TheNextBigWriter Premium → meaning for 'strongest start'?
To a degree, I understand it is something one knows when one sees it, but I also see that SS winners are usually in the Y/A fantasy/scifi so Pow! Wow! of adolescent gadzookery fits whereas the slow build in mystery's and lit-fic's can never be realistically SS until and unless the judges see that there are necessarily different sorts of SS for different genres and especially out-of-genre literature.
I would think a thriller might also qualify, depending on how much the opening promises.
I would think a thriller might also qualify, depending on how much the opening promises.
Yes, if you mean a sort of thriller that is not 'action' but rather like mystery or horror -- those have slow, build-up starts, and correctly so. IOW: does the meaning of SS in the SS contest necessarily exclude authors and their preferred genres?
Run a contest out of the Literary Fiction Group with Sol's help, funds and qualified judges. How about six chapters of "Strongest Slow Burn Contest", wherein the authors try to ignite readers with locations, characters and threaded plots until a conflagration sets a reader's imagination on fire with utter fascination, profound amazement and intellectual perspicacity.
Run a contest out of the Literary Fiction Group with Sol's help, funds and qualified judges. How about six chapters of "Strongest Slow Burn Contest", wherein the authors try to ignite readers with locations, characters and threaded plots until a conflagration sets a reader's imagination on fire with utter fascination, profound amazement and intellectual perspicacity.
LOL!
"The Slowest Burn Contest"
Sounds like there might need to be some antibiotics involved at some point.
Bimmy
Run a contest out of the Literary Fiction Group with Sol's help, funds and qualified judges. How about six chapters of "Strongest Slow Burn Contest", wherein the authors try to ignite readers with locations, characters and threaded plots until a conflagration sets a reader's imagination on fire with utter fascination, profound amazement and intellectual perspicacity.
That isn't quite what I mean in that I am not trying to define SS in whatever terms one wants to define it. I am asking: is there meaning officially defined for the specific TNBW contest for which there is quite a valuable prize and by which I guess 4/5 winners happen to be Y/A sci-fi/fantasy.
To a degree, I understand it is something one knows when one sees it, but I also see that SS winners are usually in the Y/A fantasy/scifi so Pow! Wow! of adolescent gadzookery fits whereas the slow build in mystery's and lit-fic's can never be realistically SS until and unless the judges see that there are necessarily different sorts of SS for different genres and especially out-of-genre literature.
I'd always considered that the 'strength' element refered to the sheer quality of the prose and it’s delivery irrespective of genre; and the 'start' to be an evaluation based upon the reviewers overall impression of the opening three chapters.
I supposed that the competition represents a random agent or publisher’s eye view of a submitted manuscript. Do they still ask for the first three?
This subjectivity subject cropped up in the early days of the Strongest Start competition on the old site. A lively group of erudite author members back then; I recall a thread where examples from literature were posted to illustrate ‘the hook’. Some examples were from the ‘slow burn’ approach to a novel where the ‘electricity’ is written in. Where phraseology, word choice and the delivery of words prove to be an enthralling and compelling introduction (rather than fast paced action sequences or “adolescent gadzookery”).
There were some excellent examples of literary ‘devices’ that plant a hook without resorting to action sequences.
There was also a very interesting forum thread that discussed in great depth the elusive ‘the X-Factor’ element within a piece of writing.
something one knows when one sees it.
I miss those discussion forums from the old site along the thousands of hours of knowledge and opinion that was poured into them. There were many gems.
For an uneducated would-be writer like myself, the mentoring and advice that was dispensed by the experienced, educated and enlightened authors back then, was pure gold.
The new site is not the same and I wonder if my legacy connotation of the ‘Strongest Start Competition still stands?
This subjectivity subject cropped up in the early days of the Strongest Start competition on the old site.
I was taught old-style that a strong novel (as against a sort of meandering story-telling) revealed the major characters, even if obliquely, story arc, except obviously the concluding bits, and theme in the first 10%. This is hard to judge, though, without hindsight (i.e., a rule for the writer, not the reader). However, it is a completely objective standard. Genre fiction like massive world-building fantasy with seemingly a cast of thousands and mystery (in which the perp cannot be revealed in the beginning and the victim may be irrelevant as a character) are exceptions, and it still may be my prejudice is with 'literary fiction' that used to be called serious fiction for which this rule applies.
I supposed that the competition represents a random agent or publisher’s eye view of a submitted manuscript. Do they still ask for the first three?
