Casting the Spell
By Donald Maass | April 5, 2017 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Thanasis Papathanaslou
Once upon a time…
Is there any better opening than that? Fairy tales are the first stories we hear. Even now, as grown-ups, we associate those four words with coziness and bedtime. From the safety of our parents’ laps or with the comforting weight of Mom or Dad next to us on the mattress, as children we embarked on voyages. We experienced peril and magic. We were both scared and safe. We got happy endings every time.
We were under a spell.
Technically speaking, once upon a time is an authorial voice speaking directly to us. It is saying pay attention. It is saying I have a story to tell you, and it’s important. It’s saying dream with me. It’s an invitation from a warm and confident voice, one we can trust, one in charge of the tale just as surely as our parents were, slowly turning the pages before our wide and sleepy eyes.
Every novel begins with a narrative voice that pulls us into the dream state in which stories instantly come alive—or not. Sadly, not every narrative voice quickly takes charge and assures us that it is okay to dream. All should. From the darkest horror to the frothiest comedy, novels can immediately put us under a spell but too often they don’t. The voice relating the tale is far off, timid, or false; a huckster’s voice selling us a sideshow trick or the phony intimacy of a presumptuous stranger.
What narrative voice will most effectively lull us into your particular dream? Regardless of your story type, setting, style, choices of tense and person, or your chosen distance from your characters, what does it mean for you to say to the rest of us, in your own fashion, once upon a time…
The most common narrative voice I hear in slush pile manuscripts is one that is documentary, objective, wholly visual in nature, reporting the movie in the author’s mind. This voice is cold; indeed, it is barely a voice at all. It may cause readers to “see” what is happening, but readers will not feel much with their yearning hearts. How can they? In a dry report, what is there to care about?
More experienced writers can be more artful but almost always default to the voice that they believe is required for their type of story. Thriller writers begin by evoking an air of menace. Mystery writers present us with puzzles. Spec fiction writers let us know that their story world is different. Romance writers jump into a pool of feelings. Regardless of story type, almost all authors strive to create some kind of worry or tension, for characters or readers, because after all what is a story but a problem?
More advanced narrative voices can be canny, grabbing our attention with something puzzling or unique about the story situation. This “hook” entices the reader onward with what is intriguing. That approach is fine enough, I have no quarrel with it, yet it appeals mostly to the mind. Hooks have a short half-life. Reader interest quickly dims because that level of intrigue is impossible to sustain.
What about warm and chatty first person voices? Intimate ones? Witty ones? Ones that talk directly to us, treating us like old friends who share everything with us? Is intimacy the key?
There’s no doubt that a close point-of-view, whether in first person or third, is the dominant narrative voice of our times. An intimate voice that reveals not just a character’s thoughts and feelings, but their whole experience of things, is hard to ignore. Intimacy may seem like an arm around our shoulders, an instant friend, but when that voice we hear is reticent, sour, snide, dire, ironic, or self-doubting we may be interested but we are not lulled. Intimacy by itself doesn’t relax us. We cannot be disarmed when we are uneasy.
That last point runs counter to our understandings. Creating tension is imperative, is it not? Grabbing the reader with a hook, a problem or if nothing else a voice that commands our attention ought to be the strongest choice, right? Not necessarily. Grabbing our attention is one thing. Lulling us into the dream state is another.
What, then, creates an instant lulling of the reader, but without sacrificing the intrigue or intimacy that makes us want to read on?
Let’s go back to once upon a time and what those four words convey. Pay attention! I have a story. It’s important. A lulling narrative voice takes charge in a welcoming way but doesn’t waste time. It presumes our willingness to engage, skips the set up, and goes straight to something critical. We are inducted into a privileged circle and are right away trusted with important information. We are off and running not with the plot, or even the person, but with our processing of what’s going on and what it may mean.
Have a look at some narrative voices, recent and not. As we meet them, how do they say to us…once upon a time?
By 1927 there were twelve girls who danced all night and never gave names, but by then the men had given up asking and called them all Princess.
“Hey, Princess, dust off your shoes? It’s the Charleston!”
Note the first two words: By 1927…it’s as if the author has been talking with us for a while already and we’ve finally reached the time in question. The narrative voice is authorial and the situation is magical: there are nameless girls called “Princess” who dance all night! They may be dancing the Charleston instead of a Chaconne, true, but we’re sipping bathtub gin in a what can only be some sort of speakeasy fairy tale.
I’d seen him before. Old guy was probably seventy-five. Maybe eighty. Gnarled, arthritic fingers. Four-packs-a-day voice. Cottony-white hair with yellowed ends. Wrinkled ebony skin. A high-mileage chassis. He wore threadbare, blue-and-gray striped pants that had previously belonged to a wool suit and a soiled white button-down that he’d fastened clear to the top. To complete the ensemble, he wore two-toned classic oxfords. The white was dull and cracked, but what remained of the black had been polished to a spit shine.
And his guitar was as road-worn as he. It was a Gibson J-45 and he’d strummed holes both above and below the sound hole, exposing some kind of bracing.
A reportorial opening? Yes, but one that is warmly observant. What does this first-person narrator feel he must tell us right away? I’d seen him before. In another tale that might have been a menacing statement but it is quickly followed by folksy observation: Old guy was probably seventy-five. This voice isn’t condescending, it’s compassionate. More than that, it’s the voice of someone keenly interested in a street musician as crumpled as a used-up cigarette pack, and a narrator who thinks we might be a little bit interested in that old guy too.
The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.
A grabber? Definitely. There is tension. She said no. Questions are raised. Running north? From what? Also, things have already happened, we are only jumping in. Caesar has been provoked to approach Cora. How? We don’t yet know but we certainly are going to find out. This is a hook opening with an underlying urgency. Look closer, though. This opening line has more than plot intrigue. Something—or rather someone—is important. Cora. Caesar wouldn’t be urging her to run north if she didn’t matter.
In my younger and more vulnerable days my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.”
No plot grabber there. No action. Nothing to see. No enchantment, either, though the narrator’s “advantages” may promise us a story set among the wealthy. There’s a smidgen of tension but what tension exists is mildly expressed: Advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. There is, however, a presumption of interest. The narrator is in no hurry to start the story. What he first imparts to us what is most on his mind: his father’s advice and believe it, advice from our fathers is to be heeded.
Pay attention! I have a story. It’s important. In some way or other those narrative voices are immediately telling us that the story to be imparted matters. It matters to the narrator and because the narrator begins with what is most significant, the tale becomes important to us too.
What lulls us into the dream isn’t magic, visuals, plot hook, or intimacy, though none of those things are bad. What lulls us is a narrator who is committed to the tale, confident in its telling, placing priority on what’s important, and who cares.
Pay attention! I have a story to tell. It’s important. Once upon a time…
What about your WIP? How does your narrative voice lull us into your dream? Care to share your opening? We’re in our pajamas and ready…
The narrative voices in order:
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
Long Way Gone by Charles Martin
Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
I went straight to my poor long-suffering WIP that’s a mess mess mess! It’s the first novel since the first one I wrote that’s all out of order, all jumbled and rumpled. And what I read from the very first paragraph was in the POV of a Crow. *laugh* Or seemingly a crow.
“Crow circle the cabin on silent darkling wing. The scent of death-blood tangled the air. Crow circled, lower, lower, landed on a branch outside her opened window, peered inside with a black bright sees-all eye. There. The woman lay still, eyes staring at the ceiling, arms cradling goo and innards. Dark blood covered her nightdress, pooled on the floor, soaked into the white sheets . She turned her head to Crow, and smiled, held out the gooey innards . . . .” Blah blah blah etc etc etc.
And as I write that there, and look at it, and go “huh” I know how removed it is from the reader – unlike my published novels that start out in a conversation with the reader – character “talking” to the reader. But here, I have this Crow thing who is the watcher – so it’s more of an Image than a Conversation. Ungh.
But I’m feeling rather brave being the first one to put something here. I NEVER do that – ever. My first struggling words are always my secret.
I see why you’re struggling with this opening. The problem is not the crow POV or the gooey innards, but–as you note–the objective reporting. This passage is visually striking but it’s not involving.
To get out of your morass, first decide whose POV we are reading, crow or woman’s. Then ask, in this moment what does that character urgently feel we must know, see, get or understand?
What matters?
I took a long walk, because this has me thinking –
Where I need to start with this book, is the next chapter. But I know I’ll fight this – want that dreamy snapshot image in the front of the book.
Thank you for this post and your comment. It has given me a lot to think about. I know this book is a mess and I’m actually glad it is – for the first time since I wrote that first book, I’m struggling with the writing and sequence and etc – and that’s a good thing for me – it’s going to make me dig very deep.
Don, I think the last line of your comment above is key to any opening and is a most valuable tool for judging the effectiveness of an opening: “What matters?”
I am extraordinarily fond of crows and even more so of their intelligent cousins, ravens. If you keep the crow’s POV (or maybe change the crow to a raven–can you do that within your premise?) I guarantee to keep reading.
Smiling – crows show up a lot in my work–I had a white crow in The Lighting Charmer. The crows are all about my lil log house – I talk to them; they talk to me – they follow me around the cove, flying from tree to tree, calling out. This crow in the story will stay – “what the crow sees” – in this stupid stupid STUPID book *laughing*
You’re brave to post your beginning here, Kat, and you reap the early-bird (pun intended) prize–a personal tip from Don. I like the crow POV also and agree it has a place in your novel. I know I’m biased–Ravens show up throughout my biblical fiction “Rain”, a reimagining of the story of Elijah and the boy he raised from the dead.
Steven King’s “Needful Things” has a great opening that lures readers in with a welcoming voice that just instantly makes me feel like I am part of the story and even the town.
Yes, the narrator has a lot to tell us about his town. A LOT. And it’s dang important that we hear it all, too. We’ve got to KNOW. We’ve got to GET IT. Yes, sir.
