Monday, October 26, 2020

Fantastic First Lines - Match UP

Image courtesy of NaNoWriMo.
It's NaNoWriMo time again. What is NaNoWriMo? It's National Novel Writing Month and it happens in November. Every November, people all over the world attempt to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, November 30. Participants sign up by creating free accounts at www.nanowrimo.org, the official site (for ages 13 and up). There you can post your daily word counts, display samples of your writing, and discuss your progress (if you so choose) in forums with other writers. Our Head of Reference, Sarah Lauderdale, hosts write-ins during November, find out more on that here: https://hwlibrary.org/national_novel_writing_month/

If you are age 17 or younger and want to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time, you may want to start with NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's program. The Young Writers Program allows you to set individualized goals. So instead of the set 50,000 word goal you could choose a goal of 1,000 words,10,000 words, or 100,000 words.

If attempting to write a book in a month is not for you this Fall, maybe instead of a book you could try writing a first line. What story would it begin to tell? What makes a GOOD first line? Below are a bakers dozen of first lines from books in our Young Adult fiction collection. Which one of these books would you like to read based on their first line? Can you match up these first lines with their book covers? Write your guesses on a piece of paper then, click here to see if you are right.