Doubleday/Knopf is the rare publisher who will allege they consider unsolicited manuscripts and they ask for the first 50 pp. which is 10% of a 500 pp. novel. There are literary agents who ask for 3-5 pp. I think, for them both, quality is not so considered as much as marketability. I think even considerations of 'hook' and such is not a 'marketability' issue.
FYI re Doubleday/Knopf accepting unsolicited manuscripts - it doesn't. Agents only, dudes. It's on their website.
Some examples were from the ‘slow burn’ approach to a novel where the ‘electricity’ is written in.
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.
The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song."
Having tantalized us, Corra, will you please tell us what that's from?
What is a strong start? What does "Most Valuable Player" mean? Valuable in what way?
A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. It can make the reader curious about what is to follow. It can be the voice of a first-person narrator that makes the reader wonder what sort of story this character will tell. (Think of the opening of Huckleberry Finn, or of the best of the hard-boiled first-person detective stories.)
Dorothy Sayers does not begin with a knife and a corpse. Neither does Agatha Christie, nor John Dickson Carr. I'm thinking right now of the opening chapter of Ellery Queen's Double Double, which sets up a strong (strongly-drawn) character, a strong reaction, and a strong character axis, and thereby creates multiple levels of jeopardy that unfold through the story.
The very literary P. D. James generally begins with her detective character. So do many 'lesser' genre writers.
Wilkie Collins begins The Woman in White with the description of a woman (not the woman in white). There's a subtext that runs opposite the written word, and the reader feels it personally rather than judging it.
So do we measure 'strong' by how lurid it is, or the horrors it creates, or by the wonders it promises, or by how well it convinces the reader to invest time and caring in the story that follows?
FYI re Doubleday/Knopf accepting unsolicited manuscripts - it doesn't. Agents only, dudes. It's on their website.
Still trying to prove Darwin wrong, are you?
http://knopfdoubleday.com/contact-us/
FOR KNOPF ONLY — Knopf usually only accepts manuscripts submitted by an agent. There is an excellent listing of literary agents in a book called The Writer’s Market, which you should be able to find in a local bookstore, from an online retailer, or a library. You can also visit their Web site at www.writersdigest.com for more information. If you still want to give us a try, though, even with that caveat, please send a sample of your work, 25-50 pages, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to THE EDITORS / Knopf / 1745 Broadway / New York, NY 10019. It will be reviewed with other unsolicited work. Allow approximately 9 months for a response. Please also be aware that we are unable to accept manuscripts submitted via email.
Having tantalized us, Corra, will you please tell us what that's from?
... making a series of contradictory assertions as if wisdom (or something).
Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.
I like farce; you go girl!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...
So you think that an ironic statement on the conflict of social conditions in ancien régime vs. revolution is the same as blathering on speech which has no direction and yet harmonizes? The first is ironic truth, and the second is farcical falsity.
Having tantalized us, Corra, will you please tell us what that's from?
It is an excerpt from Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
The story made Time's 2005 100-best novels published since 1923 http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/1 … 0-novels/.
Memphis Trace
A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. It can make the reader curious about what is to follow. It can be the voice of a first-person narrator that makes the reader wonder what sort of story this character will tell. (Think of the opening of Huckleberry Finn, or of the best of the hard-boiled first-person detective stories.)
All of which leads to subjective judgement. The hardest part of review/comment on TNBW for a reader who has particular tastes--and I am not sure there are any readers who don't--is fairly judge something of a genre which is uninteresting to him. The best author of X genre cannot make an X-genre hater like his stuff unless his "strongest start" is to fool the reader into thinking it is not in X genre, only later to disappoint.
Or supposing it was my plan to have the first chapter something which is poorly (or, at best, merely competently) written to fool the reader. Well, what a bad plan that is for any literary agent or contest holder to judge, and yet in an objective sense that plan is the strongest start for what the book is.
Having tantalized us, Corra, will you please tell us what that's from?
It's the opening to one of my favorite novels: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. 
If "strongest start" is measured solely by the effect of the first chapters on the reader, it must be subjectives, since a given chapter will affect different readers differently. Even if it were possible to point to the development of character and theme, you can't tell how subsequent chapters will modify that development or develop a latent theme.
jack the knife wrote:FYI re Doubleday/Knopf accepting unsolicited manuscripts - it doesn't. Agents only, dudes. It's on their website.
