James Patterson, is the first author to achieve ten million ebook sales, and holder the Guinness record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers of any author is leading an online writing class (www.masterclass.com). As a student of that class, Karen MacNeill-Swartz was one of the lucky few to get the opening lines of her sequel-in-development critiqued by the reknowned author. Of the thousands of opening lines submitted in the contest, Patterson commented on only 20… see the excerpted video (apologies for the quality) at around 3 minutes in! It should be noted that the contest was based on social media following in facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Dreaming Is Free, and the sequel, Waking Reality are not exactly James Patterson’s cup of tea, but his impression of a potential opening line for Waking was “Not bad.” He critiqued a range of opening lines for different genres, but was most favorable to those aligned with mystery. His favorite opening line was “A heavy hand pounded on the door; friends don’t knock.”
The two opening lines submitted from Waking Reality were:
A – For such a big hotel, no one was coming or going. He wondered for a moment if Sarah had taken every living soul with her when she left.
B – No autograph seekers. No photographers. No friends seeking favors. No women hoping to catch his eye. Geoff’s audience consisted of one hotel valet trying to look dignified at his stand.
It was interesting to see which line he chose to read, as well as the context of where the line took him. As many of this author’s readers mentioned, the opening line is too much about Geoff and Patterson unknowingly confirmed this! Of the two lines, preference was split 50/50 with readers who were asked for feedback prior to the contest submission. We shall see what the final opening lines will be!
Of course, now there is great curiosity to know what Patterson would have thought of the Dreaming Is Free opening lines:
How could she still be sleeping and still know that someone was in the house?
Perhaps that was a touch more his style!!