The first sentence of Rachel Neumeier's novel, Tuyo, widens the view before narrowing it again: "Beside the coals of the dying fire, within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp, surrounded by the great forest of the winter country, I waited for a terrible death."
This is a sentence almost like a camera trick. First, we have a narrow focus: "Beside the coals of a dying fire."
Then, we back out to a slightly wider view: "within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp." A campfire is a small circle. The borders of a camp is a larger one.
Next, we zoom to a very high altitude view: "surrounded by the great forest of the winter country." We'd need to move to a mountain top or a bird's eye to see an entire forest or an entire country.
Suddenly, the focus is very tight again: "I" – one person, one face.
And last, "waited for a terrible death," prepares us for a final fade to black. Neumeier has written a truly cinematic sentence.
In addition to the camera moves, the narrator sets a strong hook. "I waited for a terrible death" sets the stakes to mortal. We also have clues about the world: people camp in groups around fires, there is a great forest and a winter country. "Winter country" is a little strange. In our world, we might call some polar regions winter countries. But even there, it is not winter all the time. Is there something else happening in the world of the story? "Winter country" is a subtle note that might point to the story taking place in another world.
In another way, the sentence is dramatic rather than subtle. There are six words in the lexical field of death and endings: coals, dying, trampled, abandoned, winter, and death. Nor is it a gentle or quiet death; it is a "terrible death" – death worse than death. This sentence suggests the story to come will contain both small details and subtle clues and grand emotions and vast scale.
Spending time with this sentence has me feeling like rereading the book.
Some notes about what I do on this blog. My first sentence posts (which have been my only posts recently, but are not guaranteed to be all I write about) follow a few rules. For living authors, I only write about sentences I like or that I wrote myself. I usually read the books and like the books as well. My schedule is every Monday. I like to vary my authors and the genres they write in. Today I found that my working list of sentences contained six from sf/f, one from romance, and two from mystery/thriller, so I may need to go looking in mainstream fiction soon. This is no surprise, as science fiction and fantasy are my literary home! I do like to feature sentences from authors in groups who have historically had less attention. I like seeing more points of view, and I believe that we are all better off when more people have a chance to share their creativity.
So do send me intriguing first sentences you've seen, especially those by women and members of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities! This is my 86th first sentence post, and I'm still finding new pleasures in them.
Photo by Benjamin Raffetseder on Unsplash
Graphic elements by Ken Silbert