Tag: Janis Patterson

Hook, Line and Sinker – The Problem with First Lines

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by Janis Patterson

Unfortunately we live in a sound bite age – if you don’t get their attention in X amount of seconds you don’t get it. Time was when authors were advised that you had the first chapter to hook the reader (agent, editor or customer). Then it went down to the first five pages. Then the first page. Then the first paragraph. Now people are leaning toward the first line. Logic would dictate that it would stop there, but in this crazy publishing world I wouldn’t bet on it. With a sad fatalism I’m waiting for a list of sure-fire attention-getting first words. Where things will go after that I don’t even dare speculate.

So what do you do? You grab their attention from the first. Now I’m generous, so I personally work under the three sentence rule. You have three sentences to intrigue them enough to read on. Almost every classic novel violates this rule… some of them adhere to the old ‘first couple of chapters’ convention, which means many if not all would never make it to the shelf today. Of course, novels, conventions and writing styles have changed over the years; what was loved and lionized years – decades – centuries – ago is dead weight today. After all, how many modern people read really old books today for pleasure? (I know some do, and good on them, but we’re talking about modern, short-attentioned modern genre readers.)

So what is it about first lines? People say, you have your cover blurb – why won’t that make them read the book? Well, sometimes it will. It and the cover will usually get the reader to look and pick up the book, but the first sentence(s) will make them want to read the rest. (And like all other things in this more than slightly mad business, this is a generalization. Nothing is ever absolutely certain!)

How? is usually the first question. What do you do to hook the reader? What formula is there to make sure that first line makes them want to continue reading?

The first thing you do not do is start off boring. Don’t talk about the weather, or the pretty scenery, or how much you like your new red dress… unless of course, this is so strange or so much of a clue or whatever that it almost turns out to be the turning point/crux of the story. That’s an individual story call.

Some people just start writing and eventually go back to edit; others end up cutting the first thousand or so words to get a good beginning. Every writer at one time or another has been told “Your story starts in the middle of the second chapter – cut everything before that and lard the information into the story later on.” Other writers can craft a winning first line almost from the get-go. Still other writers come up with a sterling first sentence and then create a story to support it. Even other writers… well, you get the idea. Writing is a highly individualistic enterprise and everyone’s process is different. There are requirements about the finished product, but the process is up to the individual writer.

Back to first lines. Do start off in the middle of something exciting. The hero is caught in the middle of a wildfire or is being stalked by a hungry tiger or is hiding from a gunman – or is being made love to by the most beautiful woman in the world whom he has never seen before. Make his emotions your own. Make the reader wonder (1) how did he get into such a situation and (2) how is he going to get out so much that he has to keep reading.

Once the reader is engaged you can tell the rest of the story – either from that point on or going back to the beginning to tell how he got there or whatever timeline the story demands.

Let’s face it – it doesn’t matter how good and outstanding your story is, or how you present it, the reader is not going to read it unless you hook their interest, and one of the primary tools for that is the first line.

Noise Levels and Other Considerations

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by Janis Patterson

This is a noisy world. There are sirens and neighbors and families and appliances… and not even noise-cancelling headphones can guarantee total silence. At least, not at my home with a house reconstruction going on to the west and the neighbor to the east – though a wonderful man in many ways – owning every gasoline-powered piece of lawn equipment ever made. His lawn is beautiful, though.

Now all writers are different. Some like lots of noise, claiming it is a stimulant, while others like pure silence as they say it frees their creativity. Depending on the time and our mood of the moment I daresay most of us fall somewhere in between.

Some writers swear by writing in different places – cafes, car parks, just about any place you can think of. Now when we have to be someplace besides our office, a writer can work almost anywhere, especially a writer under deadline. Have to take your child to ballet practice? Need to get the car worked on? Have a lunch hour at work? You can take a laptop or one of those keyboards that feeds  into your phone (I keep meaning to get one of these, just as soon as I get a phone which can handle it), or even a humble pen and paper, then make use of the time to up your word count.

Other writers believe in total silence – or as total as one can achieve short of moving to an uninhabited mountaintop in some third world country. Noise-cancelling headphones help, as sometimes does a white noise machine, but nothing can truly drown out the noise of the modern world.

As I usually do, I stand firmly in both camps. There are times I write happily in front of the blaring television while listening to The Husband tell me about his day, and other times I have on my headphones, my office drapes drawn and a sign on the door threatening a dire fate to anyone who disturbs me.

