Fantasy Literature and the Writer’s Itch

“I write to relive the itch in my head.”

So said American fantasy author N.D. Wilson, author of Dandelion Fire and 100 Cupboards, a wonderful emerging trilogy (set in Kansas) for young readers (and up!) who enjoy Harry Potter and the great works of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.

I have to admit, that “itch in the head” thing comes closest to describing why I write.

I just wanted to mention that my newest book, A Guide to Fantasy Literature, is in print. For more, visit my Fantasy Literature website, or the book’s blog, Creeping Past Dragons, to celebrate fantasy storytelling in all its diverse forms, exploring why it delights and enchants readers of all ages.

The book, by the way, is a substantially revised edition of book I did in 2002, called The Writer’s Guide to Fantasy Literature, focused on advice for writers. The 2002 edition sold well (about 5,000 copies), but the company later dropped that line of books, and the rights to the title reverted to me. I felt (there’s that itch!) the material had broad applicability beyond writers, and revised and tightened it to focus on points about the diverse types of fantasy and the building blocks of the genre interesting to a general reader . . . while still offering many bits of advice, ideas, and creative paths for writers.

A lot of the book addresses core issues of storytelling, and imagination, and the role of sense of place, theme, and such in good stories, as practiced by some of the finest storytellers ever – from Tolkien and Lewis to the pantheon of other greats: George MacDonald and Lord Dunsany to James Thurber and John Steinbeck to modern literary wizards like Ursula Le Guin, Jonathan Carroll, and others.

So if you want to scratch that itch in your head with the magical wand of fantasy, check out that book, website, blog.

As always, let me know any feedback or comments. I’m happy to try to address them here or in my Creeping Past Dragons blog.

Stories are Like Spiders and Spiderwebs

Stories are like spiders and like spiderwebs.

That’s what Neil Gaiman thinks.

Or he does via the invisible narrator of the trickster tales found in Anansi Boys, his 2005 novel.

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

Congrats to Neil for his Newbery Medal, just awarded by the illustrious (and hard-working, long-into-the-night-reading) committee, for The Graveyard Book.

In praise of The Graveyard Book, Peter Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, said that “one might call this book a small jewel, but in fact it’s much bigger within than it looks from the outside.”

That reminds me of something Eudora Welty once wrote about the art of storytelling, how stories turn into something unexpected as they grow and swell with unseen forces: “In the end,” she said about the trick of the tale, “I tried to make the story’s inside outside and then leave the shell behind.”

As Welty herself described a Faulker story “The Bear,” it swelled up “like a balloon with forces invisible, so the time and space within the story is somehow greater than seemed physically possible.”

Time and space is caught within a tiny story . . . like we are caught, with all delight, by the gossamer webs of tiny Anansi, master storyteller and trickster, in the guises of Gaiman, Beagle, Welty.

The Power of Poe: Use of the Gripping Image

Imagery for a master writer isn’t just coming up with a nice turn of phrase . . . one that conjures up a sunset suddenly appearing like a distant marching band turning the corner . . . or the sense of a breeze on the skin like a silk scarf.

A truly compelling image is the one that grips your imagination by the throat and just won’t let go.

For examples, there’s no better place to turn than Edgar Allan Poe. Founder of the detective story, master of the creepy short story, and a quotable poet, this is his 200th anniversary (he was born Jan. 19, 1809), and I highly recommend the Read Street series of blog posts on Poe in the Baltimore Sun.

Here a couple of excerpts from those posts that refer to Poe’s command of the gripping image – how it can hold your attention and burrow into your brain.

Where in your own writing can you create and point the reader’s attention to a glorious, unforgettable image?

In this Read Street guest post by Rob Velella, creator of the Edgar Allan Poe 2009 Bicentennial Desk Calendar, Velella describes Poe’s timeless appeal:

Poe was the first author that I wasn’t ashamed to enjoy – and I remember what pulled me in were his sights and sounds. I heard the tremor in the narrator’s voice when he told me how “calmly” he would tell me the whole story. I saw the old man’s evil, vulture-like eye, blue film and all. I heard the sound of the old man’s heart, beating like the ticking of a watch when enveloped in cotton.

What appealed to me then is still what appeals to me now: his ability to take words that do more than tell a story, but show one. He was a writer of sensation, creating images that are impossible to forget – a writhing black tongue in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” a shackled man in jester’s motley appealing “for the love of God!” in “The Cask of Amontillado,” and the one-eyed black cat sitting triumphantly on the head of a murdered wife in “The Black Cat,” just to name a few.