King’s voice in Needful Things is friendly and folksy, but what lulls us into the tale is not the tone but the urgency the narrator feels in the telling.
Every King book does this, in my opinion.
Long live the King!
Good Morning Don, and please pass along my congratulations to Yoon Ha Lee and Ada Palmer for being nominated for the Hugo.
I’m not sure about this opening, it’s told from an antagonist’s point of view (sequel). Feel free to tear it apart.
The Monstrosity
The needle tears a hole into your neck. You are so new to feeling your own skin that you can’t fathom the pain of it being pierced; it is like this. Pressure builds as the fine metal point pushes against your throbbing skin a half-second before the hollow shaft plunges deep into your tissue. Another half-second passes before the faint push of liquid enters in to mix with the blood in your thundering artery. Were you normal, and had your wits, you might’ve turned and lashed out at the man behind you. Instead, you look at him with a grim recognition, he’s one of the handlers, and you were seeking him out. Numbness doesn’t scare you, it’s reassuring, like when you are about to be left alone, but you won’t be. Your mind goes back and replays the last few minutes. The five of you came into the garden at the Magnan school and saw your teacher hanging by a rope from the one tree that’s there. His foot was pushing against the top of the stone bench to keep him from choking to death. A man, one you have deep feelings for named Hashburn, cut him down and began questioning him. During this moment is when you suspect that a Magnan came close to capture you, and you’d be right. What you saw through your body’s eyes, and what in truth happened were different. You saw your body’s reflection in the water of the garden’s single small pond. When that reflection started to move off towards the center of the pond, you followed it. The realization that this was an illusion came too late to save yourself from being captured. By head-hopping to the man named Hashburn, you saw what’d occurred. The garden was engulfed in flames, and that forced your four companions to the nearest exit. You watched through Hashburn’s eyes as your teacher, covered in flames, rolled into the pond and stood up with blackening and boiling skin to walk to you. From behind your body a figure rose out of the water, a Magnan. One of four you were looking for, and found. This Magnan, in a show of power you didn’t know they possessed, killed your former teacher and lowered your body into the water of the pond. Underneath the water was a hatch-door, and that lead to a special chamber holding a laboratory where the Magnans are all born. You struggled against the arms holding you with only your feeblest of instruments, your muscles. Had you known to use your real strength, we would not have been able to hold you.
The drugs make their course through your veins, subduing you. Every mind looks for comfort, and in your weakened state all you can envision is the damned clock. That pretentious pneumatic construct every Magnan is forced to piece together and power on with their mind. You’ll discard it soon enough once you realize it’s not needed. Time-telling is important for those groveling groundlings the humans, but not Magnans or those sitting on high called The R.
You, Maggie, as you’ve come to call yourself are the last Magnan. There will be no others because you have let us down, and that is a horror unknown in history. In your weak state of mind, you have committed a grand error and have brought us all to the brink of destruction. ‘All’ includes the near-billion sentient human beings. ‘All’ includes the aliens known as The R whose numbers are not known. The small group you have sought out (there are four of us) are the Magnans. It is the where you truly belong. You don’t realize this, and how can you now that the drugs have rendered you drooling and slow of mind? We will tell you this again, and again until you realize your mistake and try to correct it.
Were we to start again, we would have killed you, but not now. You’ll need to prove that you are one of us, even if you have doomed humanity and The R to die. We can still live. You can still live with our help. The first step is to understand that you have no emotions of your own.
This is your enemy, not us.
Good Morning Don, and please pass along my congratulations to Yoon Ha Lee and Ada Palmer for their Hugo Nominations.
I’ll put the ‘kick me’ sign on and post my WIP’s current opening. Feel free to tear it apart.
The Monstrosity
The needle tears a hole into your neck. You are so new to feeling your own skin that you can’t fathom the pain of it being pierced; it is like this. Pressure builds as the fine metal point pushes against your throbbing skin a half-second before the hollow shaft plunges deep into your tissue. Another half-second passes before the faint push of liquid enters in to mix with the blood in your thundering artery. Were you normal, and had your wits, you might’ve turned and lashed out at the man behind you. Instead, you look at him with a grim recognition,
James-
Vivid stuff and yet–as you’ve realized–not stuff to lull us into the dream. You could do the same thing, approaching it to show us not what to see but what your POV character believes we urgently need to know.
“When the needle tears a hole in your neck the pain is good, even welcome, because you are feeling your own skin for the first time.”
Still not loving that, but I think you can see the difference.
Thanks Don
I’ll work on it.
I’m not comfortable sharing the still very raw opening of my current WIP but best to whip off the Band-Aid fast I guess.
A flock of pelicans drift across the river and a sadness, deep as hunger, gnaws at my stomach. Despite the intense heat and incessant drone of insects, I will miss my little tent beside the Euphrates. I will miss the man-sized herons standing in the shallows on long knock-kneed legs, fishermen’s keen eyes fixed on the water at their feet. I will miss the marshland villages and their tunnel-shaped reed houses perched on small, high-point islands strewn across the wetlands. I will miss the morning ‘chaar’ of reed warblers. But the trucks are here, the artifact preservation team already unloading hermetically sealed crates. If I want a last look at our finds, I need to go now.
A simplified version would provide a bit of a hook:
“I will miss my little tent beside the Euphrates, but the trucks are here.”
Even a hook doesn’t lull us, though. For that we need to see not pretty images of herons, reed houses and warblers, but for your narrator to tell us what is important to know at this moment of departure.
Thanks for your thoughts. Back to the drawing board I go!
Short addendum. I wrestled all day with finding what was “important to know at this moment”. At this moment, was the key. And it wasn’t in the opening I wrote, it was somewhere entirely different. Thanks again for your invaluable insight.
Call me boring, but one of my favorite opening lines will always be “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
That’s a hook. I think it works because it has the tone of fairy tale. That said, that little hole in the ground isn’t going to lead onward for very long. Luckily, Tolkien knew that.
He also knew that in 1937 readers were less familiar with fantasy, more so with fairy tales, Peter Rabbit and Peter Pan, and that he would have to make us feel safe in what eventually will become a tale, and a world. decidedly unsafe.
The next line is…
“Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
Comfort. That’s what we need to know. Hobbits are nice. Hobbits are cute. Hobbits are clean and have good food to eat. We’re safe here. For now.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2003
Jimmy, they’re going to love you. You’re going to be their
favorite grandson, the beautiful young man who helps them. I see it, I really do. If you go to the other coast, you’ll be a sensation. The hair, the teeth, perfect English better even than Harvard—they won’t know what hit ’em!
That’s what’s important to know. They’re going to love you, Jimmy. And I’m loving this opening. Dreaming already.
Thanks Don, for explaining this complex issue simply (as you always manage to do).
I’ve always thought of this like the definition of porn: I know it when I see it.
I no longer need that visual. THANK YOU!
Awesome post, Don! More writerly wisdom to cram into my stubborn brain. Okay, here goes:
It was the muffled sounds of despair that roused me.
A woman called my name, summoning me as if we were lovers.
“Vincent, mon cherie, I have a treat for you. Come, I think you will be pleased.”
Her voice was alcohol poured over a glistening, gaping wound.
I was not awake, but in the midst of a nightmare. A nightmare from which there would be no awakening, no relief, no respite.
As I opened my eyes, my consciousness clarified. Flashes of fear, anguish, pain flooded in, yet I felt more alive than ever before, my senses heightened—a blast of color from the tapestry hanging on the wall, the amplified sound of the wind flowing through the trees like a stream. Unidentifiable odors mingled with the sight of my unfamiliar surroundings. It felt as if a thousand tiny spiders raced through my veins.
To me, that’s a somewhat reportorial opening. It’s vivid and full of both fear and excitement, but I’m neither excited nor lulled into the nightmare.
Try asking, what does this dreamer feel is most important for the reader to know? The reason to report this nightmare to us is–?
Someone was fighting for her life and losing.
Although her mouth was clamped shut by her attacker, nothing could stifle the psychic shrieking that doubled Jack over as his foot hit the broad sidewalk and the cab sped away. A streetlight jittered on and threw his hunched-over shadow across the pavement and up the mossy stone wall like a black beacon, not that he needed help to find her. It was happening so close. He had to stop it. Had to try. His brain was splitting with the fury and pain of her terror when the silent shrieking stopped and fell away, like a feather drifting down into a well. One word.
Mama.
It’s what they all said.
“Mama. It’s what they all said.” That’s a grabber opening, textbook correct for a thriller.
The intent of a thriller opening, classically speaking, is not to lull us but to jolt. I’m okay with that but this approach–despite the chilly last two lines–intrigues me only mildly. It’s good yet so familiar.
Just another routine killing? I wonder. If he could speak with us, what would this killer want us to know is not only different about this one but important? Play around with it. I suspect you could transcend the stock thriller shock opening.
This post is gold. Thanks so much for this insight. It’s troubled me since I wrote it, but I needed to cover ground. The first revision is underway and nothing will be spared.
Don, I loved the openings you quoted- they did lure me in. Care to share where they come from?
Maggie, the attributions are at the bottom of the post.
1906 — In the grim dawn light around Mineville, Alice St. Germain stood half-awake holding the cold hand of her husband Emile. She looked along the bleak row of concrete block company houses, made from iron ore tailings, all the same. The morning air was filled with the constant rumble of skips bringing ore to the surface. A mournful locomotive whistle drifted up from the road crossing below.
Reportorial opening, almost all pictures, the movie in the mind. Nicely written but not lulling me into the story dream. Try a different approach?
Thanks for the challenge. Here’s my entry:
Few things make my granddad appear approachable; even in a wheelchair he still commands any room he enters. But every once in a while, I catch him staring at the ocean like he is today, as if he’s confessed a failing and is waiting for its absolution. Now, I think, now is the moment to ask him for what I want.
This works for me because there’s something I need to know, and it explains why this is the right moment to importune: grandfather is unapproachable, even in a wheelchair–but today is different.
