PB First Lines December 2024 Edition
Featuring Rebecca Gardyn Levington and LITTLE DREIDEL LEARNS TO SPIN
Welcome to the December 2024 edition of PB First Lines!
I'm so glad you're here.
This month, I’m delighted to analyze a first line Kate DeMaio shared:
Candace started every day with a thunderous, “Goooood Morning!”
I love the personality in this first line! We get a strong sense of the type of person this main character is. And I love that descriptive word thunderous. What a powerful word! In comparison, “started every day” feels a bit mundane. I wonder if you could fiddle with that phrase a bit, maybe change it so we get a tiny detail about your intended setting. Is she waking up and greeting her stuffed animals with this exuberance? Is she bounding into the kitchen and bellowing this at her family? Or does she make this grand entrance into her classroom?
Thank you for sharing a first line, Kate! If anyone else is interested in feedback on a first line, pop it in the substack comments, and I’ll analyze them in the next edition of PB First Lines.
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be launching a new blog series in 2025 for my paid subscribers: Elements of a Great First Line: A Deep Dive. There will be one post per month. Each will focus on a different element and will include 10 examples (mostly from the archives, but some new titles) that are representative of that element. And there will be original content further discussing that element. You can subscribe for as little as $5 a month. I would be so grateful for your support.
The regular [free] first line and occasional [free[ first page revision journeys will continue as usual.
And now, on to our featured author. I’m thrilled to have Rebecca Gardyn Levington sharing the revision journey of the first line from her new book, Little Dreidel Learns to Spin. I’m a huge fan of Rebecca’s. I think her rhyming and meter are extraordinary. So much so that I interviewed her about her process! I’ll be sharing her answers in a special post next week.
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First Draft (11/22/19):
Hannukah is almost here and Dreidel’s in a tizzy!
He only has one job to do, but spinning makes him dizzy.
Final Published Book (9/3/24):
Little Dreidel, made of clay, at last is dry and ready!
She wants to whirl and swirly-spin, but she’s a bit…
unsteady!
Thanks for having me participate in this, Sara. It was really interesting to go back and see the evolution of my first lines!
It turns out that on 11/22/19, I apparently wrote that couplet above in a document titled “Dreidel’s Dilemma.” The weird part is that it’s the ONLY thing written in that document. JUST that one couplet. Nothing else. I have no idea what happened, but I clearly didn’t feel like I knew where to go with this concept at that moment in time.
It wasn’t until we were in the thick of the pandemic almost a YEAR later that I actually sat down to write this story (on 9/4/20). My younger son, who was 9 at the time, had yet to learn to ride a bike, but when Covid came and all his activities were cancelled, there was literally nothing for him to do, so I decided it was time to finally teach him. After only one try, he yells: “I can’t do this! This is stupid! I hate this!” I explained that learning a new skill takes time, patience and practice, but he wanted none of it. After some tears, he got back on and tried again and within 10 minutes he had it!
Around the same time, I was flipping through my idea notebook and came across one that said: “dreidel who has trouble spinning” and for some reason I immediately thought about my son trying to ride his bike and how he immediately gave up after only one try. I thought about how a new dreidel might feel the first time she tries to spin and how difficult and frustrating that might be (I often think about how objects feel!)
And that’s when, for some reason, the refrain of The Dreidel Song popped into my head:
“Oh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel,
I made it out of clay.
And when it’s dry and ready,
oh dreidel I will play!”
From there, I wrote these lines of what was my first REAL full draft of this story:
Little Dreidel made of clay,
at last is dry and ready!
She has a lovely body but her bottom is…
…unsteady
She tries to stand, but doesn’t
really seem to get the knack.
“I’ll never learn to spin if I
can’t get up off my back!”
The “lovely body” line was meant to be an inside-joke for those who know The Dreidel Song because there is a line in the song that goes:
“It has a lovely body
with legs so short and thin
and when it gets too tired
it drops and then I win!”
My acquiring editor said she liked the pun, but was worried that maybe some readers might find talk of Little Dreidel’s “body” off-putting. She suggested that we use the space to describe more about the character’s goals. It was at that point that I changed the opening line to what it ultimately became!
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Revision tip: This isn’t so much a tip as a reminder: regularly go through your list of ideas! How many of us generate 30+ ideas every January and never look at them again? Just me? Regardless, make a rhythm of reviewing your ideas so that inspiration has a chance to strike!
**If you have read and enjoyed Little Dreidel Learns to Spin, leave a review! If you need help getting started writing a review, read this blog post.**
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