Making an Impact.

I am currently proof-reading The Cragstone Affair.

I first published this in 2015 as the Craigsmuir Affair and decided to unpublish and re-publish in e-book format with a new cover because the spelling of the original title always seemed to puzzle Amazon. (I haven't decided if print format is worth all the effort) As I've gone through the stages, I've removed a thousand or so words and improved the prose - as you do. Is editing ever really finished? This led me to consider the opening lines and wonder if they were good enough. Have I improved on my first lines, or not, in the last five years?

The truth is, I'm not sure. I knew what the story question was before I began - could a young Victorian woman achieve her dream of going to art school AND get happily married? I solved that one positively by the end of the story and gave her a mystery  to solve and a few adventures along the way.

I read somewhere that a mystery does not need a murder in the first few lines. A romance does not have to have to begin with a kiss, but the killer thing to remember is that most mysteries have a dead body at the end of the first chapter. (Believe me or not, that pun was unintentional.)

I had my mystery planted before the first chapter ended, so that was OK. But  when I begin a new story I now spend a long time thinking what the first line might be. Looking at the line I wrote way back eight or nine years ago, I don't think I did. If anything, I thought of the bigger picture, the fact that in paragraph two she falls down the stairs and lands in the arms of a stranger. I liked that, and still do. It is a visual beginning and readers might not like it, but it pleased me and I guess I'm stuck with it now.