If I may, this clause to me feels a tad forced: “…as if he’s confessed a failing and is waiting for its absolution.” It’s the kind of grandeur, gravitas and elevated language that I expect here.
What if you played against that? Instead of contemplating his sin and mortality, what if grandfather was instead remembering his childhood of sand castles and cotton candy? Just a thought.
Thanks, Don! Great suggestion about reversing the expected.
“You are being well paid for this expedition, as I need not remind you,” said Martin Foster, looking around the table at his three guests. “So even though the results will eventually be published, I ask that you not mention its true purpose to anyone beforehand. Even the pilot who flies you north to the site has been told that you are collecting geological specimens.”
Foster paused. He caressed the smooth curved edge of the mahogany table, sawn and carved and polished by hands long dead. Two and a half centuries old, it was the magnificent survivor of two sea voyages, from tropical forest to European castle and thence to his New York office. All his visitors noticed its beauty and antiquity. Only a few made the mental connection to the royal family in whose castle it had once stood, or surmised the series of murky transactions by which it had been conveyed to his office. None ever spoke their suspicions aloud.
Well, I like the secrecy and intrigue of this opening. It’s got hook.
That said, I’m not yet lulled into the story dream. For that we need more of Foster, and what he (and therefore we) realizes is important in this moment.
The mahogany table is a nice image but it doesn’t accomplish that, ask me.
Thanks, Don. So glad you acknowledge the hook; that’s a real boost. I’ll work on the dream. The table is necessary, but I can move it around or do something else with it, if need be. This opening has been trading places with two other openings. They all keep shuffling their feet around looking for better places (“Me first!” “No, me first.”) Fractious, them.
Is there any paragraph we writers revise more than the first one? For now, mine is the below. But I think once I get to the end of the novel, I’m likely to go back and revise it.
My training taught me to notice clues—a man whose pupils dilated when I asked if he had a drug problem, a woman who professed to love her husband but didn’t touch him, a boy who insisted he wasn’t angry but clenched his fists throughout our session. But when it came to my own family, I had a blind spot the size of New Jersey. So that spring, when I learned the truth about my parents, it was like whiplash. I never saw it coming.
Hi Maggie! Honestly, I prefer your original opening. This conveys surprise yet, paradoxically, not a sense of urgent importance. It forces the surprise too hard for that.
Got some further thoughts for you, but that’s a separate conversation. Got your e-mail from Lorin, so more later.
Thanks for this post. It’s hard to judge what pulls people in sitting on this side of the page. It’s interesting to read about this perspective on hooks since as a newbie I read all the time about hooks and how vital they are. I love this idea of lulling a reader off into story land. As a former journalist I am so guilty of this cold and reporting approach! Eek!
From my WIP:
The caller ID said ‘unavailable’ and it was perhaps the most appropriate label that existed for Trent. Grace crossed her arms at the phone as if it had been the one to stand her up. He was probably sitting there, grinning, thinking he was so clever. As if anyone else would call this late.
That’s a cute and loaded first line. Grace has something to tell us about Trent, the jerk, so I must say I found myself lulled into her story. Probably better for Trent not to pick up the phone right now, eh?
ha ha, yeah, but in the end she should have gone with her gut and let that sucker ring ;) Thanks for taking the time to read these.
Thanks for such a great post, Don. Last month, Kathryn Craft’s ‘The Power of Unexpected Elements’ made me realize that the first chapter of my WIP was backwards. I’d been sitting on that knowledge ever since though, just working on the rest of the WIP, because I hadn’t figured out exactly how to start it. And now your post has given me another ‘light bulb’ moment for the first paragraphs. I guess I’d be lost without Writer Unboxed!
I’m really enjoying reading everyone’s first lines in these comments, as well. Lots of interesting ideas here.
Awesome, Meghan. Kathryn’s got some great ideas, don’t you think?
Ha! Was just reading through these openings, since mine will soon undergo third draft revising, and was surprised to see my name crop up! Glad you liked the post, Meghan, and this one gives a lot of good for thought, Don!
[Yes, those are definitely my shoes, there in the museum case. Who would have thought I’d be famous for my shoes. And such a sad pair as that. I wore them the day I stepped onto the Titanic and the day I floated free of it, April 15, 1912. As if no-one else ever had shoes!]
Actually, I cheated, that was the third paragraph. The very first line is [I drowned three times. First, in the relentless rain of Ireland, second, in the deep gloom of mourning that settled over my mother, and third, in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.] But I wanted to semi-lull you.
Thanks so much for this post. Openings are torture for me!
Here’s mine:
My impending widowhood was never in doubt. By the time I promised to love, honor, and argue with Carl until death us do part, he had already outlived all doctors’ predictions. Since then, I’d been told to ‘prepare myself’ seventeen times. Upon hearing the news, I invariably turned to Carl and said, “Don’t you dare.”
“Well, there you have it, then,” he’d tell the doctor before offering a wry smile, closing his eyes, and commencing an internal battle of wills against the infection that gnawed at his bones. Sometimes it took days to overcome, sometimes months; he always won.
I’d tethered myself to a porous anchor, though, and all the ropes and knots in the world were no match for erosion. We both knew he’d eventually disintegrate.
That is a hook opening, but what a hook! I don’t think it illustrates the principle I’m discussing today, but I certainly would read on. For a bit.
Agreed. Whatever principle it illustrates, I’d sure read more. For me, a strong character opening.
Thanks! It swiftly transforms into actual story.
I love this — especially the idea of being tethered to a porous anchor. Fantastic!
“The narrator is in no hurry to start the story.”
I appreciate this observation, especially in light of our monthly Flog a Pro exercises. There’s a tension between being lulled into another state of mind in a first page and getting straight to the action in the first page, which is more of what it seems is looked for in Flog a Pro. I like being lulled, provided the voice is engaging in some way. Just a whisper of a hint at the story to come is enough for me, as long as the voice is there, setting some sort of scene or just evoking some kind of feeling.
Yet the pressure of that first page when we write is strong. You’re competing with too many other entertainment options. Gotta hook ’em. Easiest way to do that? Tease plot somehow. Say something intriguing about a character or relationship. Peer critique often reinforces this, with all of us trading the same advice over and over again, not always stopping to consider if that advice is best for this story. In a recent critique workshop, I had mostly positive reactions to the following opening, but there were still a number of people who wanted something else established first (setting was a main complaint). Your first sentences can’t do everything. And as I read critique of (and added my critique to) many other writers’ openings, it became clear that if we all took everyone’s advice, all our openings would sound the same and say nothing interesting whatever!
Anyway, here’s my first page and a half (a little over 500 words), trying to set a tone and a hook:
The summer you chopped off all your hair I asked your dad what the point of being a novelist was. He said it was to tell the truth, which I thought was a pretty bullshit answer.
“Nothing you write is real,” I said. “You tell stories about made-up people in made-up places with made-up problems. Essentially, you’re a professional liar.”
“Oh, Kendra,” he said, just like he said “Oh, Cami” any time you did something stupid you knew would get you in trouble. “You know better than that.” Then he started typing again, as if that had settled things.
I do know better now. In ideal conditions, a work of fiction does tell the truth. Probably your dad knew when he’d hit on it, the same way he’d know if he got stung by a bee. For me it was more like the mosquito I didn’t know to slap until I was scratching at an angry red welt behind my knee.
And by then, it was too late.
There was a lot I didn’t know then. Maybe it should have been obvious. There was a lot you didn’t know either. Which is why I’m telling you now, though I know you’ll never read this. One thing I know for sure is that I was lying to myself about why I decided to spend last summer back up on Hidden Lake. Which makes perfect sense in hindsight. After all, novelists are liars.
I told myself it was for Grandpa. He willed the cabin to me, which you would have known if you’d been at the funeral. And if you’d been there, I would have forgiven you on the spot. But when I searched the crowd for your oil slick hair, all I saw were the dull grays and browns and blondes of my European kin.
Anyway, it wasn’t Grandpa. It was the letter. One letter. Out of all the reviews and emails and tweets, one letter had worked its way into my psyche like a splinter digging into the soft flesh beneath my fingernail.
Maybe it was because the writer hadn’t had the courage to sign his name—it had to be a him. Maybe it was because it had been mailed directly to me rather than forwarded on from my publisher, which could only mean that the writer either knew me personally or had done a bit of stalking in order to retrieve my address. Either possibility set me on edge. It hurt to think of any of my friends calling me a hack or liar. But to think of a total stranger taking the trouble to track me down in order to criticize my debut novel gave me the absolute creeps.
The letter was the real reason for moving into the cabin for the summer. Both to take myself out of harm’s way, should Anonymous turn out to be some sort of whacko who might one day break in and hack me to death with my own butcher knife, and also to investigate if any of its wild claims were true. After all, it’s hard to be told in so many words that you’re the antagonist of your own story.
Yes, I fully expect Ray to weigh in–and I see his comment coming up next!
So here’s what happened when I read your voice-saturated, hook heavy, intriguing, Holden Caulfield-like opening: The first few paragraphs grabbed me, but by the time I hit “I told myself it was for Grandpa” I found myself drifting away from the page. I lost interest. As I said, the intrigue of a hook is impossible to sustain.
Sharp writing, I have to say. Great voice, and I like the narrative address to another character. I just wish I was more effectively lulled into the story dream.
Yeah…I’m not sure just how to do that at this point.
Okay, I’ll bite. The opening paragraph from the WIP:
I hate to admit this, but there are times when my natural cat modus operandi—you know, I-am-an-independent-entity-who-doesn’t-give-a-meow-what-you-think—is, shall we say, less than productive. Like tonight, when Meg let me out for a prowl. She ruffled my fur and said, “Be careful, Patch. They say a coyote never met a cat it didn’t like.” What did I do? Roll my eyes.
What? I get to flog the flogger? Happy day!
I think this works because the way it introduces what is important for us to know is sneaky.
What’s lulls us is not the disdainful cat voice, nor the hungry coyote that may be outside, but what is important for us to know: Patch is not as satisfied with his (her?) independence as we might expect.
