My novels

Editing by the Author

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When I first started writing, I would write a couple of pages, then review and edit what I had written.  When I had completed a chapter, I would go back to review and edit that chapter.  When I finished the book, I would review and re-edit the entire book.  At each of these three stages, I found mistakes or text that I wasn’t happy with, and I made changes.  A professional editor would then take over, and finally, I would check what the editor had done.  (In most cases, the editor had done an excellent job correcting typos and syntax errors.)

My first four novels were what one might call ‘four dimensional’.  That is, they told a story about characters, events, places and times.  Most novels are four dimensional.

My fifth novel has two additional dimensions: a spiritual dimension and a philosophical dimension, and as I was writing the last few chapters, I began to realise that my editing of the entire novel would have to be far more rigorous.  I became concerned that some of the material in the earlier chapters would not fully support the spiritual and philosophical dimensions that I wanted the reader to understand.

So, now that I have finished writing the last chapter, I am going back to the beginning, and reviewing each chapter.  This review is much more rigorous than before.  I spot whole sections (one of more paragraphs) which were either not interesting enough to the reader, or did not support the spiritual or philosophical dimensions.  I delete or completely re-write those sections.  (I think it is easy for a writer to become ‘mesmerised by his/her own writing’ and get carried away in prose.)  I found, also, that I had to add small pieces of text to help clarify the spiritual and philosophical messages.

It is necessary in this fifth novel that the central character changes his identity and his values, but I noticed that what I had written before did not support the vulnerability of this character to the changes that come later.  So, I had to make subtle changes to his character.

In the second, more rigorous, review of each chapter, I was also sensitive to accuracy of time, place and characters.  (See my post on Accuracy.)

During this review, I tend to be merciless about what I would call ‘ordinary writing’.  That is, writing which lacks uniqueness and character.  For example, rather than write that a character ‘fell to the floor, sobbing’, I’ll write ‘she collapsed onto the floor, hiccoughing with sobs’.  Doesn’t the latter version better convey her desperation?

And of course, each time I review something I have written, I’ll find typos, awkward syntax and punctuation errors.  (That’s a never-ending battle!)

So I no longer trust my self to ‘Get It Right First Time’, as the quality gurus like to say.  For me ‘Getting It Right’ is the result of at least six re-reads and improvements, and some of the improvements can be pretty extensive!

Empathy

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In my post ‘Emotion’, I have touched already on the importance of a writer of fiction feeling the emotions of his characters.   This is a kind of follow-up on that post.

The other evening at about 6:30, my wife came home from her work.  I was in my office upstairs working away on my latest novel.  She came upstairs and put her head in the door.  “Why are you crying?” she asked.

“Henry’s son was just killed,” I said.  (Henry is the key character in my fifth novel.)

“Oh,” she said, “I thought something was wrong.”

In fact, something was very wrong: William, Henry’s son, for whom he had great admiration and fondness, had been killed.  For me, this felt like a tragedy.  One might ask, ‘Is it really necessary for a novelist to get so emotionally involved with his characters?’  Perhaps it is possible for a writer to maintain a level of detachment, but for me, that wouldn’t work.  One might also ask, ‘You knew that William was going to get killed – in fact, you plotted his killing – how can you be so sad when you kill him?’  First of all, I didn’t kill him.  I wrote about how he was killed fighting Somali pirates.  And secondly, fore knowledge of an event doesn’t necessarily protect us from an emotional response to the event itself.  For example, when you know that your daughter is going to get married, you may also know that you’ll be feeling a little weepy (as I did), but that slight anticipation doesn’t stifle the watery eyes when you start down the aisle.  At least it didn’t stifle the tears for me.

Emotion is one of the features of humanity which makes us so interesting, and separates us pretty definitively from the rest of the animal kingdom.  (As a dog lover, I knows that animals have feelings, but not the grand passions of their human masters.)  Emotion, or the lack of it, can go a long way to define our character and our values.

