Write Novel S First Line To Guarantee Sales

Write Novel's First Line To Guarantee Sales

Start your writing with conflict if you want to guarantee sales, grab an agent or publisher, get paid a big advance. Your protagonist wants something and your antagonist wants to block it. If you want to be the publisher’s star-of-the-month, just hand out a strong dose of conflict right up front. Bold like. Then, they’re wrapped up in your story and it’s too late for them to escape. Trust me, readers, agents and publishers are going to consider writing with a strong dose of conflict as good fortune for their company. Readers will not want to put it down. The big boys just might pat you on the head and pay you a six-figure advance.

As conflict is so essential to good writing, whether it’s fiction, or nonfiction, children’s books or memoir, it will aid your attention-getting cause. I suggest you start practicing the art of writing conflict right now for your openings. Read the examples and write your own:

· James walked in ready to crash and that’s when he saw the monster. (Antagonist wants to take protagonist's calm time away)

· When I walked in, Emily had on my favorite blouse I was going to wear tonight. She stood there trying to apologize for tearing it.(Antagonist has blocked protagonist from wearing her favorite blouse tonight.)

· Jimmy worked ten hours at ten dollars an hour, and now John was saying he was worthless, he wasn’t going to pay. (John wants to take Jimmy’s earning away).

The sentences are off the top of my head and I don’t consider them profound or anything. But remember, my job is to make all of the big, foreign sounding things simple. My sentences clearly show characters in conflict. You can “feel” the tension. Your protagonist wants something and your antagonist wants to take it away. Your antagonist may not even be a person. It may be a rock against the door, keeping your protagonist from escaping the bad guy.

In my novel, The Mayor’s Wife Wore Sapphires, the mayor’s young wife wants to change the image of an inner city by making it the Black Camelot; her antagonists want to destroy the incubator idea that could make that happen.

It is conflict that grabs the reader’s attention. Eighty percent of all readers continue to read because of conflict. If there is no conflict, the story lies flat on the page, it falls apart and loses the reader’s interest. It’s yawning-kind-of dull. When conflict is present, readers perk up and wade through bad syntax, misspelled words, structure flaws, and bland dialogue to find out how the conflict ends. I’m not suggesting that you neglect any part of the writing craft, though. It’s just that conflict is one of the strongest elements of good writing, and all too often we lose the reader’s attention because we neglect that writing tool.

So, when you want to grab an editor, an agent, or a publisher’s favor, just allow them to feast on gripping conflict from the very first line and see your story rises through the slush pile to increased sales.

In the Mayor’s Wife Wore Sapphires, the story opens with two unknown characters, whispering in what seems like a clandestine place. The host balls the newspaper in rage and throws it on the dark wood table. We see that it states: Council Upset Rumored. Now the guest thrust his head out of the shadows and says that “In my country, his kind disappears without a trace.” He wants to take out the mayor; his opposition wants to fix the situation before the council meeting.

In The End Justifies The Means, the protagonist, Jalen, is trying to sleep; his mother and father are having a violent argument. He wants them to stop it; they get louder.

In the Color Purple, Celie’s baby is happy for giving birth to her baby; the antagonist, her father, is taking the baby to give her away. She is screaming, “No!” The father is already gone.

Agents and publishers are trained to recognize conflict, and they look for it. So take advantage of that now. Write conflict in your first line for practice.

THE END

BONUS : Write Queen Says I Need Your Help

I have been writing articles and blogs lately, not knowing whether you, the reader, are pleased with what you read, or even if I’m even writing about what you would like to read about.

Therein lies my problem and why I need your help. My reason for writing is not to please me, but to satisfy your need for good reading. I’m happy no matter what I write because I like to write. To know my readers are happy with my writing is worth money in the bank to me. (It better be since I don’t get paid for doing it)

I am going to first tell you where you can read my writing. I post them on http://www.justarticles.com, http://www.exinearticles.com, and http://www.articlecity.com and http://www.articlesgoaround.com and I recently started a blog and it is located at http://www.fredabd.hwyblogs.com., then press on my account on the left.

I’d like to know who you are and what you do so that I can better serve you.

What are your hobbies? What kind of work do you do? Do you like what you do? If the right opportunity came along, would you change what you do? Husbands, does your wife work outside the home? Would you like to bring her home without getting in a financial bind?

Are you married? Do you have a family still at home? Is your family grown and out on their own? Do you have grandchildren?

What are your fears and concerns about work, money, the government, politics, and/or the market place?

In other words, I want to know what you think. What and who you are. I also need your picture, with or without your spouse, new or not so new – who will know?

One thing I will not get involved in and won’t acknowledge is anything to do with religion (I hope you have that but if you don’t you have a problem that I can’t or won’t solve for you), or hateful attitudes (I can take criticism better than most) but keep your hateful attitudes to yourself.

You can write to me at gloryb2u@fredadouglas.com. Rest assured I don’t outsource any of my work, and if you want an individual answer I will try to do that, but this request is to get material
for futurearticles. Dear Abby I’m not.