first paragraphs

Last week literary agent Nathan Bransford staged his third annual "submit the first paragraph" of your novel contest.  I just started reading his blog a few months ago, so I hadn't seen the two prior contests.

By the time I stumbled on round 3, it was already in full swing, with something like 250 paragraphs submitted.  And that was only a few hours after the contest was launched.  Paragraphs were submitted through the Comments form, and Nathan's blog usually gets around 100-200 comments per entry.  So I was surprised at the enthusiastic response.

Shows how little I know about these things.  By the time the contest was over, he got 2,600 entries.

I wasn't going to bother entering since I don't gravitate toward writing contests.  And I knew SWAIN'S LOCK doesn't have a memorable or hooky opening paragraph.  It starts with a prologue about an attempted rape, and the characters are throwaway figures who set the plot in motion.  The opening paragraph just situates the characters and the action.  So I didn't see much point in entering it.

Then I thought, hey, what about that 50-page novella thing I wrote in 1985 and haven't pulled out a drawer in 20 years or so?  I dug it out and read the first paragraph, which consisted of two sentences.  While lots of novels begin with one- or two-sentence paragraphs, and for good reason, it's hard for a paragraph that short to make much of an impression in a contest.  (Evidently I wasn't alone in thinking this.  Some brave contestants entered 1 or 2-sentence paragraphs, but many more chose to submit paragraphs that consumed most or all of a page, and that I'm pretty sure would never be submitted that way as part of a query.)  So they did what I did -- bent the rules by combining several paragraphs into one.

Here's the opening of my 1985 novella:

Stensin stepped sideways, out of the sand flak.  In a broken ring the Malay boys watched, talking and laughing softly in the darkness.
"Habis."
"Tidak bisa."
This turtle wasn't getting there.  Fins sweeping wet sand with the ferocity of pinball flippers.  The sand flew, the seven-foot body swung, but the foot-high sand lip prevailed.  Stensin felt a twinge.  An hour's tireless flippering and only ten feet up the beach.  The beast rested briefly.  Stensin stared at the great dark mass silhouetted dimly on the sand, and its form dissolved away from him.  From the corners of his eyes it emerged again.  Stensin lit a cigarette as the flippering exploded.

Rather than submitting just the first two lines (which I still like, but don't really paint enough of a picture), I cut out the dialogue and jammed the rest of it together...

Stensin stepped sideways, out of the sand flak. In a broken ring the Malay boys watched, talking and laughing softly in the darkness.  This turtle wasn't getting there. Fins sweeping wet sand with the ferocity of pinball flippers. The sand flew, the seven-foot body swung, but the foot-high sand lip prevailed. Stensin felt a twinge. An hour's tireless flippering and only ten feet up the beach. The beast rested briefly. Stensin stared at the great dark mass silhouetted dimly on the sand, and its form dissolved away from him. From the corners of his eyes it emerged again. Stensin lit a cigarette as the flippering exploded.

... and (almost) convinced myself that it was a legitimate one-paragraph entry.  But I didn't like it much without the dialogue.  It doesn't do as well at placing Stensin in Malaysia.  And it made me feel like I was cheating a little.  At least I wasn't alone in that.

I submitted my entry on Monday, and by Wednesday nearly 2,000 paragraphs had been submitted.  I read most of the entries and really started to get into it.  There were lots of good ones, a few excellent ones, and plenty of crappy ones.  Like nothing else I've read, Nathan's contest really gave me a glimpse of what it must be like to be an agent who receives hundreds of queries a week.  I can see how you learn to reject in a heartbeat when something isn't right.  If you couldn't do that, you'd have no chance at keeping your head above the tide.

So back to my willingness to cheat.  I've been working on my plot outline for BURYING ZIMMERMAN on and off for a year or so.  I haven't written a word of the text.  But the contest was getting me excited about first paragraphs, and after reading so many others, I wanted to take a stab at an opening for BZ.  I've been planning from the start to write it in first-person, present-tense, with past-tense flashbacks.  I noted with interest last month that Per Petterson does this in OUT STEALING HORSES, and there are some similarities between what he did and what I want to do.

But the contest rules clearly limit entries to one per person, and I'd already entered.  Hey, in my mind I'd already broken the rules.  Why not keep going?  So I wrote an opening paragraph for BZ (a true paragraph this time) and submitted it as my dog Chase.  Here it is:

Even in the dark, my brother’s gravestone looks much older now, like it almost belongs here with the other rotting stones. When I kneel before it the flask in my coat pocket taps my ankle like a faithful dog. Without thinking I pull it out for a shot; it’s an old friend and will come with me tonight. I’m barely acquainted with the pistol in my other pocket, but it’s coming too. We’re going to meet Henry Zimmerman, who hasn’t seen me in twenty-two years and thinks I’m someone else. He’ll finally have to explain why he and Drew left without me that night, left me waiting by the canal before Henry sent my brother in alone to confront a killer in the woods.

It wasn't chosen either, and I don't know whether it was considered good, bad, or mediocre by anyone who might have read it.  But it works for me, for now anyway, and has kick-started me into writing a synopsis, so that feels something like a win.