For me, Van Gogh was an artist who understood the power of emotion, and his canvasses reflect this understanding with their powerful brush strokes, brilliant colours and fluidity.  Just look at ‘Starry Night’:

Starry NightFor me, Van Gogh has captured the wonder we feel looking up at the night sky.  In a similar way, I believe that the novelist must try to capture the feelings of his or her characters.  And what better way to capture them than to feel them yourself.  Emotions are only real if you can feel them; if they are not felt, they are only synthetic.  To feel the emotions of a character, one must know him or her, and to know her, the writer must define her.  Then, one can begin the process of empathising: I am him, in this situation, how do I feel?  Angry?  How angry?  What’s unique about my anger?  If my anger is only a stereotype, it doesn’t define me as a person.  The writer not only has to empathise with his characters, he has to capture the feelings of the character in distinctive language.

Death

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My wife and I went to the States this past week to attend the funeral of a niece.  She was not someone with whom I have had much contact, but as the daughter of my brother-in-law, who was absolutely devastated, I felt we should go.  She was about the age of my children (40’s), and she died in a tragic skiing accident.  She was an avid and very good skier, skiing with the man she hoped to marry.  She had stopped on the slope to clean her goggles, and was struck from behind by an out-of-control skier.  She was wearing a helmet, but the impact was so great that it broke her neck and she died instantly.  The out-of-control skier was not injured.

Many of us have had our parents, friends and relatives die, but I feel that the death of one’s child, particularly so un-necessarily, is the ultimate tragedy.  Our children are the ones who are carrying into the future not only our genes, but our values, beliefs and aspirations.  The death of a child not only leaves us in deep mourning, it constricts us: heart, mind and soul.  And in this case, one cannot help but wonder what if.  What if her goggles didn’t get fogged?  What if she had been three feet to the right or the left?  What if the other skiier hadn’t been so stupidly careless?  What if her man had been standing directly behind her?  (He was standing beside her.)

Death features prominently in the writing of many novelists.  A death is often used to make a point, and often the point is that death is senseless, un-justifiable, un-reasonable.  Often, in real life, that is exactly the case.  And some writers go on to make the point that if death is senseless, there cannot be a loving God, because a loving God would never allow a senseless tragedy to happen to His people.  But, in my opinion, this argument overlooks an important point: it may look and feel senseless to us.  However, in an unknowable, cosmic context it may make sense.  Why is it unknowable?  Because if it were knowable, we would also know God, and if we really knew God we would not have free will.  Why no free will?  Can you imagine that anyone who really knew God, and therefore knew his plan for us, would actually do something that God didn’t like?  In other words, I believe that God’s gift of free will carries a price: we can’t know everything.

Looking back on my writing, death and its messages have been present in all my novels.  In Fishing in Foreign Seas, Jamie’s father develops incurable cancer.  He is terrified, but, gradually, he comes to terms with his life and the blessings of his sons and wife.  In Sin and Contrition, Gary, the ego-centric politician from a poor background, is approached by his long-absent father for money for a vital heart operation.  There is an argument, the two fail to agree, and the father dies.  Gary’s mother has dementia, but Gary leaves her care entirely to his sister.  Gary later regrets his behaviour.  Efraim’s Eye portrays the mind of a pathological terrorist: so committed to revenge that killing on the way to his grand attack is incidental.  In The Iranian Scorpion, the Iranian gallows casts its shadow over Robert and his father.  And in my fifth novel, Henry slides into deep depression after his exceptional son is killed in combat.  But in each case, there is some redemption, as, I think, there usually is in life.

 

Reviews: The Iranian Scorpion

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On this page I’ll post all reviews of The Iranian Scorpion:

Anyone familiar with the novels of William Peace will not be surprised that “The Iranian Scorpion” involves international intrigue while exploring deep personal questions and beliefs. In this case, we are once again in what we Americans lump together as the Middle East. Our protagonist, Robert Dawson, is an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency who, having spent too much of his young life on the Texas/Mexico border, opts to use his expertise to explore and expose the trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan through Iran to the US.

Robert Dawson is a capable, likable, thoughtful person. He not only has the remarkable capacity to pick up languages and dialects easily (alas, for the rest of us who cannot even carry a tune), he seems to have an innate empathy for different cultures and creeds. There are of course the usual bad guys, those people in power who merely wish to exploit others and enrich themselves, and there is all the tension and terror of dealing with such people and their torturous methods. But Peace has never been one dimensional in his treatment of his characters, Western or Eastern. Robert’s true foil is a man named David Dawson, his father, as cold and closed a human being as Robert is warm and open. But here again, the author allows the man to develop on his own terms

Although an American living in England, Peace seems perfectly comfortable writing about both the land and the people of Afghanistan and Iran. He obviously likes these people and you will, too. And he is always interesting and often fascinating, whether he is blithely taking us through the steps in refining heroin from opium, following the trail of drug smugglers, or enriching U-235 on the way to a bomb.

