A Little Twilight Hate for Your Weekend

To be clear: I've never read the books. I'm sure they're horrible. I persist in my belief that the books are royal garbage based solely on the opening to Twilight:

"My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka."

THIS is not good writing. As a matter of fact, this is certifiably BAD writing. The first paragraph of any book - especially the first part of a series that needs to grip its audience - should be COMPELLING. I, as a skeptical reader, need to know why I'm going to spend several hours reading THIS book instead of watching Arrested Development again.

What's compelling in this first paragraph? Four sentences, and not ONE of them indicating that our as-yet nameless protagonist is capable of doing a guldarned thing.

Where's the hook? Where's the carrot that's going to motivate me to continue to the second paragraph, or turn the page? Should I, as a reader, see in Stephanie Meyer's description of a cloudless sky an omen of danger? What's that on the horizon? A cloud? Merciful Hemingway, I hope it's not a Nimbus!

Or maybe it's our protagonist's outfit that's supposed to draw me in. Okay, really, the outfit's the only clue I've got to help figure out who the CRAP this speaker's supposed to be. "Sleeveless, white eyelet lace..." Probably a girl.

Although...


Of course, a good opening is going to raise questions. And Stephanie Meyer’s opening comes CLOSE. The girl's outfit is a farewell gesture - I guess that means SOMETHING. But that little bit of almost-engaging detail is immediately buried under a completely pointless observation about some froofy parka. Why do we care?

A good opening rases questions that will motivate us to read on, not frustrate us with a lack of detail. Some information WILL be withheld, but what we’re given will ground us at least a little bit in SOME kind of context. As a point of comparison, let me show you the opening lines to other books. GOOD books.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Already we see what’s coming – we’re going to read about an unhappy family, one that’s unique in its unhappiness. Already our brains are firing up, ready to take pleasure in the misfortune of others (as brains are generally prone to do).

“You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly – Tom's Aunt Polly, she is – and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.” – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

I don’t know about you, but this first paragraph really makes me LIKE our speaker. He’s definitely the tiniest bit illiterate, but there’s a bit of charm in his dialect. Okay, TECHNICALLY, he didn’t tell us his name, but the whole frickin’ book’s named after him, so I’m willing to let it slide (It’s Jim Crow, by the way).

See, Mr. Twain’s already given us a REAL reason to read on. If we’ve never read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we’re liable to ask, “Who are Aunt Polly and Widow Douglas? What are these ‘stretchers’ Huck’s talking about? Why does this boy talk so funny?” And if we HAVE read Tom Sawyer, we’re likely thinking to ourselves, “Ah, boy! What’s that loveable rapscallion Huck going to do to tick off Aunt Polly and the Widow THIS time?”

Here’s a line from a Nobel Prize winner:

“For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.” – Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee

Bet you’re curious what comes next, aren’t you? Some of you are probably wondering who “he” is, but most people are curious about how he solved the “problem of sex.” The nonchalant treatment of a somewhat touchy subject GRIPS you, right from the start.

From there, of course, the book goes on to address rape (both statutory and the garden variety) and impotence. So, yeah, good Sunday afternoon reading. Right after church.

Now here’s a single opening sentence that successfully hooked readers for SEVEN lengthy books:

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J. K. Rowling

Rowling’s not really the best writer, but this opening sentence does a lot of things right: it vividly paints a portrait of the characters addressed with a minimal use of words. While the word “normal” doesn’t generally mean much, the author’s voice more than compensates with the use of the phrase “thank you very much.” We can easily imagine that these Dursley people say that type of thing regularly. They’re your normal Jones-keeper-uppers, perfectly content to keep the amount of “extraordinary” in their lives at a minimum.

So what have we learned? Good writers draw you in to their stories immediately with tasty little details, powerful characterizations, and maybe just a little shock. Bad writers write books that get turned into movies starring THIS guy:

who, ironically enough, actually looks more than a little like THIS guy:

Yeah, I WENT there.