Write the Opening Lines for This Scene

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.

May 18, 2026 0

Write a Hook for this Scene

To fit my theme of beginnings this month on JPC Allen Writes, write a hook for this scene. This picture holds so much potential for inspiration. Here’s my hook:

The call from across the lake was like nothing I’d ever heard before and I’d lived along its shores my whole life.

If you’d like guidance on writing hooks, read my post about the 2 secrets for creating them.Drop your hook in the comments.

May 11, 2026 2

Best Openings Lines from Your Favorite Novels

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.

May 4, 2026 0

Creating a Home for the Protagonist of Your Novel

This month’s theme is all about writing and exploring settings for your novel, and creating a home for the protagonist of your novel is critically important to it. But wait, you say. My novel is a thriller in which the hero never goes near his home. He races from his office in D.C. to locations around the world with the finale on top of the Great Pyramid of Giza and wrapping up loose ends in Cairo.

Keep reading. “Home” comes in many flavors and working it into your novel will add depth, characters, and plot points.

What to Find at a Home Base

If you write a series, a home base can provide a lot of material for your novels. The home base for my young amateur detective Rae Riley is the alpaca farm where she lives with her dad, grandmother, and three half-brothers. What makes this home base so important to Rae?

Her people. In the prequel short story, “A Rose from the Ashes”, Rae is looking for her father. Her mother has died of cancer, and she has no family. Rae tries to solve who attempted to murder her mother when she was pregnant with Rae in an effort to find her father. She risks everything to find her people, so her family is precious to her.
Safety. Because these are her people, Rae can retreat here when she needs a refuge to think about the case, test theories with her dad and grandma, or just destress.

Because her home base is so important, threatening it gives me a powerful plot point. When the crack marksman Colonel Sebastian Moran shoots through a window of 221 B Baker Street to kill Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Empty House”, it means something more when he attacks him in his home than if he shot him walking along the Thames.

In the Nero Wolfe mystery series, eccentric detective Nero Wolfe charges exorbitant fees to maintain his luxurious lifestyle in an old brownstone in New York City. One of his hobbies is orchids. He raises ten thousand plants in greenhouses on the top floor of his home. Wolfe rarely leaves his home to solve cases, relying on his assistant to do the leg work, so the brownstone is a crucial setting to the series. When master criminal Arnold Zeck in The Second Confession decides to issue a warning to Wolfe to stop an investigation, he goes for the brownstone. He machine-guns the greenhouses from across the street.

Threatening the home base can inspire plot points like:

Protagonist feels vulnerable.
Protagonists fears for her people.
Protagonist gives in to fear and lets threat control her.
Protagonist becomes more firmly resolved to defy threat.

What if your protagonist has no home?

No problem. A motivation for your protagonist can be either to find a home that he has always longed for and never had. Or he has lost a wonderful home and either wants to find a new one, reclaim the old one, or exact revenge on those who took it. Any of these ideas can power a novel and do so effectively because home means so much to readers. It’s a universal concept that any reader can identify with.

Back to our hero of the thriller. How do you work a home into the novel? Perhaps the first attack by the villain is at his office. His people are attacked. If he’s an agent of the government, then home can be his country and he wants to protect the life he knows.

What are other ways to use creating a home for your protagonist to develop the plot of your novel?

Here are more tips on writing settings in a novel.

March 5, 2026 2

What Novel Writing Tips Do You Want?

A few years ago, JPC Allen Writes had a theme for the entire year, “The Journey of a Book”. For 2026, I’m doing a variation of that on how to write a novel. I’m working on my fourth novel and I’ve discovered it takes me about a year from when I write the first words until I hand it off to my editor. So I will cover the basic and not-so-basic concepts involved in novel writing. I also want to ask readers what novel writing tips do you want? Articles on pacing? Or creating believable character flaws? What about how to find settings that advance the plot? Please let me know it the comments what would help you to finish a novel this year.

January 5, 2026 8

Tag: Mystery writer JPC Allen