Here is another excerpt from the Read Street series on Poe, by a member of the South African-born mystery writing team known as Michael Stanley (with Michael Sears), Stanley Trollip’s Read Street blog post on Poe:

Of everything I read, I only recall a few vividly. The one that had perhaps the greatest impact on me was Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” After I turned the bedside light out, darkness brought vivid mental pictures of impenetrable cell walls and a gaping hole in the middle of my bedroom floor. The swish of curtains nearly caused cardiac arrest as I imagined a great scythe swing ever closer to my shaking body. I knew that creaks in the house meant that the walls were closing in. Mice running across the pressed metal ceiling of my room convinced me that rats were swarming all around my bed. My active imagination took its toll, and I was terrified for weeks after finishing the short story.

How did Poe achieve these effects? Here’s a bit from commentary on the “The Raven” poem, in the 1884 Harper & Brother edition (illus. by Gustave Doré), written by Edmund Clarence Stedman, a 19th-century poet.

The components of “The Raven” are few and simple: a man, a bird, and the phantasmal memory at a woman. But. . . . What have we? The midnight; the shadowy chamber with its tomes of forgotten lore; the student, — a modern Hieronymus; the raven’s tap on the casement; the wintry night and dying fire; the silken wind-swept hangings; the dreams and vague mistrust of the echoing darkness; the black, uncanny bird upon the pallid bust; the accessories of violet velvet and the gloating lamp.

He notes that “all this stage effect of situation, light, color, sound, is purely romantic, and even melodramatic,” but is so effective. The bottom-line: it works.

Here’s one last example, from “The Masque of the Red Death,” the description of the fitful effect caused by the hourly chiming of a “gigantic clock of ebony” that stood “against the western wall” in a set of princely rooms where a masked ball was being held.

Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

Poe had the knack for the image that stuck in the brain, like one from a dream that is odd, memorable, mysterious . . . and so concrete that you wonder if indeed you dreamed it . . . and pray to god that you did.

His feverish imagery isn’t necessarily to imitate, although masters like Stephen King have pulled it off, but to learn from. One of Poe’s tricks: he often combines description of the image with the distinct effect it has on those that encounter it.

The gripping image is a technique that can be used in powerful writing from journalism to fiction. Find the odd, eccentric, specific image that holds the imagination, and you can push the reader to feel emotions – of fear, unease, delight, or compassion – because of the power of their own imaginations to continue where you left off.

December Hodgepodge (on creativity)

As 2008 prepares to lead us into 2009, here are a few thoughts (about creativity, the writing process, and looking ahead) to savor:

Fiction. . . . It’s like goading a mongoose and a cobra into battle and staying with them to see who wins.
– Shauna Singh Baldwin, author of What the Body Remembers and The Tiger Claw

Q: What is your writing process like?
I sit down and think: “what’s the worst thing that can happen?”
– Carrie Ryan, author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth
[I think she means the worst thing that can happen to her characters . . . not to the writer.]

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus

Q: Where is your favorite place to write?
In my car. An old habit, I guess . . . when my daughter was a baby she wouldn’t nap in her crib. I used to drive around until she fell asleep, then I’d pull over and write for a few hours. Now she’s a teenager, but I find I still do my best work in the car – I’m not tempted to walk away and do something else, and no one interrupts me!
– Jen Bryant. author of books for young readers, including A River of Words (about William Carlos Williams) and Georgia’s Bones (about Georgia O’Keefe)

The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
– Henry Miller, novelist

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Tips for Writers from Jack Kerouac
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
[from a longer list, but you get the point.]

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
– Ansel Adams

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
– George Carlin

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
– Yogi Berra

Today
– (a single word, carved on a stone that sat on John Ruskin’s desk)

What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

Studs Terkel and the Golden Story

A farewell tip of the hat to Louis “Studs” Terkel (1912–2008), who passed away last Friday.

I owe a great personal debt to his inspiration. His books got me started in collecting oral history and writing my first book, an effort of many years to record the stories and music of ordinary, homegrown fiddlers, the old-time musicians of Midwestern farm neighborhoods.

A lot of those field trips were taken on a motorcycle, with my mouse-chewed fiddle strapped in its case to the roll-bar, leaning into the curves of the coulee roads, in search, from one lead to the next, of anyone who could tell a few stories and play a few tunes.