I like it. Here’s my thirty cents.
Whew!
Thank you for this opportunity, Don!
It was morning when mother and daughter began digging the hole. They’d worked up a sweat and shed their coats, but with the work nearly finished, the November sun was setting and a chill had crept in. They looked at each other across the gap in the ground, but there was no acknowledgement of a job well done, just a silent agreement that it was deep enough.
Oh, I like that.
Oh, that’s a grabber! I’d definitely read on, though with a caution: the intrigue you’ve created isn’t going to last long. I’m jolted rather than lulled.
That’s not wrong, I’d just say be aware: I’m not yet sunk in your story’s dream.
Thank you, perhaps if I included a bit more to the section I submitted.
It was morning when mother and daughter began digging the hole. They’d worked up a sweat and shed their coats, but with the work nearly finished, the November sun was setting and a chill had crept in. They looked at each other across the gap in the ground, but there was no acknowledgement of a job well done, just a silent agreement that it was deep enough.
The daughter reached for her jacket but her mother stopped her, “Blood seeped through. Just burn it.”
The John Deere sat under the low hanging limbs of the peach trees, safeguarding its appalling load. Backs aching, they walked to the tractor and the mother cut the rope with the sharpened blade of a Swiss Army knife. The rug-wrapped body dropped to the ground.
This has gone through numerous rewrites, but because it deals with political and historical obsessions, watching and surveillance both in the past and the present. I thought it would be best to have my MC’s guardian angel open the story. His role as an Abraham Lincoln Brigades veteran and blacklisted screenwriter is big part of the story.
This in essence is the prologue that sets the tone of the story.
Okay, big breath…
The Lower Eastside, November 2008
I am watching you. I have been for a long time.
You sit in the redwood gazebo in the small, neighborhood park that preserves the memory of the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, glancing over your shoulder, you notice the two men in dark overcoats sitting at the plaza across the street. A sigh escapes from your lips as you contemplate your decision.
I am tempted to make my presence known. However, the time isn’t right to offer my counsel. Soon I will be there to guide you. To be your confidant. Your friend.
We are kindred spirits—you and I—no matter how far we’ve been kept apart by decades, distance, and death.
We are fellow travelers—comrades.
You scan the horizon. It is a typical New York winter; the sky is flat, gray-white.
It looks like it might snow.
And you remember.
A day so much like today—a cold Sunday with a flat, gray-white sky.
It’s 1980: Israel and Egypt established diplomatic relations. President Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics. The US minimum wage was $3.10.
Yet, none of this mattered because you were only ten-years-old.
What mattered was the story your grandfather told you that day and how one man’s name would change the course of your life.
Great opening lines, but I must say I quickly lost interest. That’s a disappointment because your story idea and choice of guardian angel POV are so cool.
There’s a lot of information here but less sense that there is something that we urgently need to understand. I’d trade a lot of the intrigue for a little bit of what truly matters in this moment to this angel.
Thank you! You confirmed what I’ve been feeling after the last Uncon. Back to the drawing board!
Great post on casting that spell!
Here’s my opening. And I’m terribly self conscious of opening with the weather. How many times have I been told not to?
It began like any other monsoon afternoon in July. The heavens opened and washed everything clean, but the earth couldn’t contain it, so abundantly the rain fell. Rivulets formed into the dirt as we waited to board the school bus home. I could only think of sheltering my new books, so buttoned my raincoat over my canvas satchel. I lifted my face upwards to enjoy the refreshing sheets of warm rain.
Nice rainy opening–with books!–and yet I’m not lulled into the story dream. Not yet.
Thanks for this post Don. I believe in the power of opening lines not just for the start of a book, but the start of every chapter. Better yet, why not cultivate such spells throughout a scene. At least, that’s the intention I bring to my WIP. If the reader can feel a shiver of wonder at some point every page turn, and not only renew their interest in the story they are trusting me to tell, but deepen that interest as well, then I’ll consider my job done.
My opening line in my WIP, at least this for this draft:
“In the last three years, Jak grew ever more curious about the woman who had burned before his eyes.”
A definite hook, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
This is probably too late now, but I’ll add it here for the sake of those reading these comments. I wanted you to know your comment really got me thinking about my opening. Most likely, the 1800 word start of that draft can be cut and worked in (where relevant) as backstory. I zipped ahead to where the scene actually springs to action and I’m curious if this is more of a lull:
***
The nights this last week, as they crossed a forested grassland called Hallow Field, were beginning to feel like winter nights, even though it was still a few weeks until the festival of harvest. The short, pale grasses shimmered with frost when the dawn’s first grays crept over the world, and the wind that gusted over the rolling terrain invaded Jak’s bedroll, keeping him awake to brood.
Today they’d made their camp in a wide glade, surrounded by crouching boulders with mossy hides. As Jak reflected on his life behind and the hope he refused to let go of, the sun sank into the stunted treetops and he ate a stick of salted mutton flank and brown Nymyran cheese, attempting to spy on his guardian Barrik, for once more, the man met with the hooded stranger, this time in a nearby clearing.
It was the third night in a row now they’d met, and Jak wondered who the stranger might be. This person—man or woman, Jak could only guess—was tall, but slumped on the right side, as though nursing a wound in the midsection. They spoke too low for Jak to hear what they were saying, but he kept stealing furtive glances in their direction.
Some wonderful food for thought here, Donald (and some wonderful openings in the comments). I’ve always understood the importance of an opening passage, but hadn’t looked at it from this angle. VERY helpful.
As for my own WIP opening, it’s not ready for primetime, so I won’t be sharing it until I’ve turned the “Suck” dial down a few more notches!
Welcome, Keith.
There’s a “suck” dial?
I’ll throw mine out as well.
“It really wasn’t a proper paranorm party until a troll took a dump in the middle of the room. Or blood was spilled. The great cavern was huge, but distance couldn’t protect the throng from the tear-inducing odor of the steamer in their midst, yet they stood in thrall as two males stalked each other in a circle. Blood always won out with this crowd, but times were changing—brut force and savagery could no longer be the norm, not if the paranormal world wanted to reveal their existence to the flighty humans and survive.”
A definite hook, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Thanks, Don. I’ll work on that!
Thank you so much for this post, and for the opportunity to test out our work! You are a generous, generous soul. I was Flogged for the opening of my previous WIP and it was instrumental in getting me to stop the start-cute. Anyway, here is the beginning of my current WIP:
David was the one thing no good Israelite ever was: alone. He had no mission. No orders. No flock to care for—either human or animal. No home he could return to.
And no options.
Saul’s men were probably waiting for him in Bethlehem, so he couldn’t go back to his father.
His great-grandmother Ruth had been a Moabitess, so he could head east and throw himself on the mercy of their king. David snorted. How ridiculous would he sound: “I’m a twenty-year-old nobody from nowhere with nothing to offer you, but my god told me I’m going to be king of Israel someday, so I need protection because the current king is trying to kill me.”
Throw him in a cave with other howlers at the moon, more likely.
Too bad Jonathan was in Naphtali. David obviously couldn’t hide out with him in the royal quarters, but skipping out on his best friend without a word felt more wrong than leaving his own wife behind.
Strong voice here, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
I guess I can’t post today. I’ve tried a few times and it’s not showing
‘I drowned three times. First in the relentless rain of Ireland, second, in the deep gloom that settled over my mother, and third, in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.’
Maybe this second paragraph will now post
[Yes, those are definitely my shoes, there in the museum case. Who would have thought I’d be famous for my shoes. And such a sad pair as that. I wore them the day I stepped onto the Titanic and the day I floated free of it, April 15, 1912. As if no-one else ever had shoes!]
Veronica, I took a look and found the spam filter got overzealous. I approved one of your comments.
Don, you may have to scroll up a bit to find it or you’ll overlook her accidentally.
Thanks Kim. I’ve been trying to send the second paragraph but had no luck.
I found that one in the trash! I’ve approved it. Since I have physically approved a couple of comments, hopefully that will solve the glitch. This sometimes happens, even with people who comment daily. Obviously the system is glitchy today! So sorry!
Hi Veronica – I’m having the same problem. Are there any characters I should avoid to get round the spam filters? I’ve used asterisks, might that be affecting the post?
Hi Sam,
Sometimes comments need to be approved. I’m hopeful all’s well now!
Sam,
I found your comment in the trash, not spam. Once in a while there’s a glitch in the system. I’ve had my comments end up in there before on occasion and I’m an assistant editor! I approved it. Hopefully that alone will instruct the spam monster to quit biting!
A definite hook, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Hi Don, I cannot tell you how many times I have changed it. This one has some backstory and I was warned away from it. Your thoughts. Thanks.
When Ella married David Singleton she had never seen a real marriage.
Parental death, some botched trick, was her singular childhood experience. One day her father, a not-so-familiar presence, was alive, the next day he’d vanished. She did have her taciturn mother, Cecile, but no memories of two people pressed together in a kiss, of bedroom doors closed to suppressed laughter or whispered arguments.
Life was an angry slap: the cavernous house of thick rugs and heavy furniture, the thudding of the grandfather clock when the pendulum descended—why had he left her? Was the answer hidden, like a game, a mystery she was charged to solve? While Cecile napped Ella searched closets and drawers, uncertain of what she was looking for—the house curtains now permanently closed, allowing only narrow knives of sunlight to slice through.
“Find something to do.” Cecile. All day. Every day.
Ella found the cracked and abandoned foundation across her backyard. She found tender breezes and the neighborhood kids playing there. And during high school, she found and eventually married David Singleton, who encouraged her desire to follow the specter of her father into medicine.
The two welcomed each day with a kiss and steaming coffee, ignoring guidance the past might offer—theirs being a love blinded to family history which is rarely able to affect a lover’s choice. Instead, the future was malleable and shiny bright. If a problem arose, they’d acknowledge it and adjust. “We have a situation,” David might say, Ella’s face registering concern while he revealed her car had a flat tire or three-year-old Sarah had vomited her breakfast—the plan for the day stolen. But her consistent reply was reassuring: “We’ll figure it out. Things will be okay.” This was minor stuff.
