Wading and Plunking

There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish. No kidding. I love it. For me there's nothing like being out on a lake in a little fishing boat with my husband. I never go without him, because, you see, we have this agreement. He doesn't iron his own shirts, and I don't bait my own hook. It's a wonderful agreement. Except that I've done a lot more ironing than he's done baiting in the past couple of years. But he told me just the other day he's going to Montana in June for business, and that he's taking me with him so that after the business we can spend a couple of days fishing. There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish in Montana. I can hardly wait.

So Bonnie's post on Monday about "hook" vs. "invite" made me chuckle, especially when I went to the TBR shelf of my bookcase and found that Hooked by Les Edgerton was the very next writer's book I planned to read. It was right there beside Truby's book, The Anatomy of Story, which I stuffed back on the shelf after wading my way through the first two chapters a few months ago, underlining everything in sight, while simultaneously scratching my head. Like Katy, I do plan to read it. Really. I do. And soon.

But back to Hooked. It's a nice little easy-to-read, easy-to-follow book on beginnings, and nothing but. Edgerton writes, "...a story is a movement from stability to instability to a new stability." I like that. It makes sense to me, like simple math. And then he says, "What is different about today's story structure is that the first part of the equation--stability--has been shortened considerably and, in many cases, completely omitted ... Many times that period of stability is only implied." Well, he's the expert, but personally, I'd rather wade into a story than be plunked into it, as though I'd been pushed off the dock way out there in the deep end of the lake. There are genres where implied stability is perfectly suited, but the type of fiction I write and mostly love to read has more of a wade-in feel than a plunked-in feel.

~

Here are some of my favorite examples of wading in:

~

"Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning." The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

~

"Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still---'Folks,' he just said, 'we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look.' I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake." What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg.

~

"Lying on her daughter's bed, Dottie Puckett heard sounds as if they were magnified a hundred times that day. She heard the usual things you'd expect to hear--an airplane, distant traffic, the air conditioning turning on and off. And she heard other things, too--a high-pitched motorized whine from somewhere nearby, the chatter of a squirrel outside the window, a tree branch brushing against the gutter, the coursing sound of water through a pipe, her own breathing. Sounds told you a lot. Today they told her that people and things were going about their normal business in spite of what had happened here at this house only three weeks ago. Though everybody thought she was mild-mannered and good-natured, Dottie knew that what she felt right now was closer to anger than anything else. Not that she was angry at the planes and cars and water pipes, for goodness' sake, but why is it, she thought, that I have to go on breathing in and out when Bonita is lying in a box a mile down the road?" By the Light of a Thousand Stars, Jamie Langston Turner.

~

"Likely it was only two dreams crisscrossing paths, one snagging on the other in passing, but somehow the face that walked by me this morning, not four feet away, got tangled up with one from my past. The way-back and way-faraway, all quiet and almost forgotten, got yanked up and placed alongside today, where two minutes before I'd have told you I was: in Boston. At the Public Garden. Not a stone's throw from Beacon Hill, where I live and work, and pay as much for my own private parking space as folks back home do for a decent slab ranch and enough acres for the dogs to tree themselves something other than city-soft squirrel ... And I swear time backstitched on itself, and at that very moment, I was barefoot--not with black pumps stowed under a park bench, but the right kind of barefoot. The kind of barefoot that went with the truck bed of a pickup. I was back with the wind standing my ponytail straight up over my head, the Blue Hole just around the next curve. And I was tracing my cheek where a kiss had just landed." Blue Hole Back Home, Joy Jordan Lake.

~

Contrast these with James Scott Bell's thrilling suspense novel, Try Dying: "On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector ... Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV ... placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired." Plunked. Most definitely. With the former stability not even implied. And exactly how a fast-paced suspense novel should begin.

~

But back to fishing. I love to drop my line in the water and begin to entice; to wait as the bait lands, then sinks to just the right depth; to tug ever-so-slightly two or three times while the worm works its magic; to let it sink a bit more, then tug again. And then ... to feel the hit, to sink the hook, and reel in. I love it. Here is the writing equivalent to my fishing method from the opening to my WIP. "Grief, it is said, is a sea that ebbs and flows. Comes in waves that roll over the shore, then recede in a dizzying, lose-your-footing-in-the-sand sensation, leaving you unsettled but standing. Well. Whoever said that never felt the tsunami effect, the drowning, sucking, tidal wave of grief. I know, because I haven't come up for air in five days short of a year. A suffocating, black hole of a year, each day collapsing in on itself like sand too long unwatered. Eighty six hundred, forty hours; five hundred eighteen thousand, four hundred minutes; thirty one million, one hundred four thousand seconds of a smothering nightmare I can't wake up from. A long slow terror, like free-falling in the dark with no cord to pull. I don't plan to be here for the anniversary five days from now."

~

I understand completely where Bonnie's coming from when she says, "But 'hook?' If I recall, it ends badly for the fish. I prefer 'invite.' Semantics, right?" Right. She'll be happy to know that, often, for the fish I catch it's not an unhappy ending, because I typically catch and release. Especially in Montana. And that's what I like to do with my readers. Catch and release--but hopefully not to swim completely away. I want them to stay in the pond with me, so the next time I cast in, I might draw them back.

~

And speaking of lines, I laughed and laughed over Dina Sleiman's comment on Katy's post Wednesday. "I got my nose pierced last year, and it's so freeing because no one expects me to be normal anymore." I love it. It would make a great opening line for a novel. And, Dina, for that line I'd like to send you one of my novels. Just email me with your address and tell me which one you'd prefer.
~

Everyone else, leave a comment telling me what you think the "anniversary" of my novel deals with and your name will go into a drawing for a copy of Lying on Sunday or Every Good & Perfect Gift, winner's choice. Be specific with your guess. And creative.