Still trying to prove Darwin wrong, are you?
http://knopfdoubleday.com/contact-us/
FOR KNOPF ONLY — Knopf usually only accepts manuscripts submitted by an agent. There is an excellent listing of literary agents in a book called The Writer’s Market, which you should be able to find in a local bookstore, from an online retailer, or a library. You can also visit their Web site at www.writersdigest.com for more information. If you still want to give us a try, though, even with that caveat, please send a sample of your work, 25-50 pages, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to THE EDITORS / Knopf / 1745 Broadway / New York, NY 10019. It will be reviewed with other unsolicited work. Allow approximately 9 months for a response. Please also be aware that we are unable to accept manuscripts submitted via email.
That's an ad for The Writer's Market.
njc wrote:A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. ...
All of which leads to subjective judgement. The hardest part of review/comment on TNBW for a reader who has particular tastes--and I am not sure there are any readers who don't--is fairly judge something of a genre which is uninteresting to him. The best author of X genre cannot make an X-genre hater like his stuff unless his "strongest start" is to fool the reader into thinking it is not in X genre, only later to disappoint.
I disagree.
I'll start by way of analogy. There are many foods and seasonings which I do not like. My tolerance for vinegar is low, for instance, and I find avacado repulsive or worse. But I've found that a really good cook####chef can turn these horribles into something I will enjoy, by subduing the worst and making what remains complement the other ingredients in the dish.
It is possible for a work to transcend its genre. It is possible for a work to avoid the genre's excesses and use what remains as part of a larger whole. To take extreme examples, compare Tolkien with Craig Shaw Gardener. Both write 'fantasy', but Gardener writes humorous camp. Morals tomorrow, comedy tonight! For a more up-to-date example, Dave Freer's Tom is glorious camp. If it's not your thing, fine. Not everybody can taste the difference between Nathan's Famous and Hot Dog Johnny's. (Both are good, and if you're near Hackettstown NJ, so is Johnny's, on US 46 in Butzville.) And not everyone likes hot dogs. Enjoy your omlette, sir. But I'm sure that if a true cordon bleu chef ever stuffed seasoned meat into a sausage casing and called it a frankfurter you would be wise to try it.
AJ Reid has a story on this site that she styles a Romance (modern meaning). It's also a period mystery/adventure. I've been pounding her on the ROMANCE!!! excesses, principally on the puppy-piled participles smothering the subjects and predicates, and I think she's now got a story that can be enjoyed by ROMANCE!!! readers and non-ROMANCE!!! partisans alike. It's not Ellery Queen, but I've read far weaker mysteries published by major houses.
njc wrote:Having tantalized us, Corra, will you please tell us what that's from?
It's the opening to one of my favorite novels: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
I wrote a paper in college on the this book...and talked about how the book used clothing as a symbolic representation of the character's growth...and a reflection of her personal power.
It is a book that is seemingly simple but isn't really simple at all.
Sounds like an interesting paper. I did a twenty-minute presentation on Zora Neale Hurston a couple semesters ago. I mostly discussed her short stories and her reaction to the push in Harlem to write from a political viewpoint. She wanted to simply write. I read the opening above aloud at my seminar yesterday, and we discussed it as a class. Still one of my favorite openings ever.
It is a book that is seemingly simple but isn't really simple at all.
I just love her writing. It's so poetic and vocal. I read that late in her life, after she was a nationally-known author, she needed work, and the only position she could get was maid. So she took it. One day the woman who'd hired her was reading The Saturday Evening Post and saw a story by "her girl" right there in the paper. She called Hurston into the room and had the first actual conversation they'd ever had together. Hurston was amused, noting that the woman hadn't bothered to ask anything about her when she hired her. She had no idea Hurston had several novels and a Masters in Anthropology under her belt. She only saw a maid. Hurston just shrugged that off and said life was too short to get upset about it. She knew her own value. I love that: her spirit is all over her work.
*It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song. *
For me, this is pure gold. Hurston personifies the words that come from these people so that the words grow larger than the speakers: they become the slaves freed of their chains and charge forward as one entity in the harmony of violent and sudden freedom. My goodness, that is thematically powerful.
The characters are flawed and authentic. There is a vocal quality to the writing that echoes like spoken word touched with music. If I were a judge in The Strongest Start Contest, I wouldn't exclude Hurston's opening from the running because it doesn't begin with a car chase or other such excitement. I'd be enthralled with the distinct and sultry voice.
I hope you're well, Bunny. x
Charles_F_Bell wrote:jack the knife wrote:FYI re Doubleday/Knopf accepting unsolicited manuscripts - it doesn't. Agents only, dudes. It's on their website.
