Challenge Fifty Titles in Search of a Story | We have a winner! Congrats to divapilot :)

What do you even consider to be the "beginning" of a story?
The beginning has to introduce the setting, the main characters, and the conflict (or emerging conflict). It has to be interesting enough to engage the reader. I have on occasion started with a quote that for me sets up a theme, then gone into the story.

What type of text to you like to start with?
It really depends on the story. If I'm writing something introspective, I might start with a bit of dialogue (internal or external) or with a description of something. I want the reader to get inside my character's mind as soon as possible. But if it's a story that is more action, I will probably start with action.

What timeframe do you like for your opening scene?
I have never done a flash forward, and I don't think I've done a flash back as an opener. I think about how I want to end that first chapter, which by that time is where the conflict should have emerged. So the beginning of the opening chapter has to be somewhat close to some flashpoint or emerging crisis which will occur before the first chapter ends.

How do you proceed to write the beginning?
It's weird. It's like the whole thing is this messy sketch in my head, and then I write it down and the characters just do what they do. Once I know where I want them to go, I write it and they fill in the blanks, Weird, I know. Like, for this particular challenge I know that I want the story to be in three parts, set in three very different times. I know I want to introduce an important OC in the first section. I know where I want it to be. I know how I want the first part to end. But.. the details? They will come when the keys start typing.

And, lastly, is the beginning the easy or the difficult bit for you?
The beginning is not that hard. The thing is, the beginning may be unusable. I've had to go back and redo major elements of the beginning because either the story went in another direction and things I was "breadcrumbing" earlier no longer matter, or I've decided to rethink my approach to a later development and I have to reset the beginning so that the story moves more fluently. For this challenge I thought I was going to start it one way and now I realize that my approach is far too slow and nobody would sit through all that. So I am ditching what I've written and I am moving the beginning up closer to the action.

So yeah, the beginning's easy, but deciding which beginning can be tricky. I often ditch a lot of what I have written to make the beginning work more clearly with the rest of the story. The middle is the hardest to write.

 

*skids in to thread*

I'm so sorry for going silent! I went to Dallas Jan 4th for a mandatory company meeting, came home sick and then developed pneumonia. I've barely been functioning for weeks!

I've only made it to page 6 of this thread - but I didn't want to not participate so I'm going to try to catch up as quickly as possible!

First Week Questions:

What is your first reaction to your title? Do you feel inspired, uninspired, intrigued, mystified?
The Book of Disquiet... Stunned that I hadn't heard of it, intrigued, and excited because I had seen TFA and had some plot bunnies forming and think that this title will be an easy fit.

Did a particular plot bunny pop into your head?
More that it meshed nicely. Fortunately - once I googled my title and chewed on it for a bit, it just solidified what was already churning.

Does the title evoke themes that you usually write or would like to write?
Always! I love angst, and what could be more angsty than 'The Book of Disquiet'?

Do you already have an idea of the sort of story you want to write for it (genre, era, fandom, etc)? Or would you rather let it mature a bit?
Oh yeah, Post TFA background speculation. And no matter how hard I've tried to think of something different that could work, I keep coming back to this idea.

Do you think it’s a good title, and why? (see also here and here for discussions about titles)
A title is what you make it...

Are you curious to read the work it was borrowed from, or have you already read it? Do you think that being familiar with the work in question is/would be helpful, or is it a hindrance? Why?
No. From the little research I've done on it it seems like more of a self indulgent diary than a narrative with a beginning, middle and end. I was a philosophy major long enough to know I don't need a ton of encouragement to lose myself in my own head... and it feels like that is what this 'book' would do to me.

 

Week 2: Outlining


How much do you outline? Are you a control freak who needs to know every single detail before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), or do you write by the seat of your pants? Do you know the beginning, middle and end of your story before you start writing? Or do you just start on a general idea and let the story take you where it wants to? What positives and negatives do you see in either approach?
I try to have a set mode, I try to use blank paper and jot down the broad concept strokes, and then squeeze in details for the broad strokes as I go. Usually I'll have the overall concept, figure out what information needs to be in each update and then when I start trying to actually write the scene the character with the dominate voice will usually take over and I become the conduit. That's when things are going well. Sometimes I will think I know exactly what I'm going to write, and then as I get into a scene things will sort of write themselves and I'll have to adjust in order to make things flow.