They were talented but self-taught fiddlers, run-of-the-mill sawyers and parlor virtuosos, who played at house parties (“kitchen sweats”), mostly through the winter months when farmwork was slow . . . when neighbors wanted to get together, roll up the rug and carry out the cookstore, and dance till the sun came up the next morning.

That resulted in a book I did, with wonderful documentary photos by a good friend, Lewis Koch of Madison. Farmhouse Fiddlers: Music & Dance Traditions in the Rural Midwest is still available here and there online.

To share a few words of advice on storytelling from the great Terkel (from his memoir, Touch and Go):

What first comes out [of an interview] are tons of ore; you have to get that gold dust in your hands.

But that was just the beginning:

Now, how does it become a necklace or a ring or a gold watch? You have to get the form; you have to mold the gold dust.

That sums up the storyteller’s gift: to take the mountains of stuff that is told or written in the first draft . . . to sift through it for the good stuff . . . and then, in the jeweler’s magical workshop, to find that golden form, to shape it into something of beauty that others will treasure . . . for many, many years.

It’s not just the words . . . but the shape of the tale that carries it out into the world to be passed as a gift from one to the next.

Thanks, Studs. You showed us the way.

From Cavemen to Chekhov (on Storytelling)

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a master storyteller, a beacon to those who followed his glittering lead, such as Eudora Welty and Raymond Carver, who considered him one of the greatest influences on their own work.

You can’t read too many Chekhov stories. Here is the beginning of “Gooseberries.” (Yes, it begins with a description of place, dear to my heart, as you know by now. Weather, no less.)

The whole sky had been overcast with rain-clouds from early morning; it was a still day, not hot, but heavy, as it is in grey dull weather . . . when one expects rain and it does not come. Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, and Burkin, the high-school teacher, were already tired from walking, and the fields seemed to them endless.

Then, Chekhov delivers that compelling line:

“Last time we were in Prokofy’s barn,” said Burkin, “you were about to tell me a story.”

Ivan Ivanovitch heaves a sigh begin to tell his story – “Yes, I meant to tell you about my brother” – but just as he lights a pipe, the rain begins . . . and we have to wait as they tromp to a nearby farm, wash up, and retire to the drawing room.

And only when the lamp was lighted in the big drawing-room upstairs, and Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch, attired in silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, were sitting in arm-chairs; . . . and when lovely Pelagea [a beautiful maid-servant], stepping noiselessly on the carpet and smiling softly, handed tea and jam on a tray – only then Ivan Ivanovitch began on his story. . . .

The hook has been baited. We all sink into comfy arm-chairs in the mind’s parlor . . . and wait for the story. At first, the story (about Ivan’s eccentric brother whose goal in life is to own a farm with gooseberry bushes) seems to be just an odd tale about a goofy person. Then Chekhov brings it home to a human issue: what is needed for a person to be happy? How is happiness earned?

And to what extent is it ever truly deserved?

His storytelling in a nutshell: 1) a curious starting point, 2) what happens, 3) some meaning it holds or interesting ideas it spawns . . . not necessarily a moral, but why the tale has stuck in the head, why it is worthy of telling.

I was recently reading an interview with Harlan Coben, American author of a series of crime novels in the style of Raymond Chandler, featuring a 6-foot, 4-inch hero called Myron Bolitar. Coben started by saying what we writers should hold dearest to our heart: “I love stories.”

And I liked his imagery of a motivation:

“When I’m writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we’re cavemen, we’re sitting around the fire, and I’m telling you stories. If I bore you, you’re probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.”

Stories. Simple? Not really. I also read an article in Scientific American (“The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn”) that suggested that stories were how early humans began to organize and keep track of more relationships as their societies grew in volume of people and complexity.

And the author, Jeremy Hsu, had this remarkable point:

A 2007 study by marketing researcher Jennifer Edson Escalas of Vanderbilt University found that a test audience responded more positively to advertisements in narrative form as compared with straightforward ads that encouraged viewers to think about the arguments for a product. Similarly, Green co-authored a 2006 study that showed that labeling information as “fact” increased critical analysis, whereas labeling information as “fiction” had the opposite effect. Studies such as these suggest people accept ideas more readily when their minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.

Stories. We seek them out, we listen, and  . . . most important to writers . . . we like them. If told well, we even believe in them; we “buy” them in more ways than the commercial one. Learn to tell a story well, and you’re on the path to literary success.

