Writing the Opening of Your Story - the TaDa Moment!

Your story starts with the first chapter.

I take that back. Your story starts with the first page.

Oh wait, I mean, your story starts with the first paragraph.

No, sorry, my mistake. Your story starts with the first sentence.

The first SENTENCE. Okay, that makes more sense.

Your first sentence is your "hook" to luring the reader to pause all that they are doing and read your book.

Your hook from the first sentence widens into the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, and the first chapter. All very important in gaining confidence in your writing and success in ensuring your reader.

According to Noah Lukeman, in The First Five Pages, "... the job of the hook is to set the tone for the book..."

Lukeman cautions that the "Hook" is more than a marketing tool. "It can establish a character, narrator or setting, convey a shocking piece of information."

Priscilla Long writes in The Writer's Portable Mentor, "Often a good opening consists of a small sentence that concentrates into its short little self the essence (sometimes the central dramatic conflict) of what follows.

Long lists various ways to use the first sentence:

• Begin with an aphorism.
• Ask the central question of the piece.
• State directly what the piece is about.
• Establish your protagonist's connection to the subject matter at hand.
• Begin with a telling anecdote or quote.
• Rely on the reliable What? When? Where? Why? Who?
• Begin with a good title.

Long suggests that writers collect openings written by others. Keep a sentence book and collect these passages and study from them, learning from them.

K. M. Weiland writes in Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding
Story, "The hook comes in many forms, but stripped down to its lowest common denominator, it's nothing more or less than a question. If we can pique our readers' curiosity, we've got 'em. Simple as that."

Writers want readers to ask, "What's going to happen?" Or, as K.M. Weiland writes, "Readers have to understand enough about the situation to mentally form a specific question. What the heck is going on here? does not qualify as a good opening question."

Your opening to your story must sell the story. You can have the best darn ending ever written but no one will ever read it if they're not hooked in your opening.

K.M. Weiland outlines the traits and parts of a good opening:

• Don't open before the beginning of the story. Don't dump your backstory in your opening.
• Open with characters; preferably the protagonist to connect your character with your reader.
• Open with conflict. Without conflict, you have no story.
• Open with movement. Keep your characters moving.
• Establish the setting to ground your reader in the physicality of the story.
• Orient readers with an establishing shot by presenting the setting and characters' positions within it in a sentence or two.
• Set the tone the reader to understand what type of story they are reading.

Openings give you the best and first opportunity to make a profound statement about your story. It should include as many of the following five parts as you can:

• Inherent Question
• Character
• Setting
• Sweeping Declaration
• Tone

Work on your opening lines. They should introduce your story’s character, plot, setting, theme and voice and send the reader on an unforgettable adventure.

James V. Smith, JR., outlines what a great opener might contain, in The Writer’s Little Helper:

•      A great first line
•       Excitement: high action, high drama, high anxiety
•       An intro to the heroic character
•       An intro to the worthy adversary
•       Problems that stand in the way of the heroic character achieving a worthy goal
•       Your best writing style, to set the tone and to show you can write: action, conflict, imagery, dialogue, irony
•       A feel for the story’s setting and atmosphere
•       Foreshadowing of things to come
•       Above all, a single overwhelming central problem that will only get worse until it appears incapable of being solved, a problem that will defeat the heroic character unless she defeats it in the Closer

A final word of caution from Smith, “Don’t press too hard with these opening words. Just as in trying to meet someone you admire, it’s possible to go breathless and appear needy if you try too hard. You’ll be tempted to overwrite an overwrought opener if you’re not careful. Be cool. Be natural. No matter how hard you have to work at it, make it look easy.”

REFERENCES:

The Writer's Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story by K. M. Weiland

The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith, JR.

Writing Tips - The First Five Pages

Every writer should own a copy of literary agent, Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages. If you've ever been rejected for any type of writing project, this book is for you.

As the subtitle states, it's a "Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile."

I've read this book. It is small but filled with so much information about how to make your manuscript the best it can be. Lukeman gives examples and writing exercises to help you learn. He knows what he's talking about. As a literary agent he sees messed-up manuscripts every day. He knows what it takes to make a manuscript acceptable.

If I were you, I'd follow his advice.

I couldn't possibly cover every single item from his book in this post, but I can give you an overview and pick out one or two points that will show you how to improve your manuscript.


From Noah Lukeman's Introduction: "There are no rules to assure great writing, but there are ways to avoid bad writing. This, simply, is the focus of this book: to learn how to identify and avoid bad writing. We all fall prey to it, to different degrees, even the greatest writers, even in the midst of their greatest works. by scrutinizing the following examples of what not to do, you will learn to spot those ailments in your own writing; by working with the solutions and exercises, you may, over time, bridge the gap and come to the realization of what to do. There is no guarantee that you will come to this realization, but if you do, at least it will be your own. Because ultimately, the only person who can teach you about writing is yourself."

