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Apr. 24th, 2007 05:50 pmHatrack.com's Writers Forum (Orson Scott Card's website) has a policy of 13 lines to post on either a novel or short, and then interested people can e-mail for more or just comment on the opening.
I was intrigued. Thinking about it, I realized that's probably (at 1 or 2 paragraphs) as much as a person can take in at a glance. Even the extent of first pages in trade paperbacks, maybe. I know that's about how short the preview first page feels on Amazon! So it's a good size. I think an exercise in self-assessment would be to pull out the first 13 lines and see what how well they work.
Rather than spamming the forum, I might just try a few here, too. First, though, what say some fun? Here's the first 13 lines of my first ever independent novel. (I wrote one for a history club. It's a grand total of 15 pages, I believe. This one is 72, handwritten.)
I'd love to see other peoples' first writings...or at least old ones, this way. I'm rather proud to show I had then some sense of pacing I've subsequently lost in a search for literary merit. Backstory, now, is a totally different matter...
I was intrigued. Thinking about it, I realized that's probably (at 1 or 2 paragraphs) as much as a person can take in at a glance. Even the extent of first pages in trade paperbacks, maybe. I know that's about how short the preview first page feels on Amazon! So it's a good size. I think an exercise in self-assessment would be to pull out the first 13 lines and see what how well they work.
Rather than spamming the forum, I might just try a few here, too. First, though, what say some fun? Here's the first 13 lines of my first ever independent novel. (I wrote one for a history club. It's a grand total of 15 pages, I believe. This one is 72, handwritten.)
I'd love to see other peoples' first writings...or at least old ones, this way. I'm rather proud to show I had then some sense of pacing I've subsequently lost in a search for literary merit. Backstory, now, is a totally different matter...