Throw Away the Thesaurus (on Repetition)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

What is notable about that famous opening line?

Repetition.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. . . .
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Repetition is a device pulled from oral tradition, from the bedtime stories of three Bears or Pigs or Billy Goats Gruff to inspiring speeches by the likes of Winston Churchill:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The success of this technique is rooted in its simple language. As Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges noted:

At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

Maturity in a writer doesn’t mean throwing around a lot of fancy words.

A secret of successful writers? The ability to recognize and tell a story . . . in a way that focuses on the story, not on you as a brilliant writer, pulling strings like a poorly concealed puppeteer.

Here is a passage by E.B. White, a true craftsman of clear, beautiful language. He is introducing a barn, but not just any barn. It is Homer Zuckerman’s barn in Charlotte’s Web, the setting where much of the novel will take place, where Charlotte the spider, lives.

Note how the passage starts with simple, repetitive sentences.

Then White builds on that. He introduces the sense of sweet patience that is the barn itself. We pause to enjoy the diverse scents, taking them in, as we begin to image the place fully for ourselves. We learn who shares the space: the cat, the cows, horses, sheep.

The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell – as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope. And whenever the cat was given a fish-head to eat, the barn would smell of fish. But mostly it smelled of hay, for there was always hay in the great loft up overhead. And there was always hay being pitched down to the cows and the horses and the sheep.

The barn was pleasantly warm in winter when the animals spent most of their time indoors, and it was pleasantly cool in summer when the big doors stood wide open to the breeze. The barn had stalls on the main floor for the work horses, tie-ups on the main floor for the cows, a sheepfold down below for the sheep, a pigpen down below for Wilbur, and it was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitchforks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, ax handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in. And the whole thing was owned by Fern’s uncle, Mr. Homer L. Zuckerman.

Good storytellers know the value of throwing away the thesaurus and using one of language’s most beautiful forms of expression: repetition. As Ursula K. Le Guin pointed out in her wonderful book on writing technique, Steering the Craft:

Repetition of words, of phrases, of images; repetition of things said; near-repetition of events’ echoes, reflections, variations . . . all narrators use these devices, and the skillful use of them is a very great part of the power of prose.

C.S. Lewis is another who uses a storytelling prose to good purpose in his Narnia books. He has no fear of repetition and simple words to deliver deep concepts; to use, as Le Guin says, echoes, reflections, variations. As in the samples given above, Lewis uses the technique to communicate great power and confidence. Here, early in The Silver Chair, heroine Jill Pole awakes by a steam to meet the lion, Aslan, lying nearby, “head raised and its two fore-paws out in front of it, like the lions in Trafalgar Square.”

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”
They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb [her friend] had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” . . . and the voice was not like a man’s. It  was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice.  . . .
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion. . . .
“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion. . . .
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh, dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

Instead of trying to dazzle with fancy verbal fireworks, great writers from C.S. Lewis to Ursula K. Le Guin, from E.B. White to Charles Dickens, know how to use the tools of beautiful language. One of the most powerful is that of repetition: the flowing cadence of an orator, the soothing lilt of “come hither and I’ll tell ye a tale.”

A bit of repetition can resonate and create an intimate bond . . . to draw the reader into the circle of your story.

A Glint of Light on Broken Glass

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

According to Britain’s The Guardian:

When 25 noted authors were asked in 1987 to name the most crucial influences on their own work, Chekhov was cited by 10 of them, including Eudora Welty, Nadine Gordimer, and Raymond Carver; he received double the nominations of any other writer. Eudora Welty said “Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.”

High praise! Here are the beginnings of two Chekhov stories. First, “The Cook’s Wedding”:

Grisha, a fat, solemn little person of seven, was standing by the kitchen door listening and peeping through the keyhole. In the kitchen something extraordinary, and in his opinion never seen before, was taking place. A big, thick-set, red-haired peasant, with a beard, and a drop of perspiration on his nose, wearing a cabman’s full coat, was sitting at the kitchen table on which they chopped the meat and sliced the onions. He was balancing a saucer on the five fingers of his right hand and drinking tea out of it, and crunching sugar so loudly that it sent a shiver down Grisha’s back. Aksinya Stepanovna, the old nurse, was sitting on the dirty stool facing him, and she, too, was drinking tea. Her face was grave, though at the same time it beamed with a kind of triumph. Pelageya, the cook, was busy at the stove, and was apparently trying to hide her face. And on her face Grisha saw a regular illumination: it was burning and shifting through every shade of colour, beginning with a crimson purple and ending with a deathly white. She was continually catching hold of knives, forks, bits of wood, and rags with trembling hands, moving, grumbling to herself, making a clatter, but in reality doing nothing. She did not once glance at the table at which they were drinking tea, and to the questions put to her by the nurse she gave jerky, sullen answers without turning her face.

