Beginning a Story: Ways to Start a Story

Please read this blog entry and take appropriate notes concerning the advice found here. You will be expected to know this material for our quiz next class.

A beginning promises more to come. It should hook our attention, allow us entrance into the world of the story. Beginnings need to be full of potential for the characters (and the reader). Some simple ways writers do this is the following (taken from The Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich)

Setting: setting sets the stage and raises our expectations, introduces us to location, time, and supports character, tone, mood and POV.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

Ideas: While this can sometimes be dry or essay-like, it can also characterize a speaker, a place, an important motif or tone of a story.

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them…”

Imagistic or Strong Sensations: Imagery invites your reader to experience your narrative, giving you a good start. It also helps establish setting, usually.

1956. The air-conditioned darkness of the Avenue Theater smells of flowery pomade, sugary chocolates, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

A Need or Motive: Need is essential for all major characters. It is usually what drives the
conflict and characterization, also the plot in a story. Starting off with a motive or need is
the fastest way to learn what characters want.

On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, “What have you got for me, daddy?” and he had nothing.

Action: Action catches our attention.

The pass was high and wide and he jumped for it, feeling it slap flatly against his hands, as he shook his hips to throw off the halfback who was diving at him.

Scene: Usually in one sentence, combines action, setting, and character.

Card-playing was going on in the quarters of Narumov, an officer in the Guards.

Symbolic Object: Describe an object that has significance to your story, characters, plot. Usually a reader will recognize the importance of an object if mentioned in the first paragraph of a story.

An antique sleigh stood in the yard, snow after snow banked up against its eroded runners.

Sex: Sex sells. It also gets our attention.

After I became a prostitute, I had to deal with penises of every imaginable shape and size.

Character portrait: Introduces a reader to your protagonist or an important character.

The girl’s scalp looked as though it had been singed by fire—strands of thatchy red hair snaked away from her face, then settled against her skin, pasted there by sweat and sunscreen and the blown grit and dust of travel.

Character’s Thoughts: Like a portrait, this one’s internal.

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Question: A direct way to motivate the reader, who often wants to know the answer to a posed question.

“Well, Peter, any sign of them yet?”

Prediction: Creating an ominous tone, a prediction foreshadows or hints at the ultimate ending of a story.

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.

Anecdote: an anecdote (a short story) can introduce an important idea or theme, create a symbol, or set a particular tone.

The village of Ukleyevo lay in the ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highway and the railroad station. When passers-by would ask what village it was, they were told: “that’s the one where the sexton ate up all the caviar at the funeral.”

Lab Activity: look through a collection of short stories (for example the one we are reading) and note how the author opens his/her story. What technique is the author using. Post your response to the forum by the end of this class.

Activity: Continue writing your story. If you haven't started yet, choose one of the beginnings and use it to start a story.

HOMEWORK: Read any of the horror writers in the compilation and post your response to the story or the author's style on the forum. You must do at least one forum post for this book. Finish reading various stories on your own time. Forum post due by end of next week (Thursday, Nov. 3)