Nice writing, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Thank you for the post and the chance, Donald…
I remember being especially spell-bound by George Garrett’s opening for Entered From the Sun (Laughing aloud, he turned away from laughing faces and the noise of voices, all of them talking again all at once…). It is the rhythm, I think, and the vivid image. But then again, George Garrett was a poet…
That said, I take a deep breath, and… here is my beginning-in-progress:
“You are a fool.” The old eyes, glittering from amidst a ruin of creased paint, rake Ned head to toe. “A handsome fool – but a fool nonetheless.”
Ned bows, uncertain. Answer quickly and to the point, instructed the harried Maid of Honour now mounting silent guard behind the Queen. Never contradict Her Majesty, say nothing foolish. All of it excellent counsel – but what do you say, that is neither contrary nor foolish, when Gloriana herself calls you a fool?
“Your Majesty,” is what he settles for, still bent in his best non-stage bow, eyes on the matting of woven rushes.
The Queen rattles an impatient sigh, and “Rise, rise, Master Alleyn,” she commands, to the tapping of beringed fingers on the chair’s arm.
Two words, and I already made her cross. Ned straightens, and finds the magpie gaze still fastened on him, though not half unkind.
And then, thinking perhaps she has not discomposed him enough, “A fool, malcontent with what he has made of himself,” the Queen says. “Angling for the Mastership of our Bears.”
Nice writing, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Thank you for this post! In my last WIP, I was struggling with the opening sentences. Then I read Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. Even though the novel itself didn’t appeal to me in the end, I’m happy I read it because her very first sentence unlocked so much for me in how to write that very first line. Now I’m working on my next WIP, and I’m trying to return to the epiphany that Groff gave me. So, challenge accepted. These are my opening lines:
“They arrived in Yesh with nothing to go on but an address scribbled on a piece of paper and vague instructions about what they were supposed to do once they got here. Fourteen days of crossing the Kemet desert, and it was with a sense of trepidation that Lara greeted the sight of the city in the distance, rising out of the sand. Tired to the bone after scaling the massive dunes on foot, for a moment she doubted her senses, afraid that the city outline was yet another mirage playing tricks on her.”
Nice writing, nice setting, yet not quite the opening “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Thank you for the feedback! “Nice” writing is a problem I keep having because I get it a lot in the feedback I receive. It’s nice but it doesn’t drag the reader in.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on all the spells the words…once upon a time…have cast over readers. I will remember this way of approaching openings for whichever audience I’m trying to reach. I’m currently working on my fourth book in a middle-grade mystery series but am also starting the process of an adult novel written under a pen name. First time I’ve confessed this to anyone! Love reading through the WIP openings and comments.
Yes, interesting to peer at openings through a different lens, isn’t it?
Read “Emotional Craft of Fiction” in January and am now finishing “Writing 21st Century Fiction”…I enjoy adding your books to my writing inspiration bookshelf. Thanks!
I’ve started this middle grade novel in so many different ways:
Mom swears she knew I was an artist as soon as I used my cute little baby fingers to draw shapes in the spilled spaghetti sauce on my highchair tray. Not only that, she says, I’d scrunch up my eyes, stick out my tongue, and carefully arrange Cheerios into smiles and snowflakes. So adorable.
Dad, however, swears that I was just a typical baby with developing motor skills who loved making a mess with any food that was put in front of me and that Mom was reading way too much into my so-called talents and please drop the subject.
But I swear that as soon I began to use crayons instead of sauce, I could feel something much-more-than-typical flickering around inside of me. Something special and electric that I couldn’t quite name.
It just took someone else to finally name it.
Strong voice here, very strong, and a promising tease, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
*Takes deep breath* This is the first time I’ve put my writing into the public domain:
‘A friend of mine is a police officer in a unit dealing with cyber-crime and child pornography. I always wondered how he felt having to watch endless hours of sickening video evidence. Now I know.’
‘No-one said it was easy but someone has to do it,’ replied Kiera, checking her watch in order to make another entry in the log.
In the valley below another shot rang out and further screaming ensued.
‘Vraiment? Tell me – how does watching this achieve anything? See what they do now.’ Pasquale, her French comrade, thrust a pair of binoculars at her.
There’s promise in this opening yet I’m unsure of the POV. I see the situation but don’t feel the protagonist.
Hi, Don: Hope you are still in your pajamas. Wonderful post, here’s my latest first attempt at a new genre.
The sea was dusted with moonlight and all was calm on the high moor. A lone shepherd sat dozing in the lee of an ancient stone cross. He came alert as Dash, his herding dog, growled and began to harry the flock into a tight huddle. The shepherd was puzzled, he could hear or see nothing amiss and yet…he knew Dash was a wily old dog, sensing danger before his master. Overhead, the hunting bats suddenly wheeled as one and headed towards the deep crevices beneath the ruins of a Roman watch tower on the edge of the cliff. And the feathered and furred creatures from tree and burrow fled inland,
Fear holding him fast to the weathered stone beside him, the shepherd crossed himself as a shooting star flared then split into three shards that lit the night like day then shot apart and fell to earth. In the forest, a lone wolf called a warning to its brethren as the wind rose and a wave curled high and gathered strength as if by a mighty force. It slammed into the cliff face, cleaving through it like a mighty axe. The ground beneath the shepherds feet shook and the rock rang like a mighty bell and Dash huddled into his side. As the wave retreated, a jagged spear of lightning split asunder an ancient oak and acorns scattered far and wide. Then all became still.
That’s a reportorial opening, vivid for sure, yet it’s cold, strictly visual, and not really putting me under a spell.
Thanks, Don. Yes I see what you mean. The shepherd scene was a means to explain how the valley came to be many years before the story. I’ll go back to the keyboard and try again.
Do comments show up immediately or are they moderated first? This is the first time I’ve tried to post in the group and it’s not showing?
Hi Sam,
Sometimes comments need to be approved. I believe all’s well now!
Brin
Thanks Brin :-)
I approved yours, Sam. Not sure what happened there!
*Takes deep breath.* This is the first time I’ve put my writing into the public domain:
‘A friend of mine is a police officer in a unit dealing with cyber-crime and child pornography. I always wondered how he felt having to watch endless hours of sickening video evidence. Now I know.’
‘No-one said it was easy but someone has to do it,’ replied Kiera, checking her watch in order to make another entry in the log.
In the valley below another shot rang out and further screaming ensued.
‘Vraiment? Tell me – how does watching this achieve anything? See what they do now.’ Pasquale, her French comrade, thrust a pair of binoculars at her.
Nice action, catchy topic, yet that spell I’m looking for isn’t quite here.
Thanks Donald, your two books (21st century fiction and Emotional Craft) arrived today. I shall read, digest and try again!
I saw him looking at me again and this time I impulsively said “Hi” before I slid into a maelstrom of giggling freshmen girls. No boy, no matter how tall, dark, and handsome would dare intrude.
After that, I saw him everyday.
What we’re getting here is what’s different, a change in this narrator’s life is beginning, which is close to what I’m talking about today, though not quite it.
I’d read on a bit further but know that curiosity will dim.
Don,
Thanks for this opportunity. I’ve long thought WU should have a dedicated page to this subject, a place to present and receive feedback.
Here’s mine:
The note looked innocent enough. Simple cardstock, folded once with care. The woman Wade brought up from the foreigners lounge saw it first, lying inside the door when he opened his hotel room. Laughing, she held it behind her for the ransom of a kiss and after he paid, they both wanted more. But what he read stunned him and as he weighed his options, her patience crumbled. Moments later, with her fury in his ears, he trotted down the worn marble staircase, crossed the lobby and headed into Warsaw’s unlit streets.
Nice writing, intriguing, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Terrified. Completely. The opening of my WIF:
Dashing up the lane in his racing sulky, he whipped the standardbred in a manner I found most distressing. I stood to the side of the window, concealed by the lace curtain, so that if he glanced up he wouldn’t see me gazing down from our bedroom. Askew in the sulky, he snapped the horsewhip, altogether missing the steed’s flank.
I trembled, as fear inched up my back and crept down my arms like hundreds of tiny pins prickling my skin. A foreboding clenched at my stomach.
Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself for his imminent arrival. I spied the letter opener, which lay upon my dressing table. I placed it in the waistband of my skirt, but then thought the better of it and returned it to its place on the table. Slight of stature, I’d be no match for his brawn. If he managed to grab the instrument from me, there was no telling what might happen. Best to leave it. A wave of nausea swept over me.
I again peered out the window and broke into a cold sweat, shivering, my heart pounding in my chest. With the sulky fast approaching the hitching post, I knew I didn’t have enough time to bar the front door.
Oops, I see how nervous I was. WIP! WIP!
The emotions are a bit purple, the situation is intriguing, this is certainly strong POV writing, and yet is it lulling me into the story dream? Not entirely. The plot tension is solid, yet beyond that what is it about horse, letter, or arriving brute that is important for us to understand?
Thank you so much for your comments, Donald Maass. If I’d shared more of the opening, the answers to “what is it about horse, letter (opener), or arriving brute that is important for us to understand?” followed shortly thereafter… :-)
The storm bore down on us all day and struck at night. It blew all night, all the next day, and most of the next night. The Red Queen was six weeks out of London, two weeks from Philadelphia, and a week away from anywhere else. She had sailed this route scores of times, and she had weathered gales before.
But I had not.
The ship pitched and yawed whilst I waited in my tiny cabin—really a closet—for the whoosh and tilt and drip to end. There is nothing so great as the ocean and nothing so small upon it as a person aboard a wooden ship.
On deck, sailors thumped and shouted. Ropes creaked. The tempest shoved the ship like a child pushing a toy. I threw out a hand to stop myself crashing into the hull. Just the thickness of a plank away, the sea growled like a living thing hungry for bodies to swallow down into the deep.
