Hilary Sares Icon

Why is it so important? Because you have only a few seconds to get a reader’s attention in a bookstore or online. Writing a historical? Beware the overly lyrical opener. A lonely bird warbled in a glade, its piercing notes a cry of longing inchoate. The dark-shrouded sky was suffused with dreamy pink as the gentle sun peeked shyly over the rugged mountains that scratched the low-hanging belly of the clouds above … Um, better get the rugged hero into the glade and skip the mountains. Skip the sound effects and stage lighting too. Try not to use words like inchoate. Scratched a low-hanging belly? Reminds me of a pregnant alley cat. And it goes without saying that clouds will be above it all. Can the proliferating adjectives while you’re at it and get to the action right away. Writing a scary contemporary thriller? If you start off with a prologue that begins the dream was always the same, in which the heroine or hero foresees most of the book, thus guaranteeing a browsing reader will put it back on the bookstore shelf, I will personally come to your house and shoot you. Dreams are never the same, but that sentence sure as hell is, word for word. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen it as the first line of mysteries, thrillers, romantic suspense, paranormals, and more.

Get to the point. It’s easy to fall in love with your own lovely, lovely words but readers won’t. They want to be entertained. Unless you are writing fiction that is so hopelessly “literary” no one will ever read it, you are writing entertainment. Here’s what readers want…

Emotion! Power! Blood! Sex! Death! Cheap thrills! Big laughs! Brave dogs! Plump tits! Huge dicks! Hidden treasure! Weird aliens! Justice with no damn blindfold! Popular and successful writers deal in extremes and they serve them up fast. Never forget that. Yes, an occasional bestselling book meanders. Mostly not, though. Some writers seem to be born knowing how to keep up a breakneck pace, many more learn by doing. Some never learn and languish in the slush pile. However, slow pace can be a common problem with midlist writers in mid-career. Once the first two or three books are done and published, complacency can set in, and a going-through-the-motions tone is the result. Getting your butt in the chair to write is only part of staying the course in your career. But don’t just sit there. The Hounds of Plot should be snapping at your butt and keeping you on the edge of your seat, and snapping at the hero and heroine’s butts too. By the way, the wise writer always bestows a beautiful manly muscular butt on the hero, of course, for reasons that have nothing to do with pace—and you can give him long, strong legs—and dimples–and, um, other stuff. Just in case the pace slows down.