Wordsmithing: Dark and stormy long and grimey hooks

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

DARK AND STORMY? MINE'S MORE GREY

I had Bulwer-Lytton moment this afternoon.

Can you imagine "It was a dark and stormy night" ever being a new way to hook a reader?

I read the winners of the 2011 Lyttle Lytton Competition the clever and the cringey.

My poetically crafted sentence is colouring the scene until every shade blends to confounded grey:

Rain teared the cobbles until the sodden ground oozed; the wind, like the keening wails of sudden widows, howled through deserted streets and lightning peaked in bleaching flashes across the rooftops’ bare-boned spars, each hunched against the grieving force, when the tempest swelled and the army floundered far from home. (50words)

CAN YOU WRITE THE WORST OPENING SENTENCE FOR A NOVEL?

"Tick is not following tock," said Maurice the clockmaker as he licked at a sooty spring in the back of the watch.

Ugh! Of course, it could just be me - germs, things with moving parts and mouths ;)

RETURN: YA Paranormal Romance

I was running late. But, it was nothing I couldn’t make up with a bit of effort. I shook my head. Confident and happy? I smiled. Increasing my stride, I pushed until the muscles in my legs burned. I kept up the pace even when the hill grew steeper.

Magpie Lane was hardly wider than a ribbon that edged the woods but that didn’t stop traffic using it to get to the motorway quicker. Large trucks and fast cars loved Magpie Lane. They sent vibrations running through me rising from the soles of my trainers. I felt the disturbance in the ground, even before the air pressure tried to knock me off balance. I hunched my shoulders as the cab hauling a container spat stones up at me.

Jogging on the spot, at the entrance to woodland, I ached to leave the road and go inside. My Mum was probably still asleep but I could hear her you-never-know-what might-be-in-there lecture buzzing on repeat inside my head. I should run safe. Not even I would argue that running through the woods on my own was the best definition of safe but I wanted to run-wild and the woodland offered me that. This early, I should be safe from axe murderers or perverts in the trees and besides, I was fast.

I jogged down the slope into the trees. From two paces in, I felt different. Freer. It felt so right. Running in the woods did great things for my style. Avoiding the roots and dodging branches forced my stride longer, I had to step higher. The woodland, The Weald, was only a sliver of ancient woodland that the developers forgot to build on but it felt like it could have been anywhere. Everywhere. At any time. The oaks and beech trees dominated the space and the skinny, silver-birches squeezed up beside them. I laughed. For a second, the woods reminded me of school and I needed to run a lot faster.

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Tuesday, 5 July 2011

DARK AND STORMY? MINE'S MORE GREY