Most importantly, you need to get your manuscript noticed. It's probably been sitting on an agent's desk for months waiting for some intern or editorial assistant to read it. The agent won't even see it unless your manuscript makes it past the intern. Like it or not, the intern will be reading your manuscript with an eye to find fault so he can get through it as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.

Here are a few things you can do to help better position your manuscript on the agent's desk:

1. Devote extensive time to research. The number one reason the aspiring writer gets rejected is because he has approached an agent or editor inappropriate for his work.

2. Let an agent or editor know why you're contacting him specifically. Use your advance research and be specific. A better way of catching an agent's eye is to tell him off the bat that you noticed he agented a specific title and that your manuscript is similar.

3. Approach agents and editors with care. Know their requirements for submission. If you are submitting to an editor that only takes agented submissions, be aware and submit to an agent first. The best submission is a one-page query letter with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE). Agents and editors are more likely to open smaller envelopes than larger ones because they know the larger ones contain manuscripts that require time to read. Time they don't have.

According to Lukeman, "...the quickest and easiest way to reject a manuscript is to look for the overuse, or misuse, of adjectives and adverbs."

Lukeman gives us six reasons why manuscripts stuffed with adjectives and adverbs won't work:

1. More is less. When a string of adjectives or adverbs is used, they detract from each other.

2. It can be demeaning to the reader when the writer fills in every last detail for him. It assumes he has no imagination of his own.

3. It is often preferable to leave things blank and force the reader to use his imagination - that way he makes the text his own, becomes more fully engaged in the manuscript. He won't set it down if it's his.

4. Writers who overuse adjectives and adverbs tend to use common ones -- usually ones they've heard used in the same context before -- and the hackneyed result is immediately apparent.

5. Adjectives and adverbs often, ironically,'weaken their subjects.

6. Finally, the overall effect of a text encumbered with adjectives, adverbs and the inevitable commas in between makes for very slow, awkward reading.

Noah Lukeman continually stresses the craft of writing, because ultimately it comes down to this one question. Ask yourself if you knew you'd never be published would you still write? If the answer is "yes", then you are truly writing for the art of it.

If you want to be a writer. Be a writer. Don't let anything get in your way.

Where Am I?

Setting.

Helen Haukeness in her article Setting Your Novel Straight, defines setting simply as "a backdrop against which your characters perform."

But, in reality, setting is a little more complicated than that. Mostly it's because of the problems that you may encounter with setting. We'll discuss those and with the help of some experts, the solutions.

According to Noah Lukeman in the First Five Pages, "setting itself becomes a character, interacting with the other characters."

As writers, we must understand that setting is a living entity of its own within our story. It changes, plies us with senses, and evokes mood. But, for an agent or editor looking at your manuscript, there are mistakes you can make with setting that will cause them to reject your story.

You must have setting in your story. If you don't that's your first problem. Some writers start their story with no hint of place or time leaving the reader in the dark as to where or when the story is set.

Then the opposite is also true. Some writers spend so much time opening their first scene with a description of setting that they've bored the reader and slowed the pace so much that the reader has given up on ever getting through your story. According to Noah Lukeman, "If you have a tendency to describe the setting all at once, try stretching it out over the course of several pages -- readers can't take in all that information at once anyway, and a setting will become more real if it unfolds slowly..."

According to Janet Evanovich, in How I Write, her opinion is to "Provide the setting and atmosphere information as close to the beginning of the book. This gives your reader a sense of where the characters live and work."

Judiciously, writers. Judiciously.

Helen Haukeness describes some frequently encountered problems with setting and identifies the solutions. I'll highlight the most obvious ones.

First of all, she indicates that writers fail to understand the depth of a setting. Ms Haukeness states that "A story's setting comprises more than buildings and roads and flora and mountains in the background. Setting involves an entire environment: furniture, weather, people, tools, toys, clutter, lighting, odors. In a word, details."

This is the biggest misconception I encounter with writers; involving all the senses and surroundings in setting their story. It's the easiest one to overlook because all the focus is on the characters. That is why in most beginner writers' stories, we see the "talking heads". This is where dialogue is composed of just two characters talking with no action, setting, emotion, or senses.

Second, Ms Haukeness discusses how writers fail to change settings. Changing settings is just like changing emotions within a character and adding and subtracting conflict within your story. Noah Lukeman tells us it's a great mistake to limit settings "because limiting settings often ends up adversely affecting stories and characters, hindering them from branching out, doing what they would if they had the space."

What all three of our experts can agree on, is this. Our characters must interact with the story's setting. It can be something as simple as the teacher writing on the chalkboard. The executive sitting at his/her desk fiddling with the computer mouse. Or the stableboy rubbing saddlesoap into his mistress' favorite saddle. Whatever. Get your characters involved.

Don't wait for your readers to ask, "Where am I?"