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Open Strong, Stay Loud: No matter what you are writing, grab your reader's attention early.
The Park Bench Method of Writing Rapid Release Fiction without Burning Out

| The Park Bench Method of Writing Rapid Release Fiction without Burning Out, by Wendy Christine Allen |



By Wendy C Allen

Open Strong, Stay Loud: No matter what you are writing, grab your reader's attention early.

  • Don’t build up.
  • Don’t lay down a foundation.
  • Don’t start with what the character ate for breakfast unless the eggs exploded and the toast screamed.

You get one chance. One sentence. One line that either locks your reader in or loses them forever. They are scrolling. They are swiping. They are distracted. You are not fighting for their respect. You are fighting for their attention. You are a street performer with five seconds to make someone stop and listen.

So you better slap them in the face with the first line.

That’s the power of the Park Bench. You don’t start slow. You don’t start with a map of the world or a long-winded history of the Elven potato trade.

  • You start with a moment.
  • A bang.
  • A question.
  • A scream.
  • A gut punch.
  • A reason to read the second sentence.

Because if the first sentence doesn’t give them a reason to continue, nothing else matters.

The bench is already loaded. It’s charged. It’s the stage. It’s the spark. Sit your character down and give them something worth saying. Worth seeing. Worth reacting to. Maybe there’s a bear in the tree above them. Maybe the bench is on fire. Maybe the bench is in the morgue and the corpse sitting next to them just moved. It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is you do not waste time.

No throat-clearing. No warm-up. No clearing your literary sinuses.

You get in.

You go loud.

You write like someone is about to unplug your keyboard.

Stop asking your story for permission to start. It’s already started. Right now. This sentence. That bench. That moment. Start it like it matters. Because it does.

Do you know what readers hate? Being bored.

Do you know what makes them bored? You trying too hard to be “literary.” You writing about dust motes. You describing the architecture. You stacking adjectives like pancakes and hoping one of them tastes like plot.

Readers don’t want description.

  • They want tension.
  • They want action.
  • They want curiosity.
  • They want to feel something. Anything. Confusion is fine. Horror is fine. Laughter is golden. Boredom is death. Confusion gets them reading to figure it out. Laughter gets them invested. Boredom gets them to close the book and forget your name.

So the opening line isn’t optional.

It’s the entire battlefield.

And don’t be cute. Don’t try to be clever. Don’t write the opening line that you think sounds fancy. Write the line that yanks a reader out of their chair. You are not auditioning for the Pulitzer. You’re trying to grab someone by the throat and scream, “HEY! LOOK AT THIS!”

You are not being subtle. You are not easing in. You are not whispering in the reader’s ear like some Victorian novelist. You are stomping through the door with a chainsaw made of verbs and a fistful of adrenaline. If you start with a whisper, you’ll be forgotten. Start with a scream and they might just stick around to see who got stabbed.

And if you’re thinking, “But I don’t know how to start big,” here’s how:

Put something weird on the bench.

That’s it. That’s the whole method. That’s the shortcut. You put your character on the bench, and then you put something unexpected right in front of them.

The weirder, the better.

“There was a goat eating a newspaper next to him.”
“The bench was nailed to the ceiling.”
“She didn’t notice the gun until she sat on it.”

Boom. You’re in. You’ve got something to work with. Your reader is asking questions. You don’t need to explain it. You just need to keep the story moving.

You don’t need a big plot. You don’t need a twist. You need momentum. Curiosity is momentum. And momentum comes from never letting your foot off the gas. The Park Bench Method is about story as motion. The reader sits on the bench with your character and the world starts spinning.

If your first line is soft, no one sits down. If your first line is boring, the reader walks past your bench.

If your first line is strange, funny, violent, alarming, awkward, unsettling, or confusing?

You’ve got them.

And once you’ve got them?

You do not let go.

This is not the method for slow burns. This is not the method for long exposition. This is the method for writing so fast, so vivid, so immediate that your reader forgets they were supposed to be doing something else and reads the entire story instead.

And that’s the secret.

  • Not editing.
  • Not grammar.
  • Not style guides.

Attention.

If you can get it, you can keep it.

If you can keep it, you’ve won.

So next time you start a story, don’t ease in.

Kick the door down.

Don’t knock. Don’t wait. Don’t write like you’re being polite.

Write like you’ve got five seconds to save your own life.

And whatever you do, do not edit the opening line. Don’t “fix it” later. Don’t water it down. Don’t turn it into oatmeal because some beta reader said it was “a little jarring.”

Jarring is the point.

Be jarring.

Be weird. Be loud.

