The Power of Those Famous First Words

The first line of a fiction novel is so important that the most famous are instantly recognized: "Call me Ishmael." (Moby-Dick by Herman Melville) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens) "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy) "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." (Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen) My son and husband just love the new sci-fi hit The Martian by Andy Weir, about an astronaut stranded on Mars; it begins with "I'm pretty much f--d." Memorable first lines grab the reader's interest, introduce the style or voice of the novel, and create expectations that the author will satisfy or confound. Many stock opening words set the scene, but the best go way beyond "It was a dark and stormy night." Consider how George Orwell's initially standard start to his novel 1984 is disturbingly transformed by the last word: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Some first lines hook the reader immediately by jumping right into action, as in Toni Morrison's Paradise: "They shoot the white girl first." Other fiction openers present a thesis or opinion before moving forward, beginning with a statement that engages or challenges the reader's experience and that grows in impact by the novel's last words. Austen and Tolstoy succeeded in the examples above. First lines also can draw in readers with suspense--about what will be revealed about events (The Martian), or about the narrator as in Albert Camus' The Stranger ("Mother died today."), or about both as in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five ("All this happened, more or less.") Test yourself on how many first lines are etched in your memory with this quiz courtesy of The Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2014/0612/Famous-opening-lines-Take-our-literature-quiz/Question-110

Blowing Out the Candles of Another Birthday

Today is my birthday, and social media congratulations are piling up. Thank you all. An issue arises every year over how to celebrate, or indeed whether to celebrate the aging process at all. My husband, whose birth date is just five days different from mine, announced his plan for a joint weekend gathering in our home with our children and local relatives (over a dozen people). I thought that was fine until he asked me what I planned to cook for everyone. He was taken aback when I declined the culinary opportunity. And I refused to bake my own cake, too. Clearly, after years of blowing out an ever-growing number of candles, my birthday spirit is exhausted. So I looked at various Internet lists of celebration ideas, ranging from dull standards (dining out) to the downright depressing (go to temple and thank God you've survived another year). I wondered what livelier ladies might suggest. Here's one list of "extremely fun ways" for women to celebrate: take a private plane ride (just not with Harrison Ford); see a Broadway show (I suggest this every year with no result); perform as many acts of kindness as your number of years (yikes, I'll be busy); do something you wanted to do as a child but didn't get to do (laser tag as long as I don't break a hip); organize a flash mob (volunteers?); escape urban stress by camping (need to fix tears in the old air mattress and tent first); go on an unplanned road trip (and send constant lonely posts to social media); throw a theme party (requiring costumes is a great way to reduce attendance and expense); do something from your "bucket list" (skydiving? forget it); pamper yourself at a spa (always ready for that); go to a karaoke bar (sorry about being tone deaf); have a fancy birthday brunch with friends (easy to get RSVPs as long as I promise champagne); and, finally, take a cooking workshop--and we're back to cooking! But just as I finished writing this grumbling post, my husband walked in with a bouquet of roses and reminded me that being with those you love is still the best way to celebrate. For another list of birthday celebration ideas for adult women, see http://www.todaysthebestday.com/ways-to-celebrate-your-birthday/

When Digital Text Rules, Does Writing Quality Bow?

My children insist on communicating almost entirely via text messages. It allows them to connect at work, at the gym, in restaurants or at parties, when they can't or won't talk on cell phones. If I need to communicate detailed information, I must send an e-mail. The next time you go out to eat, check the neighboring tables and count those where every single person--parents, children, friends and lovers--is silently staring at a mobile device to check e-mail, text, tweet, read Facebook updates, search the Internet, etc. So many of us are in company yet alone--focused on a stream of digital words and pictures. Written communication has become a social necessity, and digital tools have conferred on Everyman the power to instantly influence a wide audience with the written word. Yet I wonder what impact the Digital Age is having on the actual quality of writing and the standards of readers. Are we producing generations fluent only in informal, abbreviated "textspeak" and addicted to shallow word bites? It's interesting to see the results of a 2013 Pew Research Center survey of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers about the impact of digital tools on student writing. On the plus side, some 78% of teachers said digital tools, such as the Internet, social media, and cell phones, "encourage student creativity and personal expression." Definitely, e-mails and social posts require concise, active, colorful language to engage attention spans measured in seconds! But 68% of teachers also said digital tools made students more likely to take shortcuts and not put effort into their writing. And what about written content? Teachers rated students lowest on constructing a strong argument, reading and digesting long or complicated texts, and navigating fair use and copyright. It would seem that despite our expanding digital word power, good writing and clear thinking are still in need of champions. For more on the study, see http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/07/16/the-impact-of-digital-tools-on-student-writing-and-how-writing-is-taught-in-schools-2/

The Dark Attraction of Murderous Duos

Most murder mystery plots revolve around a single killer. Murderous partners are rarer in fiction and in real life, which is why they have a macabre fascination. In fact, as a 2014 Psychology Today article noted, more than a fifth of serial killers operate in teams, most involving two offenders. And these teams have a unique psychological dynamic: One member is invariably a dominant figure who manipulates a subordinate partner's youth, neediness, mental instability, or low intelligence, according to Eric W. Hickey, a forensic psychologist and the author of Serial Murderers and Their Victims, who has studied more than 500 serial killer teams. The dominant predator in a killing team maintains such psychological and even physical control that the partnership acquires greater emotional significance than any personal moral code that might prevent heinous acts, experts agree. These deadly partnerships are often sexual: Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate; Paul Bernardo and Karen Homolka; Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. But it is the aberrant emotional glue that really counts; consider the father-son relationship of the 2002 D.C. sniper team of Muhammad and Malvo, or the same-sex peer bond of the teenage Columbine killers. So how do such murderous duos form? Gregg McCrary, a behavioral criminologist and former FBI agent, theorizes in the article: "There's radar, gaydar, and, maybe, mur-dar. It resembles the phenomenon wherein normal people meet and decide that they're going to get along, but with these couples, it takes a dark turn. They vector in on each other, sensing the excitement of a kindred spirit. It becomes electric." There's a dark law of attraction that leads to nightmares. For the complete Psychology Today article, including historical examples, read https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201406/partners-in-crime. For some more examples of famous killing teams, see http://listverse.com/2012/07/08/10-awful-serial-killer-teams/.