So what is the best way to write? I can only speak for myself, but as always my practice varies. If I had to choose just one atmosphere, it would be classical music (either full orchestra or piano only – no screechy strings, please) playing softly in the background, preferably of an emotion and tempo appropriate to whatever I was working on at the moment. After that, as pure a silence as could be achieved. Of course, I would – and have – made do with whatever had to be undergone at the moment.

By contrast, I have a friend – an excellent writer – who is addicted to writing in cafés. Now I admit there are advantages to writing in a café, foremost of all being to command endless cappuccinos by the mere raising of a hand! On the other hand, there is a constant swirl of people and babble of conversation, to say nothing of being the object of curiosity by the customers (“They’re real writers? And they’re working on books?”) for all as if we were some sort of exhibit in a raree show. I am no shrinking violet when it comes to being in the public eye – far from it – but not while I’m trying to concentrate on work.

However – being a fair individual and willing to experiment, I have joined my friend on occasion, and yes, despite being interrupted by spectators telling me about how they have always wanted to write a book, or have a sure-fire idea for a best seller, both broadly implying that I should stop and either teach or co-write with them (grrr) I managed to get a fair amount of writing done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really writing – just lots of typing that, on a cool-headed reading the next day, was barely one baby step away from garbage. I didn’t try to save any of it, but I did go put on some Chopin, close the drapes and the door and try to salvage the underlying idea.

By contrast, my friend actually wrote a short story that same afternoon, one when it was polished, she sold.

How boring life would be if we all worked exactly alike!

A New Year, A New Me?

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by Janis Patterson

Don’t worry – this isn’t going to be an evangelistic paean about how I’ve totally remade myself to claim a glorious and bounteous New Year and the rest of my life. That would be nice, though, but I’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work. For long, at least. I think my record is about two weeks.


No, I’m the same old curmudgeonly, opinionated, workaholic biddy I’ve always been. The only changes are that I am a year older and – for a blessed change – rested. From writing stuff, at least. I finished my 22 novel republishing blitz on 25 October. I was so tired (and cranky, I will admit) that The Husband insisted I take November and December off.
And that proved to be a good thing. I am indeed rested and the creative mind is starting to percolate again. I would like to say that my house is cleaner, but I don’t tell lies. Sadly, it probably never will be, as I totally lack the housekeeping gene… and I thought I’d never marry anyone who was as bad a housekeeper as I, but… A sterling man in every other way, but…


We spent the early part of December in Germany, redoing our favorite Christmas market tour, enjoying good German food and beer and a refreshingly enthusiastic attitude toward Christmas everywhere from the markets to the stores to the street decorations. And the people. Love the people.


It’s a good thing I had no other commitments, as since the third week of December I have been at war with Lufthansa airlines about their last-minute cancellation of the final leg of our inbound flight and the subsequent disappearance of our luggage. My bag was found – in the hands of a thief, no less – but The Husband’s is still among the missing. Not to go into details, Lufthansa has handled the thing very badly and withheld information we need if we are to go forward, information that none of the dozen or so of Lufthansa employees we talked to said we needed. Needless to say, it is going to get very ugly.


Back to writing. Aside from the Lufthansa unpleasantness it has been a lovely two months. Germany was – as always – beautiful and fun. My writing mind is unfolding and starting to bloom. I’ve contracted for two novellas – one a Regency romance for a ‘summer weddings’ anthology, the other a WWI mystery for an anthology centered on July 4th. The other novellas include the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWII and Viet Nam.


And that doesn’t address the two nearly-finished books of my own done for my own publishing company and a major new release that has to be stage-managed. I’m even considering releasing a compilation of my blog posts from years past. Plus, we’re off to Egypt again in a short time. This will be my 8th trip and this time I get to see Abu Simbel for the very first time! I’m so excited!


Sounds like I won’t be rested for very long.


A writer’s work is never done. But – it is a lot easier when you are rested both mentally and physically, even if that desirable state only lasts a short time. You have to let the well refill. A happy new year to all of you –

The End Is Nigh

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by Janis Patterson

For every beginning there is an ending… and conversely, for every ending there is a beginning… and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.


This year has been a landmark year for me – it’s been one of the lowest output years for me in well over a decade (only two books as opposed to the four or five I usually do) and yet I’ve been busier than I ever have.
In case you have been living under a rock and not heard about my republishing blitz I’m going to give you a quick précis…


During the covid crazies I got very lazy. The Husband was home – and even retired during this time – s0 we had things to do and my writing business came in a distant second to being with him. I knew that rights on previously published books were coming back to me, but being distracted by other things I just let the reversion letters pile up on my computer.