Peace has “balanced” some rather perfunctory sex in the book with a few somewhat pedantic scenes revolving around discussions of faith and religion. These latter themes, however, blend so effortlessly with our hero’s thoughtful nature and the everyday life of this Muslim world that we see in practice what we might object to in preach. And there is an intriguing lack of resolution in “The Iranian Scorpion,” just as there is in life. It sets one to thinking. But you’ll have to buy and read the book first, and bookreview.com highly recommends that you do just that.

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I very much enjoyed reading “The Iranian Scorpion” by William Peace. The story line was suspenseful and fast moving, with seamless plot lines that kept me guessing. Robert, a US government DEA agent, was stationed in Afghanistan to get a handle on and find a way to stop poppy growth and thereby limit the production of opium and heroin, to the dismay of the Scorpion, a heroin kingpin. His father, David, is also a government official. Their relationship goes through a transformation in the story and you will be on the edge of your seat as both their lives are jeopardized. Will they make it out alive? Which love interest will win each of their attention? You’ll have to read it to find out and you’ll gain a new appreciation for illegal border crossings in the bargain.

Just a few shocking bits but I still loved reading this story, and it was educational as well. It provides more than a little violence, a little raciness, neither unnecessarily graphic, but mostly intrigue and heart pounding excitement. Historical, governmental, and cultural details are featured in “The Iranian Scorpion”, giving me a new understanding of the countries of Afghanistan and Iran. Characters are likeable, complex, and believable in relation to one another. The interplay of Islam and Christianity in this novel provides a colorful tapestry for a backdrop as several characters’ stories are woven together. To top it off, lamb kebabs and flatbread are on the menu. I look forward to reading other books by William Peace.

Reviewed by Mary DeKok Blowers for Readers’ Favorite

The Iranian Scorpion

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My fourth novel (another thriller) has just been published.

 

 

In brief, this novel involves an undercover agent of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), who with the help of an attractive freelance journalist and a shadowy Taliban official learns the cultivation of the opium poppy in Afghanistan and how to convert opium to heroin.  He follows a heroin shipment into Iran and traces it to New York City where it has been sent by The Iranian Scorpion.  When a bust is made in New York City, The Scorpion orders the agent captured and executed.  Will the agent’s connections  including his father (a US Army general),  the journalist, a 15 year old Afghan boy and some Iranian dissidents be able to save him from execution?

The full synopsis follows: 

Robert Duval, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, volunteers for a reassignment after years of trying to stem the stream of drugs across   Grande.  He is sent toAfghanistan with a mission of developing a strategy to stifle the flow of drugs to Iran and on to the US.  Robert meets Kate Conway,  a freelance journalist in Kabul, and she introduces him to Vizier Ashraf, a shadowy figure in the Taliban, who also has a religious interest in reducing the cultivation of the opium poppy.  In preparation for the Afghan assignment, Robert has developed fluency in Pashto, and, at the urging of the vizier, he disguises himself as Abdullah, as a migrant peasant farmer.  In the village of Nad-e-Ali, in Helmand province, Robert finds work on Azizullah’s large poppy farm.  Under Azizullah’s direction, Robert learns how the poppy is cultivated and its liquid opium is harvested.

After the harvest, Robert, Azizullah and three other field hands take the opium cakes to the owner of a make-shift conversion ‘factory’.  There is a violent falling-out over price, and that night, Azizullah, Robert and the field hands raid the factory, killing the owner and his helpers.  Robert questions the owner’s fifteen-year-old son, Rustam, who knows the chemical conversion processes.  Rustam is taken captive; the chemicals and equipment of the ‘factory’ are hauled away to Nad-e-Ali.

A new ‘factory’ is established in Nad-e-Ali, and Rustam, chained to Robert, begins to convert the opium to white heroin.  Men from Rustam’s village attempt to retake the factory.  They are repulsed, but Rustam fears that his old neighbours will kill him for the shame he has brought on his village, if he returns to it.  As an inducement for Rustam to stay in Nad-e-Ali, Robert persuades Azizullah to find Rustam a wife.  Rustam is married to Padida, a twenty-three-year-old war widow.