Where do you start? Characters? Plot? Location? Context? Themes? Something else? Do you brainstorm and jot down notes for random ideas? Do you discuss your options with other people? Do you just let your ideas ripen in your head? Why do you find any of these approaches helpful to come up with an outline?
Where I start depends on what the original idea was. Sometimes I have a flash of an image in my head, and need to 'look' at that image for awhile and explain it to myself, then the story starts to tell itself to me and the plot and themes just fall into place. Sometimes it feels like there is a monitor behind my forehead and the story is playing out like I"m watching a tv show - with 'me' having very little to do with the 'writing'.

Wow - that makes me sound sort of psychotic...

What does your outline look like? Is it simply a one-paragraph summary of your story, or do you come up with a detailed breakdown of your plot? Is it a series of bullet points in no particular order? Does it include questions as well as answers?
What ever I 'need'. sometimes I use excel spreadsheet, sometimes note cards, sometimes I use a window as a story board and put plot points on stickies and then rearrange the points to work out the story flow. Overall though the one consistent thing is that I try to work out the overall issues so that as I'm writing I can ask myself if every particular action or thought or word of dialogue validates the individual character.

How do you keep track of details for your story? Do you keep a list of plot points that need to be resolved, or of elements of character development that should be covered? Do you note in the margins titbits for which you want to introduce some foreshadowing? Do you deliberately plan for red herrings to mislead and later surprise the reader? Or is it all in your head?
Yes to all of the above. I've still got files from when I was writing Fear and Love on little bits of dialogue and plot points for the characters. In fact I laughed a lot when I accidentally found a bunch of word docs with character notes in them several weeks ago (I'd actually thought for the last 5 years that I had lost those files) and found that I had posted lines of dialogue for one character but had originally written it for another. Depending on the length of the story - I have written whole dossiers on characters - down to experiences they had as children - so I have a full psychological profile to validate their action in the story...

Yeah... feeling like I need a good therapist right now.

What tools do you use? Worksheets? Flowcharts? Character sheets? Any other tools you think are useful? Pen and paper, or electronic, or both? Why? Any software recommendations?
See above. And never underestimate the power of a Taco Bell napkin as a note pad.

And if anyone does have software rec's I'll be all over that.

 

I'm cheating by skipping week 3 and jumping to week 4:

Week 4: Serialised storytelling

A specific challenge to writing a long story, as opposed to a one-shot or a vignette, is that you have to break it down into chapters. An additional parameter when publishing your story in a format such as these boards is that readers get to read your chapters weeks or months apart, which may mean that you need to insert some form of "previously, in this story" at the beginning of each new instalment.
This is where I find outlining so important. My chapters tend to be either theme or time based - therefore I write until I've accomplished what I feel i need to accomplish for the themes or the time.

When I was writing Fear and Love I had up to 6 different posts that comprised a single chapter because I either had a specific time frame that I wanted to cover in a chapter and had several different characters POV's contributing, or there was a theme that several different characters where contributing to. In Fragile - every post was it's own chapter, but I was trying to hit a single theme or topic for the entire 'chapter/post'.

I guess another way to describe it is that I ended a 'chapter' when the 'voices' were finally quieted.

How do you define a chapter? Should it be a self-contained piece of text that covers a single component of the story, or do you prefer a chapter (either as a reader or as a writer) to include elements of various sub-plots/character development arcs? What difference do you see between a chapter and a scene?
See above... depends on how I'm structuring the whole story. I try to let the flow come about organically - so I hope that the 'chapters' or 'scenes' feel natural and that depedns on the story as a whole.

How do you slice and dice your story to break it down into chapters/scenes? Do you build a mini-outline for each chapter, do you list elements of plot/character development that should appear in a chapter before you write it, or do you merely keep an eye on your general outline document and make sure that the plot/characterisation elements and themes you chose are integrated in that fragment?
All of the above? But again, sometime once I start writing and the cahracter is speaking, I don't have as much control as you'd think. And I will often think I'm going to write a chapter from one cahraters perspective, then as I get into the actual writing, another character will have a stronger voice and it will ultimately read better written in a different way. Often I feel like I"m really just a conduit for the characters to get their thoughts and feelings out so I try to respect that and allow the 'voices' to do what they need to do.

How about chapter size? Do you favour a specific chapter length? Do you favour a specific density of events? Do you like your chapters to all cover similar amounts of time, or do you go for a more elastic approach, where one chapter covers a twenty-minute conversation and the next a series of events over several months? How do you pace a story across several chapters?
Organically - I'm feeling a theme here! I try to stay consistent in this in one story - but often that isn't possible. And in Fear and Love I sometimes had 4 updates covering different POV's of one night, and then in other places I had 2 updates covering several months... go figure.

