The Night Was Sultry

I think what made him so darn mad was that HE, the professional writer, couldn't think up a book opening as good as an ornery old woman, LOL, so it really hurt his pride for a minute. My favorite part, LOL!

Good question, I was wondering the same thing.

The way I see it is that, considering that it was mostly her fault that they were on the train crossing the border to begin with, and considering that she wasn't displaying the slightest bit of concern for Larry, and considering that he earlier took a dive for her and was almost killed (only to get kneed in the groin by her later), I can understand the motivation. Ultimately, they were having a pleasant, intelligent conversation about how to begin a novel and she piped in with a totally inappropriate remark, essentially mocking them and maybe even insinuating something (don't want to guess what) and my guess is that he had had enough of her abuse and wanted to knock her out.

2.

The writer goes about it all wrong anyway.

Trying to think of a 'perfect word' for a book opening is never going to be satisfying or proper for the story, even if he manages to find it. There's no such thing as perfect word for it anyway, words are just tools to use, and the story is more important than the exact words you use, just like a statue is more important than the tools you used to carve it.

What he SHOULD have done, instead of coming up with a really stupid opening and then trying to find a 'perfect word' to fit it, is to take into account what the story needs, what are the circumstances, what benefits the story the most, and so on. What kind of weather, what kind of evening, what kind of atmosphere, and so on.

Then just describe all that with WHATEVER words, it doesn't matter. If you do it well, it doesn't matter if the words are 'perfect' or not - as long as you get the description of what you want or what the story requires for you to create done, the reader is going to be interested.

What does it matter if the night is sultry? What would the 'night being cloudy' add to the story? He should've thought of things from THIS kind of perspective, then he could have easily used any kind of terms, words and adjectives and it wouldn't have mattered, the story would've been served and he could've gone on with his life.

It was bad writing and a really stupid choice to get stuck with that kind of non-problem. 'The night was' should never be the thing that defines your story, but you should think what kind of night the story needs, and then just describe the night as such. (If you want to open a story with such a banal and overly-used Snoopy-like statement)