Or, from “A Joke”:

It was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snapping frost and the curls on Nadenka’s temples and the down on her upper lip were covered with silvery frost. She was holding my arm and we were standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the ground below there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun was reflected as in a looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge lined with bright red cloth.

“Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!” I besought her. “Only once! I assure you we shall be all right and not hurt.”

But Nadenka was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to the bottom of the ice hill seemed to her a terrible, immensely deep abyss. Her spirit failed her, and she held her breath as she looked down, when I merely suggested her getting into the sledge, but what would it be if she were to risk flying into the abyss!

Note that the advice “don’t tell me, show me” is not taken to extremes. We are told the occasional bit of information for dramatic effect, such as: Nadenka is afraid. But mostly, we are drawn into the story by quick, deft sketches. Reading Chekhov is like looking over the shoulder of a visual artist sketching a quick drawing, using only a few strokes – a setting, a character, an incident about to happen.

“A glint of light on broken glass” is just that . . . a quick flash of a concrete but brief image, an intriguing visual clue that, instead of telling all, draws us in by making us wonder . . . what’s it all about?

We Are Lonesome Animals

I gave a recent talk on being a successful writer (craft tips, pitching advice, and a few other helpful hints) to a public library near Milwaukee (Muskego Public Library), a truly wonderful place with a gorgeous, inspired, high vaulted ceiling, lots of local artwork, and happily, plenty of people using it . . . even in the midst of a snowy, slippery January blizzard. One person on her way drove into a ditch, but got pulled out and still made it to my program. It made me want to share good thoughts on writing!

Here’s one:

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, “Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.”
– John Steinbeck

A related thought, from the website of Australian author Morris Gleitzman:

I don’t think you can make emotions up, no matter how good your imagination is. I’ve never met a writer who knows how to invent new emotions. All we can do is use the emotions we all feel every day. Love, hate, hope, fear, excitement, jealousy, sadness, guilt, joy, anxiety etc. The characters in our stories may be feeling them for different reasons to us, but they’re the same emotions.
– Morris Gleitzman

And:

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
– Willa Cather

The point: we need to connect to our readers with stories and characters and feelings that resonate with them, that touch on those simplest, oldest, most powerful of stories.

The Sea of Trolls (Opening Lines)

In my quest to convince emerging writers that a compelling opening for a novel can be an intriguing description of place . . . here’s the start of a 2004 fantasy for young readers, a book I’m currently enjoying, The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer, 3-time winner of a Newbery Honor award.

Jack woke before dawn and listened to the cold February wind lash the walls of the house. He sighed. It was going to be another rotten day. He stared up at the rafters, savoring the last minutes of warmth. He was bundled in a cocoon of wool blankets over a bed of dried heather. The floor was deep, below the level of the house. The wind that found its way under the door passed over his head.

It was a good house, with oak pillars planted the root up to keep damp from rising from the ground. Jack had watched Father build it when he was seven. Father had thought a child couldn’t understand such a complicated task, but Jack had. He’d paid close attention and thought he could build a house even now, four years later. Jack forgot very little of what he saw.

At the far end of the long room Jack could see Mother stir up the cooking fire. The light danced on the loft.

A simple start. But notice how much is communicated; the time frame (early Middle Ages) is sketched. Notice what is asked as an implicit question. Why will it be another rotten day? Notice the character hints. Jack is a boy who observes things. He wakes up, seeing things around him.

With a calm, confident air, the first paragraphs of the book signal: this is the beginning of a tale. A story is about to unfold.

When I turn over the book, the jacket praises Farmer’s previous novels, “perilous adventures through hostile but richly conceived landscapes” (New York Times Book Review); “a talent for creating exciting tales in beautifully realized, unusual worlds” (Kirkus); and “Readers will be hooked from the first page” (Publishers Weekly).

Perilous adventures. Exciting tales. Unusual worlds.

And readers hooked from the first page.

Hooked not with wild action, but with a quiet, appealing, intriguing description of a boy waking up in a house in the Middle Ages – a come-hither promise of Once Upon a Time.