Nice writing, I’m seasick, yet not quite the “lull” that I’m discussing today.
Don:
Boy, did you set yourself for a loooooonnnnnggggg day.
Anyway, here goes:
Dearest Mattie:
Be forewarned, my news is not good.
I killed a man, and but for luck would have killed another, for which it now appears I will likely be hanged.
(I’ll stop there.)
Huge hook. Very strong. Definitely buys more attention from me. But the once-upon-a-time lull–? That grabber isn’t meant to work in that way, ask me.
Don, I love the “dream with me” invitation you’ve explained so well here. I fear my opening clatters with too many literary hammers and nails, but this is it:
Pinky DeVroom, in his cups, stared into his brandy. His lips appeared to be having a complex argument, flexing and jutting without a clear rhythm. The argument’s fulcrum was the removal of his characteristic sneer, but the pivot was coming to rest: the sneer won.
The sneer had never been shy of like company on Pinky’s face. But he had to try, didn’t he? You have to practice something to get good at it, correct? So he’d been practicing various smiles—a winsome grin, a lopsided smirk, a publicity-shot starburst—for the past hour at the bar, but every effort made his face feel like a thing possessed. Blessedly, The Shrub had no mirror behind the bar—Pinky was sure his conjured rictuses made him look like he was being garroted with piano wire.
You like words! Pinky’s grin is making me wince, but this approach to the opening is missing the spell magic, ask me. What if you had started simply with this:
“Pinky knew it was important to get his grin right. You had to practice.”
See? Now there’s a sense of importance, which is the main ingredient in the spell.
Thanks Don—that’s an economical (and impactful) way to begin.
Eek! Here goes…
Ingrid pulled at the straps of her backpack to ease the weight and sighed. “Come on, Essie.” The rest of the team was already boarding, but her daughter was making typically adolescent farewells, hugging her friends as though this was a permanent move to the other side of the planet rather than just a two-week survey trip.
Three hovercraft sat at the edge of the city where the paved streets gave way to fields of Earth crops. The green farmland in turn gave way to the rusty orange of native scrub and, farther on, the dull golden plains that stretched west to the horizon. The colors were muted in the dawn light, but it was bright enough for Ingrid to see Mariana waving them toward the vehicles. Mari wasn’t really in charge, but she was as bossy as ever.
Ingrid shook her head. Maybe that wasn’t fair. As the future mayor of the settlement they were scouting for, Mari probably had the most at stake. Ingrid only had to worry about assessing the water at the candidate sites—well, that and whether Essie’s behavior was going to make things with Ingrid’s one-time friend even more tense.
I love the setting yet the spell magic isn’t there. You set up the situation, intro your character and her task, yet for all that I don’t know what’s personally important for us to know. If you see the difference.
Thank you! I was afraid of that, and while it’s disappointing, it’s also good to know my instinct was on target. Back to work on it, then.
As always, with every post from you, my pen magically moves across my notebook. Thank you, Don. Here is my opening…
I have prepared for this year all my life, a primordial fate once hidden under a melting sheet of ice; now cracked, the rushing river underneath sweeps me off my feet and threatens all I once called mine.
I made it to another Friday; it’s 4:00 a.m. and as with every morning after waking up two hours before my alarm, I get up, splash water on my sunken eyes, and swallow something for my throbbing head before stumbling downstairs to feed my dog and cat. Coffee is first; I add the filter, two tablespoons of ground Starbucks Verona and six cups of water. As I wait for the magic that is coffee, I check my email and Facebook to see if something has changed since 11:00 p.m. Black Friday sales are coming early but otherwise nothing. The coffee pot beeps and the sound of hot liquid pouring into my cup whispers that I can do this thing I have to do today, unbearable even one month ago, yesterday; any earlier would have killed me, but I feel mostly dead anyway, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
“I have prepared for this year all my life…”
Yes! The spell is weaving with those words. I wish that what followed kept the spell working. Alarm, dog and cats, coffee, Facebook, feeling dead…the routine morning business deflates the magic, IMHO.
Ha! Yes, I can see how it looks like I’m talking about every morning… but it does continue, it’s every morning since the bottom dropped out.
However, I want to spin a magic dome over the story so I will keep working on it. Thank you so much for reading and giving me, all of us, feedback. : )
It’s always a treat to see a post from you Don. Interesting perspective on the hook today. Here is my first public roll of the dice with a WIP.
On a billboard where I live in Paris, a man slaps his forehead as if recalling a past moment or period of time. His expression lingers between anguish and joy. The words read: “Si t’as pas de nostalgie, t’as pas de memoire.” If you have no nostalgia, you have no memory.
I know about nostalgia. It’s a stone pressing on my chest, crushing the present out of me. I fear I’ll become a martyr to it until all that is left of me is a small, hard lump on a desiccated pile of bones, a pile that I’ll continue to pick through for shreds of a previous life.
So I’ve decided to exorcise this nostalgia, and if that means losing a little memory, that will be fine. Outside, the Eiffel Tower looms and the Seine serpentines through the medieval heart of Paris and the Parisians with their dogs and baguettes pass through my life like shadows. And all the while, I’m still in Japan.
Wonderful writing, and a nice hook in the final line. While I’m enchanted by the voice, here, I’m not yet under the story’s spell. Can you see why? It’s descriptive of a character’s state of mind without making it matter, ask me.
Thanks for the feedback, Don. I get it. Loved reading the contributions and your trenchant observations.
“It’s descriptive of a character’s state of mind without making it matter, ask me.”
Already replied, and perhaps you meant I should ask myself….but since you have instructed me to ask you, I will. Why doesn’t it matter? Does the character’s state of mind not lead to any questions that carry the reader on?
The character’s stated state of mind tells us that she’s going somewhere. “So I’ve decided to exorcise this nostalgia.” That leads us on but that is not the same thing as causing us to feel that the journey matters.
Many thanks for the follow-up and for the time! And great question (always)…why does the journey matter? I have very much appreciated the chance to get a little piece of my writing in front of your editorial eye!
Wonderful insight! Thank you, Don.
Here’s the opening of my MG WIP:
I couldn’t eat my best friend, even if she was a chicken. After she stopped laying eggs, Mama cooked her, and I chose an empty stomach.
Ha! Nice hook. The chicken is important, too, enough to refuse to eat it. I’d like to find out why and I also know the narrator cares. So, yes, a bit of a spell being woven here. Not strong yet, but getting there.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
I saw a ghost. She appeared from the sea of faces in the theatre, yanked me out of the grave, and thrust me back into life. The years dropped away and I was sixteen and in love. Delirious. Terrified. On the brink of a precipice.
“The gods themselves do weep.”
The cue brought me back to the action onstage. Almost. It was hard to breathe. It couldn’t be her, yet I couldn’t restrain the wild hope that consumed me.
Years of discipline came to my aid, and as Cleopatra I responded with my lines. The counterfeit asp struck its fatal blow on my breast and I slid to my knees in the throes of apparent agony, poisoned.
I collapsed to the floor and lay motionless on the stage. Dead.
Great voice, wonderful opening situation, definitely leads me onward. I dearly wish that opening line, “I saw a ghost”, carried greater significance somehow. The ghost of–?
Thanks, Don. The ghost she thinks she sees is that of her dead first love. My concern with putting more was that I would bog it down with too much.
I suppose I could simply say – I saw Danni’s ghost, though simply using a name may not bring enough significance.
I’ll tinker with it and see if I can bring the significance without adding any excess baggage…
Thank you – your posts always jump start my writing!
“Before the prop asp struck my chest and I died on stage, I saw Danni’s ghost. Death is not final, it seems. Cleopatra, and Danni, would always have another show.”
Something like that?
So interesting…I thought of changing the first line to, “I saw Danni’s ghost,” and leaving the rest the same. In your example of Cora and Caesar you said we knew she was important because of his urgency, and I thought that might work here.
However, I like what you did, also. It’s an approach I hadn’t considered.
Thanks for the additional feedback, I appreciate it.
My opening paragraph:
‘When my doorbell rang I had no idea it meant that someone was about to die. ‘
And my favourite opening line:
‘The goats were poor travelling companions.’
From ‘The Lights of Skaro’ by David Dodge, 1954
Great hook, even if not exactly a spell caster.
I can’t imagine this is spellbinding but I’m interested in your take.
It was the morning of the annual Hermitage Trust Foundation Fundraiser, the event where William Prelioux would debut his new wife, Amelia. Whether she was accepted or rejected by Prosperity’s high society, there was no going back, and there was never any going home.
Everyone who was anyone would be there and Amelia’s job was to prove she belonged, but belonging in Prosperity was a fickle prospect, especially for a girl who’d never worn heels. As she dressed in the clothes her husband had laid out on the four-columned, Roman-inspired bed—white silk dress with a skinny black belt, a feathered hat, and a pair of black and white striped pumps—her dead grandmother’s words carouselled through her mind: Money don’t make class, how you treat others, that’s class.
Approaching this more tightly from Amelia’s POV would help weave the spell. Maybe…
“Amelia was an imposter in a white dress. She’d never worn heels so high or felt so low. Her grandmother’s words haunted her: Money don’t make class. No, definitely not.”
Okay, not loving that, but do you see the difference? Your passage as written describes Amelia’s situation. My clumsy take goes to her feelings, which perhaps hints more at what this evening means, not to her husband but to her. Does that make sense?
Yes. This is my hardest chapter because I have to introduce a whole cast of characters. It’s possible I need to start at the event, casting Prosperity itself as a character. Very tricky…
William is my Henry Higgins and is very much included in the cast, but Amelia is my leading lady.
The first few lines of my fantasy WIP, which is actually about a storyteller, called Tales of Uncle. So it’s full of stories being told, in a variety of styles. Those tales are embedded in an outer story, of which this is the beginning.
“It would have been easier if his opponent had been some giant hulking brute, scaly, stinking and armored, a battle-axe in one hand and a warhammer in the other. This was worse, far worse.
