Writing Tips - Pairs of Beginning Sentences

Today's Writing Tip comes from Alexandra Marshall, from the book titled What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers.

I'd like to know what you thought of it, so please leave a comment at the end.

Sometimes less is more, and sometimes it is just less. But no matter what, writing with a strict economy of purpose can force useful answers to fundamental questions. Even from one sentence you can learn both who the character is and what the story is about. To provide focus, it is helpful to begin by writing sentences in arbitrary pairs with established parameters.

THE EXERCISE

Write the first sentence of a story about a birth. Now write the first sentence about a death. Try other paris, such as falling in love an filing for divorce. Try pairs that are not in opposition, such as spring and summer. Then invent your own pairs.

THE OBJECTIVE

This is a way to sharpen skill by working for a specific kind of clarity. It is about naming essences.

STUDENT EXAMPLE

A birth and a death

1. I won't be doing any bonding with either one of them for quite awhile; I know I shouldn't have gone into the delivery room.

2. "He doesn't look peaceful or tortured or saintly, and no he doesn't look 'just like himself''; he looks like some dead thing that I never knew, and I don't know why I'm here."

Falling in love and filing for divorce

1. It could have happened to him a dozen times before and with women prettier, smarter, richer, funnier, sexier, even nicer, but it didn't, did it?

2. I don't want to throw her out the window or cheat her out of the money or tell her what a shit she is; I want to thank her for every damn day of it.

Spring and summer

1. All spring means to me is that things change, and if they didn't, I'd never die--but I'd want to.

2. The end of summer stopped having any tangible meaning in his life long ago, but with each year he is still slower to recover from it.

Can you think of other examples? Choose subjects and write beginning sentences. I'd like you to come up with pairs of sentences that help you bring together a specific kind of clarity; the naming of essences. If all you can come up with is opposition, that's great too. Just start writing.

Let me know what you think of this tip and exercise.

Writing Tips - What If?

We've all been there. We've written a great beginning to a story only to have it bog down in the middle.  Where do we go from here? Let's use the "what if" process to "unstick" our story and wrap it up.

Let your imagination run free with ideas. Don't think of ways to complete the story but continue it. For each idea, ask yourself "what if" and then continue the story.

For example, let's begin our story with two boys playing hooky from school. By using the "what if" process, we can continue the story by asking "what if these two boys went to the circus instead of school?"

From the "circus" lead, we can extend the "what if" question to encompass the kinds of animals that these two boys encounter while at the circus. "What if" can focus on the kinds of acts at the circus as well as the kinds of people the boys might run into while at the circus. You can get as specific as you want or keep the story purposely vague.

Find a story idea that you've been struggling with and see if you can come up with a list of "what if" options for it.

Does your story take place at the beach? In the mountains? In the city? Shake things up a bit. Put your character in a compromising situation. Lead your imagination on a wild chase.

Give yourself the freedom to come up with as many ideas as possible for your story then choose the one that most speaks to you. It's not about which idea makes sense, only that you give birth to the idea and follow through with plot points. Be extravagant. Be outrageous. Be creative.