How do you end a chapter?

WITH A BANG!



Should every chapter set up the scene for the next one, or do you like to use chapter breaks to shift from one element of a story to another, until your sub-plots finally converge? How do you decide where a chapter should end and the next one begin?
Organically! Sometimes you need a cliff hanger, and sometimes you need resolution.

Cliffhangers: love 'em or hate 'em? Is there such a thing as too many cliffhangers in a story? More generally, how do you conclude a chapter to leave the reader waiting for more? Conversely, do you insert a "previously, in this story" titbit at the beginning of a new chapter? Why or why not?
Cliffhangers can be awesome - but they need to be earned and used with respect. Sometimes it can feel like the author is just screwing with you and that isn't cool.

Anything else you'd like to mention about the joys and pitfalls of telling a story in a serialised fashion?
The sense of accomplishment from finishing a long story is amazing. When I was writing Fear and Love I had the beginning, middle and end and a large portion of the first 10 posts done before I started posting. I tried to keep a regular schedule, but could never have predicted that I would go through a cross country move, the collapse of my marriage, a second cross country move, divorce, and having to build a new career from scratch. None were conducive to writing fan fic. To this day I regret not finishing and - 10 years after putting up the first post (11 and a half years after I started working on it) I still dream of finishing.

After things settled, and I was reading the LotF books, I came up with the concept for Fragile. I was so disappointed in myself for not finishing F&L that I had 2 thirds of Fragile roughed out and the whole outline done before I even entertained the idea of posting. I Kept to a one chapter a week schedule and posted the Prologue, 28 chapters and the epilogue without ever missing a week. The sense of pride and satisfaction from accomplishing that was incredible and well worth the effort.

Resource threads:
Discussion about chapter length
Discussion about pacing
Discussion about cliffhangers

 

Week 6: Beginning a story


What do you even consider to be the "beginning" of a story?

The title. Or, on these forums, the thread title and all the data that gets crammed into it, followed by (hopefully) the fic info.

These are what the reader first notices (unless they click on a fic because they like the writer's previous works), so logically this is where the story must begin.


What type of text do you like to start with?

I like to begin with something tangential, something that leads into the story but isn't vital to it. For example, some observations on culture (dissecting proverbs is one of my favorites). I like to think I'm establishing that the fic's setting is larger than what the reader sees.


What timeframe do you like for your opening scene?

I usually start at the beginning and go forward chronologically. I have to, because although I have milepost scenes when writing, I almost always miss them by a mile.

Though I will go back a few hundred years before "present day" in a prologue if I feel the need.


How do you proceed to write the beginning?

I jump in with my fingers crossed. If I'm lucky, the first attempt will be right (or right enough) that I can keep on going. If not, then I find myself stuck after a few paragraphs and need to start over again.


And, lastly, is the beginning the easy or the difficult bit for you?

Er, neither. Writing with a set goal in mind but without knowing how to get there is hard. When I know how - and by this I mean really knowing, instead of just having a vague idea - it's too much fun to register as being difficult. The beginning is sort of like the former, except I know I can start over from scratch so there isn't as much pressure to get it right.

 

What do you even consider to be the "beginning" of a story?

The very first sentence is the beginning. It's that simple.

What type of text do you like to start with?

I like to start the story with an action or a description of the place the character is in. This, I hope, will get the reader to continue reading to figure out what is going on.

What timeframe do you like for your opening scene?

The opening scene starts at the beginning of the whole story. Any flashbacks will come later in the story.

How do you proceed to write the beginning?

Introduce the main characters, or at least the ones that are in the story at the beginning. I try to include actions that will give backstory and show traits, and somehow tie that in to the entire story as a whole.

And, lastly, is the beginning the easy or the difficult bit for you?

It's just as hard as the other parts to write, but it's also the most important part of a story. If I have a weak beginning, readers will become disinterested.

 

I'd really like some feedback from everyone on how this challenge is going.

I really like this so far. I like the weekly questions as they really get me thinking about how I write. Plus, it gives me good ideas. For example, I was unsure of my starting point for my new idea since it meant that the real plot really didn’t get started till chapter 3 (and the last time I did that, it didn’t turn out the best) but I just came up with a different starting point.


Week 6: Beginning a story


What do you even consider to be the "beginning" of a story?

For me, it depends; I often consider the first chapter the beginning of a story, as that will (usually) introduce the main character(s), setting, and conflict – or emerging conflict.

