and her father’s identity.

A lot of superstitions deal with performing rituals to predict the future.

“On Christmas Eve, if an unmarried woman peels an apple, making sure it remains as a single ribbon, and if she throws it on the floor from above her head, the pattern of the peeling on the floor will disclose her future husband’s initials.”

What if a young woman performs this ritual and doesn’t like the initials she sees because she knows to whom they belong? Or what if such rituals are accurate but can only be performed by trained fortune tellers? In this world, the best fortune tellers run businesses and customers scramble to make appointments with them for New Year’s Eve and Day, changing the important days from Christmas Eve.

One way to insure good luck for the coming year was to get the right person to enter the home after midnight on New Year’s Eve. This custom, called first-footing, was popular in Scotland and northern England. A powerful man with dark hair brought the best luck. Agatha Christie uses this superstition to help solve a ten-year-old death in the short story, “The Coming of Mr. Quin” in the book The Mysterious Mr. Quin.

Do you know of some holiday folklore in your area or a tradition that’s been passed down through your family?

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Ferreting Out Weasel Words

Ferreting out weasel words

Ferreting out weasel words is a key editing technique. What are weasel words? The authors of Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel describe them as the unnecessary words that creep into your manuscript. They’re also called weed words. Every writer has pet ones that scurry through their stories until it’s time to edit.

Don’t worry about weasel words in the first draft. My first drafts are littered with “just” and “almost”. If I stopped to analyze whether each one is needed, I switch from the artist mindset to the editor one and break my creative flow. When I settle down to a thorough edit, that’s when I tackle the weasel words.

In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, I had characters thanking each other so much that a little ingratitude would have been welcome while I was editing. I only needed my characters to extended a few “thank you’s” to get across that they were polite, nice people.

While working on my third novel, I had a scene where three characters kept asking each other if they were “all right”. Good grief, I hadn’t remembered that “good” and “okay” work too, and those are the boring alternatives.

I also think you can have weasel settings. These are settings that a writer uses too much. A Shadow on the Snow had too many scenes set in places where characters were eating or in cars while characters were driving. I had to broaden my scope of settings.

If you’re a writer, what weasel words do you have to ferret out? Do you have settings that are your go-to? What are they?

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Writers, What’s Your Best Editing Tip?

writers, what's your best editing tip?

My last prompt for this month on editing is to ask–writers, what’s your best editing tip?

Mine would be that when you have finished all your big picture edits–smoothing out the character developments, plugging the plot holes, filling in logic gaps–to edit your chapters out of order.

If you read each chapter like it’s a short story, you can pay better attention to the details. When you read in order, you often pay attention to the big picture items, such as how does the end of chapter four flow into the beginning of chapter five. Treating each chapter as its own little story makes you zero in on problems in dialogue or description or pacing. Writers, I’d love to hear from you. What’s your best editing tip?

For more editing tips, click here.

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