Still trying to prove Darwin wrong, are you?
http://knopfdoubleday.com/contact-us/
FOR KNOPF ONLY — Knopf usually only accepts manuscripts submitted by an agent. There is an excellent listing of literary agents in a book called The Writer’s Market, which you should be able to find in a local bookstore, from an online retailer, or a library. You can also visit their Web site at www.writersdigest.com for more information. If you still want to give us a try, though, even with that caveat, please send a sample of your work, 25-50 pages, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to THE EDITORS / Knopf / 1745 Broadway / New York, NY 10019. It will be reviewed with other unsolicited work. Allow approximately 9 months for a response. Please also be aware that we are unable to accept manuscripts submitted via email.
That's an ad for The Writer's Market.
That's a statement on the website of the Alfred A. Knopf division of Doubleday where they will accept unsolicited manuscripts directly from the author of 10% or so of his work.
cite from Wikipedia on Alfred Knopf:
Knopf (1892-1984) had little enthusiasm for most of the changes that took place in the publishing industry during his lifetime. "Too many books are published, and they are overpriced," he told The Saturday Review. These are things "about which all publishers agree, and about which no publisher does anything." The most fundamental change he noted was the increased importance of the editor. "In the early days, things were quite simple. The books came in; we published them as written... A publisher was regarded—and so, in turn, was the writer—as a pro. A writer's job was to write a book and give it to you." And he remarked to Shenker: "I guess business became more complicated and publishers less literate. It ceased to be the fact that publishers publish and authors write. Today authors submit manuscripts and editors write books." The editor is now hired largely to acquire books, "and if he can't get good books, he usually takes what he can get--books that are not so good. And then he sometimes wrecks himself trying to make a silk purse out of what can never become anything but a sow's ear."
Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. ...
All of which leads to subjective judgement. The hardest part of review/comment on TNBW for a reader who has particular tastes--and I am not sure there are any readers who don't--is fairly judge something of a genre which is uninteresting to him. The best author of X genre cannot make an X-genre hater like his stuff unless his "strongest start" is to fool the reader into thinking it is not in X genre, only later to disappoint.
It is possible for a work to transcend its genre. It is possible for a work to avoid the genre's excesses and use what remains as part of a larger whole. To take extreme examples, compare Tolkien with Craig Shaw Gardener. Both write 'fantasy', but Gardener writes humorous camp. Morals tomorrow, comedy tonight! For a more up-to-date example, Dave Freer's Tom is glorious camp. If it's not your thing, fine. Not everybody can taste the difference between Nathan's Famous and Hot Dog Johnny's. (Both are good, and if you're near Hackettstown NJ, so is Johnny's, on US 46 in Butzville.) And not everyone likes hot dogs. Enjoy your omlette, sir. But I'm sure that if a true cordon bleu chef ever stuffed seasoned meat into a sausage casing and called it a frankfurter you would be wise to try it.
AJ Reid has a story on this site that she styles a Romance (modern meaning). It's also a period mystery/adventure. I've been pounding her on the ROMANCE!!! excesses, principally on the puppy-piled participles smothering the subjects and predicates, and I think she's now got a story that can be enjoyed by ROMANCE!!! readers and non-ROMANCE!!! partisans alike. It's not Ellery Queen, but I've read far weaker mysteries published by major houses.
You are confused on the meaning of genre. It is a predictor of the story arc and to a lesser extent the sorts of characters and thematic content: sci-fi has a story based on fantasy of what science (to date) has given us in purported facts and theory, well-drawn heros and villains, and some-to-much thematic content; fantasy, ditto, except no scientific (fact-based) content. Romance contains relationship and romantic love between two people, characters less drawn between good and evil, and little or no thematic content.
There is no genre style only perhaps a style of writing that is typical of authors within a genre. So that if Janet Reid diverges in style from what a typical writer of Romance commits to (usually for no particular reason) or sometimes sticks to (also for no particular reason) does not mean she is or is not writing Romance, and on he subject of the strongest start: she draws a strong line of distinction on how her Romance story and characters conform to the Romance genre, and not. That, to my mind, is an objective meaning to SS. I think generally Romance writers on TNBW do a better job at SS: where's this going in plot;. what sort characters will there be; will the reader be much bothered by thematic content?
'Literary Fiction' writers have a harder time at SS because both story arc and character-set is nuanced and not direct and the reader is told he will be bothered by strong thematic content. Moveover, style is content, especially to the degree the writing resembles post-modernist.
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