General David Duval, Robert’s father, is frustrated with his assignment to Pentagon logistics, and at the urging of his young girlfriend, he accepts an assignment with the International Atomic Energy Agency.  In Tehran he joins an IAEA delegation, which is reviewing the Iranian nuclear program.  David meets ‘Lisa’, the secretive widow of an anti-government activist. ‘Lisa’ is well connected in the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, and is not averse to using her body to obtain evidence of the duplicity of the Iranian government.  She provides David with test data showing that an enrichment level of 42% U-235 has been reached, as well as the wiring diagram of a prototype nuclear weapon.

Azizullah, Robert and Rustam cross the fortified border into Zabol, in southeast Iran, with 15 kg of heroin to find a buyer.  They are able to sell it, but Rustam protests that they have failed to find the principal buyer: The Scorpion.  On a subsequent exploratory trip, Robert and Rustam find that The Scorpion is actually the provincial governor, and they make arrangements for the sale of 25 kg.  Azizullah joins his employees for the sale, which takes place in the governor’s palace in Zahedan, the provincial capital, and is attended by The Scorpion and General Khorhoushi, the commander of the Republican Guard in the province.

Robert is able to learn where the consignment of heroin has been shipped.  He reveals his true identity to Rustam, and persuades the boy to accompany him on a trip to Kerman and Bandar Abbas, where the destination and method of shipment of the heroin are discovered.  Robert advises his boss, James, at the DEA, of the destination: a carpet dealer in New York, who is the Scorpion’s cousin.

The Scorpion guesses that it was Robert who had his cousin arrested, and he orders General Khorhoushi to find the agent.  Robert is captured and imprisoned, but Rustam eludes capture.  Rustam uses Robert’s phone to advise Kate and James of Robert’s capture.  The Scorpion is concerned that if Robert is released, he will inform Tehran of the governor’s involvement in the drugs trade.  Robert is tried by a kangaroo court, found guilty of ‘espionage’ and is sentenced to death. Tehran officials, notified by the US government of The Scorpion’s drugs trafficking, demand that Robert be released to them at once.  The Scorpion sends Tehran a premature message informing them that Robert has been executed. 

David Duval is informed of his son’s execution, and decides to take vengeance.  ‘Lisa’ supplies him with a ‘sticky bomb’.  He travels to Zahedan, and attaches the bomb to what he thinks is the governor’s limousine.  He learns, instead, that he has killed General Khorhoushi.

(You’ll have to read the novel to learn how it ends.)

Reviews: Efraim’s Eye

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On this page, I’ll post all reviews of Efraim’s Eye:

“Efraim’s Eye” by William Peace is a thriller in which a very capable and determined terrorist is pitted against a very capable and determined financial consultant. Doesn’t really sound fair, does it? Until, of course, you think of the last banker you worked with and who won.

Early in the book Peace gives us an example of Western duplicity when the consultant, Paul Winthorpe, is duped by a charming and sophisticated woman for–of all things–money. Nor is being a terrorist a piece of cake. Efraim Al-Rashid is betrayed by both Taliban and Russian arms dealers as he puts his plot into action. There is a major difference in the two agendas, however, that goes beyond greed. The terrorist has suffered great personal loss; as a result, revenge is the dominating tenet in his interpretation of the Muslim faith. “An eye for an eye” and, in this case, the EYE of London.

Winthorpe’s goals are the more prosaic ideals of helping companies run effectively. He takes on a pro-bono assignment to examine the management of a Moroccan affiliate of an international charity based in London. Assisted by a young, Arabic-speaking, Israeli woman, he soon realizes that the entire situation requires either abandonment or complete overhauling. Of course, outside consultants often irritate existing company structures, especially if the CEO–as in this case–is embezzling most of the funds for terrorist activities.

Peace really seems to know Marrakech, Tbilisi, and yes, account books like the back of his hand. There are lots of little throwaway sentences that bring the book to life and infuse it with authenticity. It is unfortunate, therefore, that in what is probably an attempt to give more literary depth to his novel, he interjects a May/December romance and numerous discursions into Christian, Jewish, and Muslim beliefs and practices. It is not that these digressions are exactly boring, but they might have found more resonance in another setting.

