We’ve talked so much about the reader, but you can’t forget that the opening line is important to the writer, too. To the person who’s actually boots-on-the-ground. Because it’s not just the reader’s way in, it’s the writer’s way in also, and you’ve got to find a doorway that fits us both. I think that’s why my books tend to begin as first sentences — I’ll write that opening sentence first, and when I get it right I’ll start to think I really have something.
Stephen King
Something popular genre fiction does very well is series. Essentially it’s a number of books featuring a cast of regular characters. It’s for those characters that we keeping coming back for more and more and more…
My second installation of “Fun with First Lines” is all about “Serial Love”
One of my first bouts of “serial sickness” was with Nancy Drew books when I was about 8. They were terribly written really, but they were completely addictive. Maybe it was something about the familiar and the new all wrapped into one. It’s comforting and challenging at the same time…
Pithy 