The Importance of the Opening Line: Part 1 of 4

Patrick and Marcus talk about their appearance at TusCon Science Fiction Convention. They talk about what makes a person a professional vs amateur. They dive in to the value of the title versus the first line. In contrast, they talk about last lines and how the last line and be just as important as the first.

Ed Note- Marcus mentions Tucson Festival of Books, but means TusCon. 

Things and people that get mentioned:

My Identity as a Stereotypical Side Character by Marcus S. Campbell: brickcaveclick.com/z1uqftj

Corporate Boiler Plate Vinegar by Patrick Hare: brickcaveclick.com/bm3b79m

About Author Patrick Hare

A performance poet for more than twenty years, Patrick Hare has always redefined the ability of poetry to be a weapon of humor, using a sardonic scalpel in his language and theme choices to un-apologetically reveal the areas of our lives we’d all rather not see.

Patrick has performed nationally, including several National Poetry Slams. Learn more at https://brickcaveclick.com/f6lvdvq

About Author Marcus Campbell

Marcus Sterling Campbell is a poet and film enthusiast from Phoenix, Arizona. Graduating from Mesa Community College, he received a high distinction in Creative Writing, along with degrees in Journalism and General Studies. He is a Vortex Award winner and has placed in several writing contests within the Mesa community. Marcus sweats when he writes and while growing his Magic collection. His work can be found scattered across the web or @marcus_s_campbell on social media. Learn more at: http://www.marcusscampbell.com/about.html

About Brick Cave Media®

The Brick Cave Podcast is ©2024 Brick Cave Media LLC., all rights reserved. for more information on Brick Cave Media, visit the organization's website at https://brickcave.media. The Brick Cave Membership Community is called the BC Book Club, and you can join at http://bcbookclub.com.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Brick Cave Media Podcast. My name is Marcus Campbell,
poet and author of my identity as a stereotypical side character from
Brick Cave Books. Joining me tonight is my co host, fellow
poet and author, Patrick Hare. How you doing?
Good. Hi, Marcus. Patrick Hare here, author
of core corp I wrote this book once.

(00:22):
Corporate Boilerplate Vinegar from Rick Cave Books. The Brick Cave podcast
is brought to you by the BC Book Club. Brick Cave Media's community portal
for readers that love Brick Cave Books and authors.
Gotta love it. So we were just down in Tucson for the Tucson
Festival of Books. How did that go for you? It
went pretty well. It's fun to be considered an authority figure just because you're

(00:45):
sitting up there on stage. It it is. Something about the elevated,
elevated platform makes it feel, kind of pulpit ish. You
know? Feels like I have power over other people.
Even though it's completely, like, arbitrary. But,
I do find myself sometimes, like,

(01:07):
getting like you were saying with the oh, it's a it
makes you feel like an expert where I almost like my tone will
start. I'm like, that's not how I talk. Why am I trying to be overly
formal here? What am I doing? This is just Well, that was the
the fun of it. It's like, okay. You guys are asking me questions. Like, I'm
not just as qualified as anybody sitting in the audience right

(01:28):
now. Yeah. Yeah. And that that brought up an
interesting side point that I thought Bob and I
talked about it briefly, but it merits mentioning here and while we're on the while
we're on the subject. Bob and I were talking about how it's interesting how the
line in the digital era, it seems like the line between
novice and expert and the line between amateur and professional is

(01:51):
becoming increasingly blurry. And it's it's hard to
determine or even qualify who or what is an expert in a
given thing or who or what is a professional in a given
Yeah. If you're good at BS ing and people don't seem to care about your
credentials almost. I mean Yeah. But it's almost like, what is a
credential in the post? That's a good that's

(02:13):
a good point. It's not like you're speaking at a conference and you got your
degree and you've got all that other stuff. It's,
well, here's my opinion on something, and I you have to believe me because
I've written a book. Yeah. It's kind of arbitrary, and so many
people have written so many books. And then the line used to be, okay. You
were kind of an amateur if you were self publishing, and then when you got

(02:34):
with a big publishing house, you were, like, a professional. Well, that that
line no longer exists because there are plenty of self published
authors who are just as successful as people at large big box stores, so there's
no line there, or with large publishing companies. There's no real
line between how I self published and somebody helped
me self publish versus there's no lines for, like, what is a

(02:56):
professional. So are are you a are you a professional writer or an expert once
you've sold x number of books? And and if so, what number of
books would that be? Because then that then that, like, monetizes writing, and that
feels bizarre as well. It's always kind of been monetized, I
guess. But, like, if you're a TikTok star, you know, you could
be right up there as well. Like, just because you've got an audience.

(03:19):
Yeah. People like your stuff, and you can probably push quite a few books doing
that too. Exactly. And then what it's interesting that the quantifiers
of success seem to have kind of shifted a little bit.
Well, I don't know. That could be a good thing. I mean, you can you
can fake it now. Yeah. Yeah. Fake it till you make it kinda deal.
Yeah. But it was funny because, like, one of my

(03:40):
panels was, like, the importance of the opening line,
which, of course, it's it's but it's always been important. Mhmm. It's
like for most of my stuff, well, that's where I gotta hook people
to set the tone of the piece, you know, and
drive the rant in the right direction, essentially, when I'm reading something.
So but at the same time, any piece of fiction,

(04:04):
whether from a, you know, dark and stormy night Mhmm.
All the way up to best of times, worst of times. Yeah. That was literally
what the one that was in the front of my head. It was, like, stereotypical.
These are these are great opening lines, but
you gotta keep people reading the rest of the the first page and end
of the book. Yes. I agree. Do