It should also be mentioned that the book is–fittingly–very well edited, with hardly a typo. Bookreview.com considers it an excellent thriller, but suggests that you read it after you’ve had a ride on the EYE.

BookReview.com

I very happily rate Efraim’s Eye by Bill Peace a Great Read. The first book review had me a bit worried, but I did not find the spontaneous love affair that bloomed in Morocco a distraction. These people are very real and interesting. Nor did I find the explanations of the various religions involved a problem. I was deeply impressed by the author’s apparent first hand knowledge of places I will in likelihood never get to in this lifetime. Including Morocco and Afghanistan, Georgia, Pakistan etc. I also found in this book a rational and even handed construction of the Koran (I still balk at spelling it the new way).
This in not your ordinary page turner replete with endless chase scenes and terrifying moments piled up on top of each other. What makes you want to keep reading this book is the skillful characterization of ALL the protagonists. Efraim himself is a multi-faceted bad guy. I even found myself almost liking the poor guy when he was agonized by the problem of clean vs. unclean women and the enormous drive provided from his groin area.
I cannot think of a single character, down to the loyal driver, Mohammed, who is not dealt with in depth. The women who work in the Moroccan charity are both very much alive and sympathetic. The part-time, and very young assistant bookkeeper is superbly drawn and he’s only on scene for a few pages. Paul’s (the hero’s) family are a nice mix of fun and intelligence.
The mechanics of making a very complicated terrorist bomb (or rather, six of them) are sketched with what seems to be the product of deep and keen research–at least I am hoping this is not first hand knowledge.
I don’t want to get too much into this lovely read because I would encourage to get the book yourself. I read mine in the Kindle version and was amazed at the few typos–though there are a handful, and they do not disrupt the narrative.
Peter C Parsons
Some writers produce a great first book, but subsequent books are mediocre. Some sustain their proficiency from book to book. And some seem to get even better with each book written. Mr. Peace’s first two books were both good reads, but his third, Efraim’s Eye is his best so far. It is a fast paced page turner revolving around a terrorist plot to destroy the London Eye.
While doing pro-bono work for a London charity checking on one of its subsidiaries, Paul Winthrop along with Naomi, a consultant with the charity, discover a terrorist plot to destroy the London Eye. Each one of the characters is developed in depth and with a complexity that makes them believable. No cardboard cutouts here. We follow two storylines as the book develops. One is with the developing relationship between Paul, a widower but in a relationship back in London, and Naomi, a well traveled, intelligent and younger Israeli. The other deals with the organization of the plot from obtaining the necessary weapons and equipment to choosing the personnel to be involved.
As we follow the terrorist Yusef as he travels to several countries to complete the plans, one cannot help but be impressed with Mr. Peace’s attention to detail. Whether describing weapons or the intricacies of an audit or the geography of a city, his information is so well researched and written that one is reminded of Tom Clancy in his early books.
Mr. Peace appears to have an interest in religion and in the spiritual aspects that guide and motivate individuals. This was a thread in his previous book as he explored facets of Christianity. In this book, Mr. Peace is able to explore the beliefs of Islam and the teachings of the Koran. He is never judgmental and gives his reader much to ponder.
I look forward to the next book by this talented writer.
“Kitty” Book Lover
William, congratulations!  There is quite a difference between reading a manuscript and holding a book in one’s hand.
Efraim’s Eye is a first rate thriller. It will have a wide audience. It is tightly plotted – no loose ends – the sex is just right- in  other words, very believable, and the settings are interesting – even London – and the incompetence of the Police!!
They were warned beforehand, in detail, where the explosive charges were going to be placed – they had sharpshooters stationed, and they didn’t shoot the perp – it was the civilian, admittedly ex SAS, who foiled the villain!!!  Poor old Scotland Yard!  A good read and I am now going to bed, sad to have come to the end.  I am a good boy, like your  hero Paul, but that doesn’t prevent me from dreaming about Naomi.  Well done.
     Peter S.  (Peter S. is a retired recruitment executive.  He is quite direct; his comment on a different manuscript: “It’s boring”.)