What's in a Name? The Chance for Success

Several young couples in my circle recently welcomed babies, and their struggles with name choices reminded me of my own deliberations over naming of fictional characters--because the answer to Juliet's famous question "What's in a name?" can affect social (or publishing) success. For example, a 2003 study of resumés identical except for fake names divided between those that sounded "white," like Emily and Greg, and those that sounded African-American, like Lakisha and Jamal, found the resumés with "white" names received a 50% higher call-back rate from employers. It would be interesting to see if those results have changed in 2015. Certainly, given names today reflect more social and ethnic diversity than ever before. In the U.S. of 1950, only 5% of parents chose a name for their child that wasn't in the top 1,000 names; by 2012, that figure was up to 27%. The expansion of naming trends in multicultural America opens up the choices for creating fictional names that are ironic, symbolic/connotative, phonetically suggestive, alliterative or just poetically right to the inner ear. But there is also more potential for faddish anachronisms, social bias and offense, regional dissonance and ethnic missteps. In a writersdigest.com guest post, veteran mystery author Elizabeth Sims (Rita Farmer mysteries) offers some rules for creating fictional names without tripping over today's naming trends: 1) Check root meanings of names, so Caleb, which means "faithful," can fit a loyal character without hitting readers over the head with Loyal (or it could be an ironic choice for a villain); 2) Get your era right and realize that Taylor doesn't fit a twenty-year-old girl in the 1930s or a ninety-year-old woman in 2015, but Myrtle works; 3) Say the names out loud because some names look good on paper but don't work when spoken (don't undermine the future audiobook/movie); 4) Manage your cast appropriately by varying names in terms of initials and syllables to prevent reader confusion when you have a big cast of characters; 5) Think it through to the real world, which is why, Sims points out, most fictional villains don't have middle names or initials since that increases the chances of offending a real person, who can come after you with a suit (or a gun); 6) Check those names again to make sure you have researched thoroughly, especially for ethnic or foreign names. For example, Sims admits that she once named a supposedly Japanese-American character Gary Kwan, only to discover that Kwan is a Chinese surname. To read Sims' full post, go to http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-7-rules-of-picking-names-for-fictional-characters

No End in Sight for Dystopian Fiction's Popularity

Dystopian fiction is thriving as news stories about global warming, world pandemics, and violent human intolerance of every kind--racial, religious and sexual--inspire tales of a terrifying future for humanity. It's no fluke that The Hunger Games series sells books and movie tickets. My book club is naturally tapping into the trend, recently reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, a tale of technological and social collapse after mass depopulation by a virulent flu strain. Back in 2011, we read the dystopian classic The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, set in a Thailand inundated by global warming and decimated by megacorporate "calorie company" biotech tinkering. Contemplating the popularity of apocalyptic fiction, it's clear the best dystopian novels not only hold up a mirror to shared fears for the future, they also are essentially hopeful rather than hopeless literary expressions. After all, if enough people are convinced by the writer's vision that failure to change now will lead to disaster down the road, they may be spurred to avert the forecast doom. Consider the lasting impact of these seminal dystopian works: 1984 by George Orwell, published in 1949, with its eerie prescience about the rise of "Big Brother" government and its Newspeak; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a 1953 Cold War classic about a society where books and independent thought are banned; 1962's A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess about the culture of violence, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, a 1968 vision of a world dominated by androids. Today's writers tackle a new crop of fears along with the standard war, famine and plague. But the best dystopian novels still use the same formula for success: They go beyond technical and socio-political jargon to connect with the human heart, breaching our defenses against unpleasant truths with compelling characters and emotions. For a list of some top dystopian reading, go to http://www.shortlist.com/cool-stuff/20-best-dystopian-novels

Why I'm Ambivalent on 'Mockingbird' Sequel

The big buzz this week is the soon-to-be-published sequel to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic novel about young Scout and her family, including beloved father and lawyer Atticus Finch, caught up in the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman in Depression-era Alabama. The sequel from Lee, titled Go Set a Watchman, will be published in July. I admit to both eager curiosity and some misgivings about the new work. The reclusive Lee, who has not published since the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird, actually wrote the "Watchman" manuscript before "Mockingbird." Lee's editor read her first "Watchman" effort, about an adult Scout paying a visit to her father Atticus in 1950s Alabama, and was more engaged by the childhood flashbacks. The editor encouraged the fledgling author to create a story around the Depression-era characters instead. Lee took the advice and, after many revisions, produced her acclaimed "Mockingbird" novel. The "Watchman" manuscript was apparently lost and forgotten, only to be unearthed recently by the aged Lee's friend and lawyer. Those who love "Mockingbird" have long yearned for more from Lee, yet I fear a letdown. First of all, Go Set a Watchman supposedly will be published as the original manuscript, basically the unedited voice of an inexperienced writer. I worry that there's a reason editor and author forgot about it. More fundamentally, To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age masterpiece. Consider other coming-of-age tales that have become literary classics: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, or Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Do you really want sequels, say the life of Huckleberry at age 35? I loved young Scout when I said good-bye to her. I don't want to be disappointed by the grown-up Scout. For more on Lee's new book, read http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/books/harper-lee-author-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird-is-to-publish-a-new-novel.html?_r=0