Until January of this year. Life was returning to a semblance of normal and I realized I wasn’t getting any younger (are any of us?) and if I wanted to get back into this writing thing I had to get busy, so a good start would be republishing those reverted books through my own company. A quick wander through my hard drive shocked me, because there were 26 (yes, TWENTY SIX) of the little beasties. Gulp.


A quick perusal decided me that for various reasons four of them were going permanently ‘under the bed,’ hopefully never to be seen again. That left 22 to be republished. As I am lazy, doing that could possibly take a couple of years, years which I might not have. As I was raised in advertising and journalism, the fact that deadlines are sacred is bred into my blood and bones. My father taught me that (to use his words) “There is only one excuse for you to miss a deadline, and that is death. Yours.”


So I set myself a deadline – I would release a book freshly edited, freshly formatted and most with new covers every other Wednesday until all were out, starting on January 15. MISTLETOE MAGIC, the last book, comes out October 25.
22 books released every other Wednesday, each on schedule, each reworked as promised and all without missing a single release day. (Actually, there were 24 released – one through one of my publishers and the other as an outlier which appeared suddenly through a set of circumstances too complex to go in to… neither of which I counted as part of the blitz.)


I’m exhausted. I would love to take a few weeks off away from the computer, but I have deadlines… one for a July 4th mystery anthology, one for my new Flora Melkiot book and one for a summer Regency romance anthology. Sigh. Even though we spend our days pretty much in the same room (the den) The Husband says I spend more time with the computer and my invisible friends than with him and lately he’s been right. I’ve taken my computer along on every trip we’ve made this year – and it saved my sometimes tenuous sanity the days we were holed up in a motel in Mississippi when he fell ill on our way home from NINC!


Anyway, the blitz is now over and the encroaching deadlines await. It doesn’t get any easier, people. It really doesn’t.

And now for some good news! EXERCISE IS MURDER is now available in audio from Audible! (The ebook is available from Amazon and will hopefully be available in paperback before too long… it is the first appearance of the redoubtable Flora Melkiot!)

The Magic Factor

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by Janis Patterson

There are many mysteries in this world, and many – as we all know – are in the writing game, not the least of which is the Best Seller. Now a dedicated media campaign, the work of many people, a LOT of money and the backing of a prestigious publisher can create a national best seller out of an unimaginably dull and occasionally pedestrian book. On a smaller, more human scale, in the self-publishing world the same pattern will hold, though with generally less rarified results. A lot of (usually) friends, some dedicated and probably expensive PR, and determined social media presence can elevate a piece of pure dreck to more than respectable sales. Everyone knows that.

What everyone doesn’t know – and what can’t be guaranteed – is the Magic Factor.

That is the unquantifiable something which no one can guarantee, cause or even predict which strikes at random and elevates an ordinary – or even less-than ordinary – book to stellar heights.

I just experienced this phenomenon and no matter how I have tried I simply cannot analyze why it has happened.

The book in question is a romance, a perfectly ordinary romance which was written (in some haste, I might add) for inclusion into an anthology many years ago and republished under my own imprint at least half-a-dozen years ago. Since then it just sort of lay there; I didn’t publicize it other than putting an excerpt on my website (which I do for all my books). It hasn’t sold a single copy in any format in at least two or perhaps three years.

Until about a month ago.

I was surprised but happy when a copy sold – in paperback, no less. When that number jumped to six, still in paperback, I was delighted. When in the course of about three weeks about thirty paperbacks (including a smattering of ebook versions and KU reads) were sold I was astonished. When it was selling more copies than any other of my books I was totally gobsmacked.

Why? And why this book, which while reasonably well-written and originally well-received but is still not one of my best or even favorite stories?

I don’t know. I like the book, but have no idea of why this sales surge is happening. (And it is still happening, believe it or not.) Perhaps a book club discovered it and wanted a shortish, pleasant, clean read? Perhaps some college writing class wanting a good example of how to write a genre novel? Or – horrors! – perhaps how NOT to write a genre novel? I really don’t care – it’s all subjective anyway, and I get my royalties no matter what.

Perhaps the best of all, the surge of interest has sparked an interest in my other (similar) stories, though none of them have taken off like this one has.

That’s what I mean by the Magic Factor. I had nothing to do with it, and the reasons are totally unknown, at least to me. Magic!

Now if we could just figure a way to bottle it…