Loud gets read.

| ©2025 Wendy Christine Allen | All Rights Reserved |

The Park Bench Method To Writing (and the series of articles and rants that go with it)

I've Written An Entire Series on The Park Bench Method of Writing. Here are more of the articles in this set: 

The Park Bench Method To Writing (Just the article - no prompt lists)

The Park Bench Method of Writing (the really old long, rambly post from years ago; the long page with over 10k writing prompts and lots of lists)

Want to see The Park Bench Method of Writing Rapid Release Fiction without Burning Out, in action? Each of the stories linked below, used it:

Looking to read more Quaraun stories?

  • Stuff over 5k and under 20k words I post on GumRoad.

Writing Prompts I Use When Writing this series:






What Is This Site?

I'm an author. This is an author home page. It's about me, my life, my books, my hobbies, my home town, and anything else that applies to me and my life. 

Since starting my writing career in 1978, I have written 130+ novels, 2,000+ short stories, 6,000+ non-fiction articles (ALL are found on this site), a few dozen stage plays, 12,000+ blog posts, and a few comic book scripts for Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck (I only worked for Disney one year (in 2005) and only wrote a few stories for their Danish comic books).

NOTE: I ONLY write the Quaraun series (aka The Twighlight Manor series aka The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane). In recent years there has been an issue with impersonators trying to pass books off as written by me, notably several non-fiction and Erotica books. I write neither nonfiction nor Erotica.

ALL of my books and their cover arts are listed on my website here. Beware of any books you find claiming to be me. If the books are NOT listed here on my website, they are NOT my books.

In fiction works, I specialize in Weird/Bizarro Tales set in 40th century CyberPunk-Quasi Medieval, Cozy Dark Fantasy and Science Fiction worlds featuring an intersex Elf and his Faerie husband main characters.  I DO NOT WRITE ANY OTHER SERIES - THIS SERIES IS THE ONLY ONE I WRITE.

Non-fiction (found ONLY here on my site) is daily updates of events in my life, and how-tos on how I write my novels.

I DO NOT write Erotica.

I DO NOT write books with HUMAN characters.

The Erotica books and books with Human characters, that you are finding, are written by scammers trying to impersonate me.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter. If you find any such books, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322

The FBI believes the people behind the impersonation accounts showing up, are relatives of the woman who murdered my son.

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.

And I'm sick of real estate agents who are too incompetent to research land ownership before they show up to stick a for sale sign in my yard.

The fact of the matter is, my son was murdered in 2013, and the friends and family of the murderer think it is funny to keep ILLEGALLY listing my land for sale, because apparently their child murdering bitch friend didn't hurt me enough by crippling me with a golf club, ripping my baby out of my 8 month pregnant belly and beating his brains out on the ground with a golf club.

Also, her friends and family like to gaslight me by doxing me on ufo and alien abduction forums, while pretending to be me, and trying to make it look like I believe in ufos or aliens, even though I think people who believe in ufos are raving lunatics and people who claim to be alien abductees are crazy. 

Worse, they've also taken to harassing my WW2 vet homeless friend, by calling HIM an alien, demon, or cryptid and sending alien crazy ufo nutjobs at try to "catch him".

So, yeah, my son was murdered and the murder's friends and family endlessly harass me, my friends, and my family both online and offline, and I'm not happy with it at all.

There is an ongoing FBI investigation into this matter.

The FBI is looking for information into:

  1. identifying my son's murderer, 
  2. identifying the scammers who listed my land for sale, 
  3. identifying the impersonators who pretend to be me both online and offline, 
  4. the harassers who are harassing the homeless man and sending the UFO nuts to harass him... 
  • If ANYONE tells you 146 Portland Ave Old Orchard Beach, Maine is for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you I believe in aliens, demons, or UFOS, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322
  • If ANYONE tells you my homeless friend is an alien, a demon, a cryptid, or named Etiole for sale:, please report them to FBI Agent Andy Drewer @207–774–9322


I'm going to repeat it because I'm tired of people showing up and making offers:

146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine, is NOT FOR SALE.




| Home | Index |



How did you build your audience?
Not online, that's for sure.
aka How to sell ten million books
aka How I sold ten million books.



The Park Bench Method of Writing

(just the article)

or

The Park Bench Method of Writing

(with the list of 10k writing prompts - takes a LONG TIME to load - SEVERAL MINUTES!)



Why I am not proud of Disability Pride Month.
In fact, I think it’s deplorable and downright offensive.



I Think UFO and Alien Believers Are Weird Here's Why...




Does every writer have to deal with this shit?



Testing Out AI aka Conversations with ChatGPT-5:



My thoughts on the Rapture 2025 Rumours, that are on both Etiole's birthday and my 50 year anniversary: September 23rd:





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Wendy Christine Allen 🌸💖🦄 aka EelKat 🧿💛🔮👻
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