“Efraim’s Eye” by William Peace is about two Iraqi half-brothers, Yusuf and Efraim, who are set to destroy the London Eye, an 800- passenger Ferris wheel, as a personal vendetta against the British. They plan to accomplish this by utilizing funds from the Morocco Chapter of the Global Youth Enterprise, GYE, a charity founded by the Duke of Suffolk which provides low cost loans to young entrepreneurs who have a great business idea but lack the financial requirements.

The story begins when Paul becomes a member of the charity in London and realizes that there are problems every time they send someone to Morocco to conduct an audit. At the same time, we learn that Yusuf is the CEO of the charity in Morocco as Efraim begins to plan the London Eye strike. As a financial consultant, Paul is sent to Morocco to investigate along with Naomi, a multilingual Israeli, who is the Director of Operations for GYE.  Upon the discovery of accounting irregularities with the management of the money, the chase for proof of corruption begins.

Peace did an excellent job alternating between Efraim’s whereabouts and actions and Paul and Naomi’s investigation and romance.  He was able to portray them simultaneously while developing and maintaining a flow that was easy to follow. His characters were real and interesting to the point that the suspense was built in his character development with action following towards the end. My favorite part was Paul and Naomi’s relationship and interaction, as he paired a conservative and well set in his ways 60-year-old man with a free spirited younger woman. Their fun interaction woven in the midst of the suspense made this a fun read.

Definitely a page turner, I found “Efraim’ Eye” by William Peace very difficult to put down. I recommend this book to all who love International, terrorism thrillers. “Efraim’s Eye” is a fascinating, and entertaining thriller!

Reader’s Views (Shortlisted for the prize in general fiction)

Efraim’s Eye

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Efraim's Eye

My third novel, Efraim’s Eye, has now been published and is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Briefly, it is about a lone wolf terrorist who has a fanatical hatred of the British, and who is financed by his half-brother.  Efraim intends to destroy the London Eye and kill the eight hundred passengers.  Standing in the terrorist’s way are a middle-aged British financial consultant and a beautiful Israeli charity worker.

A (nearly) full synopsis is as follows:

Efraim has designed a plan to sever the supporting cables of the London Eye, using shaped charges, causing the Eye to fall over into the River Thames.  All 800 passengers will be killed or drowned in their capsules.

But first, he must call on his half-brother to provide the funds with which he will buy the ingredients for the shaped charges.  Having obtained the money, he travels to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya, where he obtains the RDX high explosive, the polymer binder, and he has the casings manufactured.  He kills two Taliban who try to steal from him, and a Russian agent who tries to entrap him.  He visits prostitutes and agonises over the Qur’an’s proscription of ‘unclean women’.

Efraim’s half-brother, Yusuf, is chief executive of the Moroccan chapter of the British charity, Global Youth Enterprise.  GYE provides loans and mentors to young entrepreneurs who have a business idea, but no funding.  The CEO of the British GYE suspects that all is not well in his Moroccan chapter, and he engages Paul, a senior financial consultant, on a pro-bono basis, to assess the Moroccan chapter.

Paul is a well-to-do, widower in his late fifties.  He has worked in large practices, has joined Charitable Consultants LLP., and now has his own practice in the City.

Paul is joined in Marrakesh by Naomi, the operations director of the parent GYE.  An Israeli by birth, in her mid-thirties, and beautiful, she speaks seven languages, including Hebrew, Arabic and English.  In their week-long assessment of the Moroccan GYE, they find much that is wrong, including lack of financial and operating procedures, lax board governance, and rumours of fraud and embezzlement.  But they can’t find proof of illegality.  Yusuf’s evasiveness and hostility frustrate them at every turn.  Efraim appears threateningly, and his malevolence reminds Naomi of events in her childhood.  She draws close to Paul and they become lovers. 

Reportedly, Efraim is a fiery, fundamentalist imam at a minor mosque, and secretly, Paul and Naomi attend Friday prayers.  Paul records Efraim’s talk and Naomi confirms its venomous intent.