She was six. “
Ha! Great hook. Not exactly what I’m discussing today but awfully sweet.
That’s the opening of the book. Every other chapter is a story about Uncle, which begin with some variation on ‘this is what happened’. Each story has a different style, depending on who the MC is telling it to, a six-year-old girl (“Tarkas bounced down the stony hillside, coming to rest at last on a boulder at the bottom.”) or a dying soldier (“Tarkas once knew a creature with five arms. He did not know it long, or particularly well. But he knew it, and that was enough.”). One is a mystical vision (“The room was blue and silent, and the lights bounced. He could be in the water now. Yes. The ripples were the surface, and he was looking up at them, as Tarkas had, at the air and the sunlight, at the…bottom of boats? Yes, boats. “), some were memories (“That day was not like any other, even from the very start. The day that we, the clan NarGiste, returned to Querdishan and resumed our lives.”).
What a great post! Thank you for putting into words what my writerly little heart needed to hear today! Here’s the start of my middle grade WIP:
It was eight o’clock in the morning on July thirteenth, my mother’s birthday. I peeked through the sheets hanging on the line, careful not to touch them; Gram would kill me if I got the laundry dirty. My eye was on Mrs. Eskew next door. She was dishing out what looked like left-over scrambled eggs into a chipped dish on her back stoop.
“Come ‘ere, Old Tom. Kitty. Kitty.” She clucked her tongue. “Get yer breakfast like a good boy.”
A huge orange-and-white striped tomcat with notched ears and a scarred face emerged from the mulberry bushes by the alley. He eyed Mrs. Eskew carefully, his nose sniffing in the direction of the bowl. His ears flicked back and forth, catching every sound as he mounted the steps.
Mrs. Eskew bent down to scratch his head, her apron dragging the ground. “Long as I got food, old fella, you’ll eat. Deserve a bit of the milk ‘o human kindness and some real milk every now and then, don’t you?”
Old Tom rubbed his cheek against her leg before tucking into the food.
He was thanking her. I knew he was.
My fingers yearned to scratch his head, too. But, Old Tom had no use for anyone other than Mrs. Eskew.
Golly, why don’t you open with this line….
“Old Tom had no use for anyone other than Mrs. Eskew.”
Thank you!
Hey Don – Just a quick note to say how much I love the concept. Spent some time today trying to adopt it for the opening of book two. Not sure I’m there yet, but I love the challenge. I aspire to lull!
It’s been great reading all of these openings today, too. Very helpful day here at WU. Thanks for your generosity. Hope you and yours are well, and work is going smoothly.
Howdy, Vaughn, and thanks!
To everyone: I loved your comments and opening lines as much as Don’s post and his replies. Thanks for being so brave.
With many thanks, Don, for this opportunity. Here’s the most recent variation for the opening of my WiP:
Fingers of cold air embraced Addison McDonel. Go to the hospital?
She reached for the smartphone she had just set on the high-top table, hesitated.
Bells bangled on the door as another customer scurried inside the corner café, the dawn frost eddying into the espresso-scented room. November’s anemic sunrise peered through floor-to-ceiling windows.
There’s action here but, for me, little sense of the character. We’re not inside her or immediately sunk in her apprehension of her world.
Thank you, Don. More work to be done. As ever!
She didn’t remember when she gave her soul to the devil. But she had. Leaving Trevor behind proved it. Her life, her son, destroyed by no one but her. She started to pull the car from the curb. After these visits with him her empty condo seemed emptier. Without her son the place reminded her of the morgue. Noise and people was what she needed. Turning the car around she headed straight to the casino.
The cheap glitz, the noise, the smoke seeped into her bones, relaxed her. Kyra let out a sigh. She was home and her favorite machine stood empty waiting for her.
From WIP All the Hidden Sins
Thank you for giving everyone this wonderful opportunity. Here’s mine:
Never care for others. One of the many lessons I’d learned as a child, and by far the most important. I settled into a crouch at the base of an enormous container crane as that singular lesson played out in front of me. Proving once again what would happen should I ever let my humanity dictate my actions.
The first three sentences are great, definitely got me in the story’s grip. The fourth sentence, to me, is unnecessary.
Thank you!
Hi Don,
I’ve loved reading all of these. Thank you for doing this!
All best,
Liz
You bet, Liz.
Great post. I’ve been pretty happy with the most recent version of my opening, but now that I’ve read this, I have a few thoughts about how to twist it around. I think the opening *is* quite reportorial, though I’d hoped that the voice would carry enough interest regardless.
Now I’m thinking if there’s a way I can flip the last part up to the top and incorporate more conversation, it might be a fair bit better.
Thanks for the insights, as always!
#
It took an army of women to welcome a soldier back from the dead.
Kit surveyed their efforts, everything laid out across the dining room table in formal order. Tea-cups in precise rows, plates of biscuits all even in shape and shade, and not a fig out of place on the platter of fruit, as if by presenting such neatness they might convince themselves that a world at war was not such a terrible mess after all.
The house fairly seethed with noise and colour and bodies, but the crowd had bustled their way out of this room earlier, and she was left in a sudden lull, gratefully received and desperately needed.
She was almost out of time.
“Katherine.”
She looked up sharply to find her father-in-law at the door. Anxiety for his sons had withered him these past few months, but there was still a spark of the old humour in those kindly eyes. “They’re asking after you.”
She nodded automatically, reaching to smooth her hair, to pat down her apron. “I’ll be right out, Dad.”
When he was out of sight again, she let her breath out. There were people laughing and chattering in the kitchen, in the parlour. None of them invited, but all morning they had been arriving nonetheless, bearing excuses in the form of casseroles, scones, and offers of help. Perhaps three of them had done any real work.
The rest were only here to lay eyes on the first fallen hero to return to home soil, and their excitement bubbled out, pressing against the walls, the ceiling, relentless. Her brother-in-law was their lone island of victory in a vast sea of defeat.
They expected her to feel the same. She had heard it many times today: _You must be so proud!_
She was anything but. She pressed her hands on the lace-clothed table, but she could not seem to stop them trembling. The air had grown too thick. The spring day held altogether too much warmth, oozing down from the ceiling. Too much gossip, too much perfume, too much everything, in anticipation of far too much Len.
Everyone hoped that the next lad to return from the Front would be theirs, not too badly injured. Just enough that they might say he had done his bit, and enough that he need never depart again. She could not agree on any count; she would rather the war be over and her husband returned to her whole and unscathed, exactly as she remembered him when she closed her eyes.
She had harboured no such wishes for his brother.
The opening line is great, as are the next two paragraphs. After that, the passage spins its wheels and I skimmed. Were it me, I would cut from “…desperately needed” to the paragraph beginning “Everyone hoped…”
Try it?
Will do! Thanks a bunch :)
People say I killed the brother of the town’s golden girl and my best friend, Thomas.
Hook opening, an arresting sentence, but there’s no emotional involvement in it and no real story spell, as me.
Didn’t see this post until dinner time in Alaska, but, here’s a shot…
Septan 27
I am so tired, but I can’t lie down. Pain shoots across my back each time my dress pricks at the fresh wounds. Since I can’t sleep, I may as well write. Shall I start with the king’s blind temper, or my stubborn care for a horse?
I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier day to ride in the forest. Prince and Charlie were already tacked, waiting by the pasture gate for the boys to finish their sword practice. Out back, Apple shared my excitement. We’ve been cooped up for months while her ankle healed. She pranced so much I couldn’t get the straps buckled.
Her flank trembled under my hand as I tightened the saddle cinch. She flicked her tail and it bit into my ear. I glanced up past her to where a man swaggered in from the nearest stable. The dust changed direction as Apple’s prance became a nervous pawing. She didn’t know the man any more than I did. That didn’t stop him from calling out to us, though.
“Girl, what are you doing with my horse?”
What’d he mean, his horse? She’s been mine since the day I met her, four years ago. Even the grooms know that—she only lets them come near because of me.
I rubbed her neck to keep her calm. He shouldn’t have come so close.
“Do you even know who I am, girl?” He was a mastiff barking at a little child. “Have you never been in the streets as the king passed through?”
There’s a lot to like here, but (for me) not the flashback framework. Why not launch right into the scene? And start with what matters:
“Since I met her four years ago, the horse Apple had been mine and no one else’s. She especially did not belong to some odious man who called himself the king.”
See what I mean? You can establish the situation and what matters in just a few lines.
Except, technically, everything belongs to the king, and nothing belongs to the peasant girl… Which is why she gets blamed/flogged for the stampede caused by the king’s interference with Apple. Hence, the wounds on her back.
In my heart/mind this story really wants to be written as a journal, but very few people see any potential in that format.
I was hoping there was a bit of “let me tell you a story” feeling to this.
Thank you very much for your feedback. I’ll keep fiddling to make it work. :)
Hi Don,
Thanks for being so generous and giving us all this opportunity!
Here’s ours,
He’s been huddled over his damn keyboard for months. Less than one day left and there’s a serious chance he won’t be ready, so he turns to a time-tested method: ask a brilliant scientist, even if he’s dead.
Al stands up. Straightens the stiff curve in his back and walks, shaking out sore limbs and flicking numb fingers, to the spot on the wall where the photo hangs between an Einstein poster and the clipping of that interview with Turing. His father, Jonah Tock—first scientist to create a successful, fast-learning AI—looks out from the photo, eyes narrowed, deep in thought. “So, Jonah,” Al says. Jonah… Can you call a guy dad who’s been gone since you were two? He’s more like an idea or a dream Al once had. Or maybe the subject of a bio pic, someone you’ve heard stories about all your life but never got to talk to in the flesh. At least in words that stretched more than one syllable long.
If ever I feel tired, drained, uninspired or anything of the sort as it pertains to my writing, I come over here and pull up your latest post. Doesn’t really matter what the subject is, there will be something in it to put the fire back in my fiction. Thank you for being here.
Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Anyone still here?
Wow, that is quite a lot of feedback there, Don. I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get to mine.
I had one character pop in with a strong clear voice and the first thing she said to me felt like an intro so I wrote it down.
“I seen so many funerals in my short life that I stopped taking drugs. I’m one of the lucky ones. Most people seen what I seen, they be taking more drugs.
But not me. No. My counselor says I’m addicted to men. The kinda men that have early funerals.
She thinks she has me all figured out, that priggy bitch. But it ain’t nothing like that. And hearing about what I seen, that ain’t the same as seeing what I seen. It just ain’t the same.”
Anyway, thanks for giving so many the opportunity to share. That is just amazing.
The heaviest rainfall ever recorded for April almost prevented Maggie from attending Bertie’s book and supper club. What a night, forced to drive her dad’s car. His cherished Nash, temperamental even in good weather, gave her problems. Taught to drive behind its steering wheel, she knew its intricacies. Her dad had patiently explained the techniques of driving and went on to teach how to change a tire and replace spark plugs. Bought used in 1944, it was still running after ten years, due to her dad’s constant tinkering. That it had complications did not lessen its value in his eyes. As much as he loved the car, she disliked it, though she had to admit a bit of admiration for the way her dad handled the Nash.
In fact, handling most situations was easy for her dad. Pastor of the local church, he had a reputation for an ability to tackle any problem. Any problem, except for the weather, Maggie thought. She welcomed an excuse to stay home, unsure of what surprise lay in store at Bertie’s. The invitation came with mysterious overtones. But her dad, handing over the keys, had chided, “Why would you want to stay at home Friday night, when you can see old friends?”
Maggie then reminded him, as if he needed a reminder, that the reason she had come home was to look after him and his broken leg. In the end she left him ensconced in his favorite chair, hassock supporting his cast, no doubt using the inconvenience as fodder for his Sunday sermon.
Maggie dashed to the car, wishing her dad could drive. At first the engine refused to start, but then burst into a loud roar, her foot pressed too hard on the gas. She pulled away from the curb with a couple of jolts. Then the wipers took their turn to be obstinate, as Maggie drove through the streets of Greenwood trying to avoid potholes and hitting most of them.
The heaviest rainfall ever recorded for April almost prevented Maggie from attending Bertie’s book and supper club. What a night, forced to drive her dad’s car. His cherished Nash, temperamental even in good weather, gave her problems. Taught to drive behind its steering wheel, she knew its intricacies. Her dad had patiently explained the techniques of driving and went on to teach how to change a tire and replace spark plugs. Bought used in 1944, it was still running after ten years, due to her dad’s constant tinkering. That it had complications did not lessen its value in his eyes. As much as he loved the car, she disliked it, though she had to admit a bit of admiration for the way her dad handled the Nash.
In fact, handling most situations was easy for her dad. Pastor of the local church, he had a reputation for an ability to tackle any problem. Any problem, except for the weather, Maggie thought. She welcomed an excuse to stay home, unsure of what surprise lay in store at Bertie’s. The invitation came with mysterious overtones. But her dad, handing over the keys, had chided, “Why would you want to stay at home Friday night, when you can see old friends?”
Maggie then reminded him, as if he needed a reminder, that the reason she had come home was to look after him and his broken leg. In the end she left him ensconced in his favorite chair, hassock supporting his cast, no doubt using the inconvenience as fodder for his Sunday sermon.
Maggie dashed to the car, wishing her dad could drive. At first the engine refused to start, but then burst into a loud roar, her foot pressed too hard on the gas. She pulled away from the curb with a couple of jolts. Then the wipers took their turn to be obstinate, as Maggie drove through the streets of Greenwood trying to avoid potholes and hitting most of them.
The heaviest rainfall ever recorded for April almost prevented Maggie from attending Bertie’s book and supper club. What a night, forced to drive her dad’s car. His cherished Nash, temperamental even in good weather, gave her problems. Taught to drive behind its steering wheel, she knew its intricacies. Her dad had patiently explained the techniques of driving and went on to teach how to change a tire and replace spark plugs. Bought used in 1944, it was still running after ten years, due to her dad’s constant tinkering. That it had complications did not lessen its value in his eyes. As much as he loved the car, she disliked it, though she had to admit a bit of admiration for the way her dad handled the Nash.
In fact, handling most situations was easy for her dad. Pastor of the local church, he had a reputation for an ability to tackle any problem. Any problem, except for the weather, Maggie thought. She welcomed an excuse to stay home, unsure of what surprise lay in store at Bertie’s. The invitation came with mysterious overtones. But her dad, handing over the keys, had chided, “Why would you want to stay at home Friday night, when you can see old friends?”
Maggie then reminded him, as if he needed a reminder, that the reason she had come home was to look after him and his broken leg. In the end she left him ensconced in his favorite chair, hassock supporting his cast, no doubt using the inconvenience as fodder for his Sunday sermon.
Maggie dashed to the car, wishing her dad could drive. At first the engine refused to start, but then burst into a loud roar, her foot pressed too hard on the gas. She pulled away from the curb with a couple of jolts. Then the wipers took their turn to be obstinate, as Maggie drove through the streets of Greenwood trying to avoid potholes and hitting most of them.
My poor little entry didn’t have enough problems. It tried to up its importance by increasing itself by three. I sometimes have problems with responding and this document is a reminder to edit before pushing send.
Pay attention! I have a story. It’s important. – brilliant! Thank you, Don. Really great thread too, loved reading through everyone’s openings. Thanks everyone for being brave and sharing.
Hello Don,
I read this post early Wednesday morning–just before I had to leave for an out-of-town meeting/training class for my day job. While I’m fairly certain that the window of opportunity you so generously opened is now closed, here’s the opening of my newest WIP…just in case:
When I first saw Henry I thought he looked like a piece of old wood. Everything about him was brown. His thick, cowlicky hair was dusty brown. His sunken, downcast eyes were brown. His glasses were brown. Even his pale, ashy skin had faded brown freckles spattered across his nose.
And his clothes were, of course, brown. Heavy brown plaid shirts weighed on his thin shoulders like a water-soaked towel, and every day he wore brown corduroy pants, secured with a brown belt. He kept his milk money in the left pocket of his pants, and a small tin of aspirin the right pocket, the only kid in school allowed to do so. His corduroys were thick and bulky, and revealed only the ends of the metal braces that caged his scuffed brown shoes.
Henry’s shirt pocket was always bulging with pens and pencils stuffed in a white plastic pocket protector–as bad a social blunder as a bib when you’re eleven. But, the weirdest part of his browness was the briefcase. It was worn and scratched, with a large stitched leather handle at the top and wrapped in two leather straps with metal buckles on one side. As much as the polio had set Henry apart, it was the pocket protector and the briefcase that permanently stigmatized him.
It was the beginning of sixth grade and Henry looked more like a tired, worn-out old man than a kid.
Oh, boy. I wish there was a way to delete a post. Just re-read it, and seeing it in this space has changed my perspective–again. (Why are the beginnings so elusive?) Originally, the last line was the first line, and I’m going back to that version–as soon as I have a large glass of wine and stop cringing. I don’t know what I was thinking, why I re-wrote it, and worse, why I let it appear in public. Sorry.
Shared this opening with a handful of compatriots to widely mixed reviews. Curious to hear from strangers on this extremely cool blog.
————–
The semen-soaked tissue made a flat splat as it hit the water in the fat man’s toilet. He turned, sat and emptied his bowels into the porcelain bowl. Head bowed, elbows on knees, he took a few quick shallow breaths before raising his head like a turtle and gazing at his reflection in the beveled mirror across the narrow hotel bathroom. He stared at the loose flesh drooping around his neck and the man boobs dangling from his chest. Funny thing about redemption, he thought, those who need it most deserve it least. Okay, not so funny maybe.
Neglecting the thick terrycloth robe hanging on a polished wooden hanger in the small closet, “yours for only $185,” he padded naked across the deep carpet of his corner suite and looked out the floor-length window toward the panoramic view of Lake Michigan. The colored lights of the Ferris wheel at the Navy Pier twinkled in slow revolutions, giant hamster conspicuous in its absence. Around the corner, out the other window, he watched the river cut through Chicago and the traffic ebbing and flowing like blood cells pulling and pushing through veins and arteries. Inhale and exhale. Breathe in, breathe out. Rush Street. His reflection in the glass stared back at him, its thin smirk a scar, its eyes empty, deserted.
Great advice once again, Don. As always, you bring out our bravery, so on that note, I’ll throw my hat into the ring.
It’s not until this moment I realise the decisions I make from this point on will not only affect my life but affect the future of everyone, whether I know them or not. With so little of the world population left, civilians need a show of strength to carry them through the hungry nights. I have the ability to provide that strength, but I won’t be alone. I’ll be one of a five, and as a unit, our job will be to maintain peace and deliver hope to a world crippled by a genetically modified pestilence.
Your thoughts on this opening will be appreciated.
I’m revising my WIP ‘again’… I keep drifting back to those first sentences, so this post couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s hard to know how much to include here, so I’ll keep it brief.
When it came to growing grapes, there was only one thing you could be sure of – Mother Nature would always have you by the balls.
Jay Wynter’s eyes flew open seconds before the frost alarm began blaring from his iPhone.
What the hay, here you go….
The message was short: “DB, Highway 99, Marker 35. Same as the others.” I drove to the dump site, pondering how a dead serial killer could be murdering girls again. I knew he was dead, because I killed him. Yet his latest victim waited for me a couple miles up the road.
The newspaper ad was deceptively simple:
One-bedroom Apartment Available
$200 a month for special services rendered.
Lizzy couldn’t believe it. Rent so low in Reaper City was rarer than luck in Louisiana. Maybe the ancient ghost of Madame Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, had finally granted her wish. Pale desperate fingers ran over the small print again and again as if the words might disappear. Hopeful blue eyes peered beneath dyed black hair. Maybe her struggle for survival would pay off.