Writing the Opening Sentence; In Archaeology, Origins of Early Religions & Nero’s Palace Opens

From My Fantasy Writing Desk:

Writing the opening sentences of a novel is a terrifying act. As readers or writers, it is enlightening to know how emotionally loaded that first page is. Think about it the next time you open a book. How much blood spilt to get those exact words on the page?

All creative juices freeze up in the face of the enormity of what I must accomplish, and I’m not alone in this. Win over all my readers, grab them, make them want more. Raise questions, answer questions. Orient the reader, but not overly much. An impossible, conflicting task.

I rewrite the starts to my novels many times. What comes out of my fingers onto the keyboard the first time is never what will be there in the final draft. I’ve learned to let it be and worry later, but still, those first paragraphs are murder.

I’ve read tons of great advice and strategies. This post by Amy Nathan lists a condensed “5 tips.” The approach seems like an excellent prompt to keep handy. Choose 1 and go. It’ll get me through the initial frozen tundra and head me in a generally useful direction at the very least. Click here for Amy Nathan’s Women’s Fiction Writers “5 Tips For Fabulous Fiction First Lines and Paragraphs”

Here are the current first two sentences of the manuscript I’m working on. They are certainly not the first version and who knows, maybe not the last, although I’m close to finishing this one. What do you think? Would you keep reading?

It was happening again.
The tortured gasps of her husband’s breath worried Tesha more than usual.

Archaeology I enjoyed:

What came first: society or religion?

All over the world and through history, human beings develop belief rituals, supernatural explanations, religions. This raises the chicken-egg question of what came first, complex society or such religious notions with the concept that humans will be punished if they don’t follow the moral code of the religion.

Mostly anthropologists have subscribed to the “moralizing god hypothesis”—the notion that the “belief in a judgmental, all-seeing figurehead precedes the arrival of complex society.”

But now a giant data-driven project named after the Egyptian goddess of wisdom, Seshat, claims to show the opposite. I’m highly intrigued by their historical technique, although I don’t know enough to evaluate it.

What does this project conclude? First comes complex societies and only when they reach populations of one million, does the punishing god belief show up. Others challenge this conclusion, as you can imagine. But this PBS News Hour post is an interesting discussion, “Which came first: society or a fear of god?”

What do you think? Do societies drive the need for a punitive code of belief or do we only succeed in building society once we hold such ideas?

Welcome to Nero’s Original Palace

Nero’s palace restoration has opened to the public in Rome.

Razed to the ground by the Great Fire of Rome, Emperor Nero’s original palace opened to the public for the first time last week after a painstaking 10-year restoration.

The ruins of the sumptuous “Domus Transitoria,” once decorated with gold leaf, precious stones and mother of pearl, lie next to a well-preserved 50-seat latrine used communally by builders and slaves. Nice juxtaposition.

Nero is more famous for his “golden house” that he started on with indecent haste after the fire that leveled this “house.” Nero loved drama of all sorts, golden real estate and all. He provides a good argument against totalitarian mindsets, in general, doesn’t he? Click here for the Daily Star “Frescoes and faeces as Nero’s palace opens in Rome”