(04:26):
you give any credence to because some people have been playing more with titles
and, Bill Campana, obviously, known for incredibly
long titles. I, myself, love a good title. Do you think that the
the title would be the relationship between that title and that first line
shares any kind of especially with poetry where you not just have the title of
the manuscript. You have all these individual titles along the way. Do you think that

(04:48):
there's any value to be added there for you in your poetry, or do you
kinda just kinda Well, I actually write the title after I've written the piece, so
probably not. See, that's interesting. I'm the I'm the exact opposite.
I often start with the title, and then everything kind of
bleeds out of the title. And sometimes I'll do that very corny
and over already overused, you know, kind of little trope of making the

(05:10):
title, the first line run into the it's I don't like it. I'm
not gonna do it anymore, but I I Works. Works.
Book number 2 is I think it'll be like every Emily doing a lot of,
like, kitschy stuff that I did in book 1. Every Emily Dickinson title is the
first line of the poem. Yes. If so, I mean Well, it worked for

(05:30):
her when she was doing it. I don't know if it works for me when
I'm just copying Emily Dickinson. So, But I also
do this weird thing related to your first slide thing. Sometimes I do this
weird thing where I'll read the last line of a book or the last
paragraph of a book very in the very beginning. Like, once I've decided, okay, this
is a book I'm gonna actually finish, like, with Dune, I just which I just

(05:50):
read for the first time recently. I know I'm behind. But I read the first
paragraph the last paragraph before I started actually getting into the
meat of the book. I find that it gives me, like, this weird point that
I'm trying to, like, reach or understand because it always has zero context,
but it's, like, ripe with meaning, that last paragraph or that last line.
I don't know if there's any do you think there's what's the contrast between

(06:12):
the first line and the last line of a book
or a poem? That's a really good question. I mean, like, you've
got, 1984 where it's like the last line is any love, big
brother. So it's like he got brainwashed into the whole
system at the end of the book Yeah. After trying to resist all that
time. Yeah. And there's, like, this there's also a like, there's this

(06:35):
interesting relationship almost with, like, film. Because film is very cognizant of
the first shot and the last shot mirroring each other. I guess one of the
foundational things in film, Christopher Nolan does it a lot with hands. Where, like, a
film will start with hands and then end with the character's hands. And then the
change in whatever opening and closing shots or shot
sequences are supposed to have kind of portrayed the shift over

(06:55):
time, which I tried to do in my book of poetry, but I think I
miserably failed at. I tried to I tried to make the last line of the
poetry part of the manuscript kind of have some kind of
correlation to kind of where it all started. I don't know if I
succeeded in that, but do you find yourself playing with last lines at all?
Well, I try to get that kick or zinger. I mean, if for slam

(07:17):
poems, especially, you have to, you know, you have to deliver
where they're gonna hold up a higher score if your stuff doesn't just trail
off into oblivion. Yeah. Are you do you find yourself
going for that mic drop moment even when you're not doing slam? Like, does that
kind of create tend to seep out internally? Happens. Yeah. It's like, okay. I
I I wanna put a punch on the end of this. It's,

(07:39):
you know, you can make something that that's a little bit more muted, but
it's like, well, I am trying to say something here, and I've gotta sum it
up. Yeah. I I wanted to I was gonna
ask you if you think it, excuse me, if you think it detracts from your
work at all. But then I was thinking about when I go for mic drop
moments, and I think even going for the mic drop moment as I'm

(08:01):
writing, trying to end it with a punch, even if I end up just having
it kind of end in a little more lackluster of a fashion, often ends me
end up ends up helping me find, like, the theme or the symbol or the
meaning that I was really trying to drive home over the course of the poem,
especially when I'm, like, free writing. So if I'm free writing and I'm getting towards
the end and I'm getting towards that last line and I'm trying to go for

(08:21):
this big mic drop moment, Often in attempting to go for that mic drop moment,
I get to kind of the meat of what I was trying to talk about,
and then I'm able to go back in revisions and kind of work back towards
that last line again and kind of play in that
space. Yeah. Well, sometimes I have I mean, sometimes I have to come back later
and just rewrite the whole end of the poem to to get that moment
because it's like like always, I'm doing something else when it finally hits

(08:45):
me. Okay. This is how I can enter. This is how I can, you know,
punch it up a little bit. But,
yeah, I never put that
much thought into it. Yeah. That's a problem.
Like, Yeah. I mean, there's probably I think maybe that's the problem the the the
problem with the panel once again. It's like, oh, what's your secret? And I'm like,

(09:08):
I just typed this stuff. Yeah. I think comes out of my brain, and I
write it down. Yeah. I think that's the problem with our with artistic panels, like,
looping back on that. It's like, what is an expert in art?
Like, so many artists that are legends and are canonical weren't
successful in their own time. And then, I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of
hacks in their time that were up on stage constantly. You know, like,

(09:30):
Kafka, Costco, like, like, numerous artists and
writers that were famous only after their time. I'm sure there were plenty of hacks
telling people how to write the fiction that Kafka was writing in, like, a
room somewhere Hold up. You know what I'm you know what I mean? Except they
would have been saying his stuff was crap. And Right. For sure. Yeah. It it
I just think it's very interesting. And post Internet, it only gets even more confusing.

(09:51):
What other panels did you sit on while you're down there? Any others? There was
the one about