Insulting the Publisher
October 23rd 2006 11:01
It was a dark and stormy night. . .
This is a clear cut case of publishing suicide for a writer. You would be surprised how many would be authors use this or similar opening lines to their novel.
If you need a storm at the beginning of your story you will need to find a way to put it across that is not cliché.
Two examples:
Sometimes, out of the dark of a moon-less and stormy night comes a tale of woe and misery so horrible you just have to sit down and laugh. This is such a story. From; The Man With No Ears
The storm had raged across seven thousand leagues of the Great Waste. It bullied the dunes as they ran before the wind. What little vegetation there had been, was now gone. No life remained in the wake of the storm. Only the dunes that rolled with the storm were left. From; The Helengon Chronicles, Invasion
If you can’t get past that “Dark and Stormy Night” your great opus is doomed to the slush pile.
Clichés are the bane of writers, we have all fallen prey to these words of self destruction. Even the character whose defining trait is the use of clichés is becoming cliché.
Best to just avoid them where ever possible.
So don’t be a sitting duck, put your nose to the grindstone, keep a stiff upper lip and knock them dead.
This is a clear cut case of publishing suicide for a writer. You would be surprised how many would be authors use this or similar opening lines to their novel.
If you need a storm at the beginning of your story you will need to find a way to put it across that is not cliché.
Two examples:
Sometimes, out of the dark of a moon-less and stormy night comes a tale of woe and misery so horrible you just have to sit down and laugh. This is such a story. From; The Man With No Ears
The storm had raged across seven thousand leagues of the Great Waste. It bullied the dunes as they ran before the wind. What little vegetation there had been, was now gone. No life remained in the wake of the storm. Only the dunes that rolled with the storm were left. From; The Helengon Chronicles, Invasion
If you can’t get past that “Dark and Stormy Night” your great opus is doomed to the slush pile.
Clichés are the bane of writers, we have all fallen prey to these words of self destruction. Even the character whose defining trait is the use of clichés is becoming cliché.
Best to just avoid them where ever possible.
So don’t be a sitting duck, put your nose to the grindstone, keep a stiff upper lip and knock them dead.
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