Unrevised by Stephen Graham Jones

[Marky Lazer]

I think this is the place to post...

Anyway, I an essay by Stephen Graham Jones where he mentioned:

Take a novel, say, and note how that first paragraph, that first scene, maybe even that first chapter, it sings, it gleams, it sets a standard which, if the rest of the novel could rise to meet it, or just keep up, man, that book, it would be a bulletproof thing. But nearly every time, that level of quality, that shine, that attention to words or loyalty to story or clarity of vision or whatever, it slackens and wobbles and wanes, until you've got a squid-ending.

No matter whether this is right or wrong. I stopped reading there to ask myself what a squid-ending really is. I didn't know. Luckily it was explained:

...until you've got a squid-ending: a big cloud of ink standing in for what might have been, what the writer was almost able to grab, hold out for you to see.

Besides being hilarious, it's also true, I guess. How often did you read the perfect first paragraph and it went to rubbish slowly getting into the story?

Anyway, here is the whole essay to read: http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/workshops/resource/sgjessay2.php

 

[flynx]

It's interesting but suggests to me that a book with a fantastic beginning started out as exactly that; a beginning, rather than something plotted, characterised and above all edited.

Come to think of it, it sounds like the way I write.