A Bit About Beginnings
By Margaret Dilloway | May 12, 2017 |
Begin sign, by Jennifer Buys Houses
Last month, I spoke at T. Greenwood’s Novel Writing class at Grossmont College in El Cajon, CA. She asked me to talk about beginnings since that’s what the class was studying.
I thought about what I consider when I begin writing a book. Of course, there’s the important decision of where to start your story within the plot. But what about the micro-beginning, like a first line? I pulled out my books and looked at all my first sentences, wondering if I could find a common thread. I could see one among the women’s fiction.
“I had always been a disobedient girl.” (How to Be an American Housewife)
“For a moment, I think I have made a mistake.” (The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns)
“People in my family are pathologically incapable of asking anyone for help.” Sisters of Heart and Snow (after the prologue)
Each first line somehow encapsulates the character and the theme of the book. I had never thought about that too hard before. It seemed to be something I did without thinking about it.
I looked at my kids’ fantasy book Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters next.
“I shuffle through my notes once, twice, three times, feeling sweat starting to trickle down my sides and from my palms.”
I suppose that first line could be construed as a theme, since the main character spends much of the book being nervous, but I’d also consider that to be a stretch of the imagination. It’s just more descriptive.
Now I was curious. Do other authors have a first sentence like the one I’d noticed? Was I a one-off? I pulled some random books off my shelf to look at their first lines.
“I am a man you can trust, is how my customers view me.” A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler.
“Snowflakes danced through the evening light.” Six Four, Hideo Yokoyama.
“Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.” Night Film, Marisha Pessl.
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston.
Six Four begins with a description. It’s a crime fiction novel. Momotaro is a fantasy and more of a “commercial” novel. Also description.
The others have a more literary bent and their first lines certainly seem to have the quality of encapsulating the novel’s mood or the main character’s essence. So perhaps being more literary is the thread tying them all together.
At the class, I challenged the students to look at their works-in-progress and come up with a first line or two that serves the same purpose. About five were eager to read theirs aloud, and a few made us gasp with their beauty.
Perhaps it doesn’t work with all genres, but if you find your beginning feels a little blah, it’s certainly something you could try. See if it unlocks anything else. Or if it unlocks nothing.
How do you start your stories? Would you try this exercise with your work in progress?
[coffee]
Margaret Dilloway is the author of the new middle grade series MOMOTARO: XANDER AND THE LOST ISLAND OF MONSTERS (Disney Hyperion) and three women’s fiction novels. She lives in San Diego with her family and a big Goldendoodle named Gatsby. She teaches creative writing to middle schoolers and does developmental editing.
Margaret-
I like your first lines! I think each one works for a different reason. May I add to your own self-analysis?
“I had always been a disobedient girl.”
There is first of all a story question: Disobedient…how? There’s also an implication. This narrator will soon be disobedient again. Or maybe will reform? As significantly, though, this narrator speaks with confidence. She presumes that we want to listen. Furthermore, what she has to tell us is important to know if we are to understand her story. Listen! Above all things, this is what you need to see!
“For a moment, I think I have made a mistake.”
This is media res opening. Things are already happening. But what things? Good things? Easy things? Pretty things? Snow falling in the evening light? No. A mistake. Uh-oh. Trouble.
“People in my family are pathologically incapable of asking anyone for help.”
Welcome to this story world. It’s a strange world, or in this case a family, and this is how’s it’s different: no one asks for help. Not only that, this self-sufficiency is sick, a disease, pathological. This world is different, and different in a way that’s both interesting and troublesome.
Listen! You have to understand something! There’s trouble! And watch out, this world is different!
What your opening lines do not do is set the scene, evoke a mood, show us a picture or in any other way lull us into a dream state. They don’t need to. Your story is already underway and you make us leap off an overpass onto the roof of your moving train.
Trouble. What’s important. What’s different. For me, that’s how story begins. Great post, Margaret, thanks.
I struggle with opening lines all the time like so many writers. I often hear that you MUST open with a killer one liner, this advice from editors and agents. At the moment I’m reading “In Sunlight or in Shadow, stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper,” edited by Lawrence Block. Seventeen great stories by well-known, successful writers. Not all of the stories have the quality of the opening one liners you describe, Margaret. Provocative openings, yes, but you have to read a couple of sentences in to get there. And some writers take several paragraphs to get there. One story opened ‘They call me Reverend Sanborn.” Not exactly thrilling, right? The next 14 lines give a history of Sanborn’s birth, college, jobs, and family members well before the reader gets to the ‘trouble’ Don Maass refers to. Another story opens “Margaret heard the train rumble by as Walter looked at the papers on the desk.” Pretty dull to me.
Here’s one story opening from the book that fits your advice: “Could she change his mind?”
But it was the following lines that really got me: “Four steps to the open window, lean out and call, “Don’t.”
I love all your beginning sentences. But one thing struck me, you are using first person POV. Wondering if that helps the “jump” into the story. With 3rd POV, I’ve struggled with various beginnings and I am still not sure I’ve got it right. Thanks for your post.
I gave up on Six Four after about 200 pages, as it never seemed to be getting anywhere.
Even the opening line of this post offers readers insight about you.
I wrestled with the first sentence of my MG MS for years. Yes, years. It wasn’t until I typed The End that I figured out how to begin my story.
Thanks for writing this fantastic post. Wishing you the best.