On his return to England, Paul informs Sarah, his divorcee lady friend, of his affair with Naomi, and Sarah leaves him.  On hearing Paul’s report, the Accreditation Board of British GYE decides that the books and bank accounts of Moroccan GYE should be properly audited, and Paul is sent back to Marrakesh to perform the audit.  A careful inspection of the bank statements reveals that fraud has been committed, but they lack the evidence of embezzlement until Naomi finds it.  Paul and Naomi secretly hear Efraim speak again; he gives clues that his target is the Eye. Just before fleeing to England, Naomi is abducted and severely beaten by Efraim.

Paul succeeds in convincing Scotland Yard of the seriousness of the threat, and a thorough plan of prevention is set in motion.  The attack is expected on Sunday.  Paul decides that he and Naomi should visit the Eye on Saturday.  They find Efraim hurriedly laying out the shaped charges. 

(You’ll have to read the book to discover the conclusion.)

Time Line

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In many cases, when writing fiction, a writer does not have to be concerned, particularly, about the sequence of events.  One simply has to tell the story in time order, and all will be well.  Sometimes an author will want to interrupt the sequence of events.  For example, a flash-back can be inserted later in the story, and as long as the reader understands that the events refer to an earlier point in time, and they make sense  in that context, it should be fine.  Even a flash-forward into the future is possible.  Fishing in Foreign Seas begins with a prologue which is set it the future, and in it, Elena, the purported author and the daughter of the key characters in the book explains how she came to write the story, much of which is linked to the quite recent past.  The novel ends with an epilogue in which Elena tells the reader what happened to her parents and siblings after the main story concludes.

My two thrillers which will be published soon did not present me with a time line problem.  In each case the story unfolds largely in time sequence.  In Efraim’s Eye, the scene shifts back and forth between Efraim’s activities in preparing the explosives, and the other two (good guy) characters, Paul and Naomi, who will discover his planned attack.  The two streams run parallel and converge at the end.  Efraim has two dreams which act as flash-backs and help the reader understand his character and what motivates him.

The Iranian Scorpion has a somewhat similar structure, which  focuses primarily on Robert’s experiences in Afghanistan and Iran as he learns the means by which opium is converted to heroin and how it is exported through Iran to the US.  Toward the end of the story, a parallel stream opens in which Robert’s father, a retired US Army general, is assigned as a UN weapons inspector in Iran, and becomes involved in attempt to avenge his son’s apparent execution by the Iranians.

For these two novels, it was not difficult to keep the events in a credible sequence.

Apart from the prologue and epilogue, Fishing in Foreign Seas follows a sequential time line.  There are two aspects of the story that required attention to the sequence of events.  First, there are linkages to real events: the  first Gulf War in which Jamie was injured and decorated, and the evolution of the US power generation industry at the  beginning of this century.  Secondly, there is the growth of Jamie’s and Caterina’s children during the course of the story.  One has to be careful that a child who can be no more than six is not behaving like a ten-year-old.

Sin & Contrition had some of  the same challenges at Fishing in Foreign Seas: linkages to real events, and keeping the behaviour of the various children consistent with their ages.  In terms of linkages to real events, for example, LaMarr, as a Marine recruit, fought in Vietnam, and his  subsequent experiences in war zones have to match reality.  There is also the complication in Sin & Contrition that the novel is not structured on a simple time-sequenced basis.  Each chapter deals with a particular sin, and characters move in an out of the story depending on whether or not they are involved in a  that particular sin.  In a broad sense,  however, the characters age from 13 to 62 as the novel  progresses.

The novel that I am currently working on is the (fictional) autobiography of a man who believes he hears the voices of surrogates for God and the devil.  Gradually, he develops a philosophy about life as he experiences great joy and terrible grief.  For the first time, I’ve had to write down a sequential time line as part of my ‘blue print’ for the novel.  This blue print lists key milestones so that even when an event is reported out of sequence (as it might be when one is recalling his life’s events) the events – taken in their overall context – make sense.  Keeping the ages of the characters consistent, tying in real external events, and maintaining order in what might otherwise seem chaotic is my latest challenge.

 

Best First Lines from Novels

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American Book Review has recently published the following list of 100 ‘Best First Lines from Novels’.  ABR “specializes in reviews of frequently neglected published works of fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism from small, regional, university, ethnic, avant-garde, and women’s presses. . . . it offers a unique model for reviewing books, one edited by writers themselves in an effort to reproduce the interest they took in their peers’ works of fiction, poetry, and criticism.”

