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Terry Carroll Newspaper Column
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- 2008-11-25 Why do readers seem to know more?
- 2011-10-05 Starting Again
- 2009-08-23 - Rewriting a manuscript
- 2009-02-04 Why Ross is out of favour
- 2008-06-15 A wonderful book
- 2008-05-15 A tough job
- Rewrite Man
- 2008-12-21 Location, location
- 2008-10-16 Second printing
- First Lines
- Little Changes with Big Impact
- How did they know?
- Oh, Niki, you're so fine
- Keep it short, and sweeter
- An intended consequence
- What if it all stinks?
- Working without an agent
- 48,710 words
- 37,047 words
- Staying at it - 2008-01-16
- Writing a new book - 2007-12-30
- MacDonald vs. McDonald - 2007-12-15
- Being seen in Toronto - 2007-09-27
- Where ideas come from - 2007-08-17
- Starting over - 2007-08-14
- Writing like Elmore? - 2007-08-01
- The future of crime writing? - 2007-07-15
- Is Body Contact subverting a tradition? - 2007-06-15
- Do writers have a life? - 2007-06-12
- Begin with an ending in mind - 2007-06-01
First Lines
by Terry Carroll
James Crumley, who recently died, is credited with one of the best opening lines in hardboiled fiction.
From The Last Good Kiss:
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
Crumley claimed it took him eight years to write that line.
It may have taken him eight years to polish the sentence.
The claim about eight years brings to mind a mystery I'm sure I'll die without solving: Of all the lines in a 65,000-word novel, why is the first one the toughest?