My reaction is that this is quite an interesting list.  I don’t parfticularly like long first lines ( like numbers 19, 23, 46, 56. 70, 84, 87, 91. 95) because I feel that a first line should be punchy.  If it’s not punchy, it may leave the  reader with the impression that the novel will be long-winded and complex.

In my opinion, the first line has several vital functions.  It should set the stage for what is to follow.  It should introduce an idea, a character or a scene, and it should catch the reader’s attention, motivating her/him to read more.

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

12. You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. —Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767)

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. —Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.” —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. —John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)

35. It was like so, but wasn’t. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. —William Gaddis, J R (1975)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

38. All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

39. They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

40. For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

44. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. —Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation.  —Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. —Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. —David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988)

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
—George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

59. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? —Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. —W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge (1944)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. —Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. —G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

65. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

66. “To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.” —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

69. If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. —Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

70. Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. —Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. —GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. —Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. —Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

76. “Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. —Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. —Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. —William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. —J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. “When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. —John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

85. 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 Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.  —James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled. —Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. —Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. —Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl’s underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. —John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

93. Psychics can see the color of time it’s blue. —Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. —Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. —Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. —Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (1988)

97. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. —Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. —David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. —Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

The first lines from my novels are:

“When my father retired as President, Ceemans America last year, he and my mother moved to Sicily.”  (Fishing in Foreign Seas)

‘”It’s hard to tell’, LaMarr thought, ‘what angle I should fire the shot.” (Sin & Contrition)

“Efraim did not consider himself to be a terrorist.” (Efraim’s Eye)

““So, I remind you of your father’s girlfriend?” Kate inquired with one eyebrow arched provocatively.”  (The Iranian Scorpion – soon to be published)

With benefit of hindsight, I think that the first line of Fishing in Foreign Seas is lacking in ‘grab the reader attention’.

What are your thoughts on any of the above first lines?

Plot

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Gustav Freytag was a German novelist and playwright who lived 1816 to 1895.  None of his novels or plays is highly thought of today, except that in 1863 he wrote Die Technik des Dramas (The Technique of Play Writing) in which he explained a system for dramatic structure, which has come to be known as Freytag’s Pyramid.  According to Freytag, there are five acts in a drama: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.  These can be diagrammed as a horizontal line, a rising line reaching a peak, and falling line and a horizontal line.

Exposition, the first horizontal line, introduces the main characters and their situation.  In Rising Action, represented by the rising line,  the protagonist begins to understand his goal and moves toward it.  The Climax, represented by the peak, is the turning point in the story – the point where a key decision is made.  Falling Action, which is represented by the falling line,  is the stage when the ‘villain has the upper hand’ and things go wrong.  Denouement, which corresponds to the final horizontal line, is the stage when the villain and the protagonist reach an understanding and where the loose ends are tied up.

While I wasn’t familiar with this model at the time, it is fair to say that Fishing in Foreign Seas follows this model.  In the Exposition stage, Jamie, the promising young American, and Caterina, the beautiful daughter of an Italian wine-making family meet, fall in love and are married.  In Rising Action, Jamie takes a job with Ceemans, a manufacturer of heavy electrical equipment, and is promoted to higher levels of responsibility while moving with his young family from Boston to Philadelphia to Atlanta.  Toward the end of this stage he is presented with the opportunity to win a $300 million order, and we watch him overcome obstacles to have the order within reach.  The climax occurs when he loses the order, and is tempted into an affair with his secretary.  Falling Action deals with the outcomes of these decisions, and Denouement is the final chapter, told from the perspective of his children.

The Freytag Pyramid does not fit Sin & Contrition at first glance, because this novel is structured so that each chapter deals with a particular sin committed by one of more of the six characters.  But instead of one pyramid for the entire book, there are a series of pyramids, one for each chapter.  In each chapter, the character and his or her situation is presented.  Then comes the temptation which reaches a climax when the sin is committed.  The results of the sin become apparent, and the character reaches a state of equilibrium.  What is different about Sin & Contrition is that there is a series of chapters at the end of the novel in which I interview each of the characters, and we discuss their feelings and thoughts about the sin(s) they have committed.  So, in this sense some on the Denouement takes place in those interviews.

We may not have been familiar with Freytag’s Pyramid but it is a useful way of considering how a plot is structured.  It seems to me that it is often an accurate picture of the major events in our lives.