As for prologues, again, it depends; sometimes a story requires that extra information between the author and the reader, an “opening crawl” kinda thing. Sometimes I like to entice people to read (and me to write) with a prologue that I can be a bit more experimental with as compared to normal prose. I’m not sure if I’m going to do a prologue for my new idea or just get right into the story.

What type of text to you like to start with?
Again, it depends. Lately, I’ve been enjoying starting with description. And I put as much context and background information as I can and as needed before launching into the plot.

What timeframe to you like for your opening scene?
I start with the actual starting point, unless I’m doing something with a prologue.

How do you proceed to write the beginning?

I just go for it. Sometimes it works, sometimes I have to scrap it and start again.

And, lastly, is the beginning the easy or the difficult bit for you?

Easy. I love starting new stories. If it just doesn’t work, I can usually tell within the first few hundred words (my last idea for this challenge was kinda the exception) and I can just start anew.

 

And I find that the thinking process started by this unique challenge spills over into reading fics, besides the fact that the fic in question is marvelous. It shows how I can handle the open communication I have planned for the middle of my fic can be handled terrifically without being OOC which also proves that a lack of communication is not inevitable between strong-minded characters.

 

pregnantpadme Welcome back! Pneumonia? I hope you're feeling better now. And thank you for your very detailed answers, I'll take some time this weekend to integrate them in the weekly summaries.

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So, about beginnings...

I consider that my story has begun once I've answered the questions who - what - where - when, and that could cover several chapters, with the main body of the story then answering how and why. I've done prologues in original fiction (by prologue I mean an exposition scene that is somewhat detached from the rest of the story, either to give necessary background or to introduce an event that will matter to the story but is told from a different POV/won't be known to the protagonists until several chapters down the line) but I never felt the need so far to do it in fanfic, since here it's assumed that the reader is familiar with the universe where the story takes place. However, for the story I have in mind for this challenge, I'll definitely need a prologue since it's happening in the distant past and will be all OC.

I usually start with a narrative, which may or may not include a bit of dialogue. That will very rarely include more than a couple of lines of description, just to set the scene for the reader (in truth I'm not very big on description as a writer, although I love reading a good description). Thinking back on my writing I realise that I usually start with something that is peripheral to the plot but meaningful -- it will usually be one or more scenes that enable me to introduce the characters and the context, but where what will actually happen in the story is only hinted at.

I've never done a flashback or a flash-forward, although it's really something I'd like to try, especially the flash-forward (I just read a fic that did that really, really well, and it grabbed my attention from the very first line). I usually begin my story before the flashpoint that sets the plot in motion, but in my original fiction I started once with the murder scene itself and then picked up with the beginning of the investigation in the next chapter. Looking back at that book I'm not so happy with the result -- there's a dramatic shift in tone between the prologue and the first chapter, and I feel that I didn't handle that so well. But then it's something I wrote almost ten years ago, so I should be able to do it better now.

As I said many times in this thread, I'm a compulsive outliner so I never, ever start writing without knowing where my story is going (I actually did that once and now I'm stuck on that story ) However, once I know where I'm going, even if it's just a general idea, I'll write down the beginning (or more than one beginning) to get a feel of it, to get an idea of the tone/atmosphere that I want to achieve. That's usually also the moment when I'll go and read books or watch films that have that feel, to pick up any ideas and tips I can find there.

I do pay a lot of attention to the first sentence, but because it takes me so long to stop planning and start writing, by the time I decide to actually write (not just draft a beginning to get the feel of it) the first sentence is ready in my head and I just transfer it to paper. If I don't know how to start, it means that the story needs to ripen a bit more in my head and I just leave it there to mature until my mind does the work on its off-time and figures out how to manage it. In general what I find difficult isn't the writing process, it's the planning/maturing process (although I do have a problem with endings, because I obsessively double- and triple-check that I tied up all the loose ends, but that's something I'll talk more about when we discuss endings later this year).

 

Wrap-up week 6

What we define as a beginning varies wildly from author to author. For some it's literally the first thing the reader reads, i.e. the opening sentence or even the title. For others, it's the actual start of the narrative, which may include anything from a few paragraphs to a few chapters, up to the conflict or emerging conflict. An additional suggestion was to head the story with a quotation or a poem. It doesn't seem that many of us do prologues, unless we need to give background, insert some foreshadowing or do a flashback. Giving the sort of background that would go in a prologue may not seem so necessary in fanfic since the reader is assumed to be familiar with the universe in which the story takes place.

We all agree that the beginning must catch the reader's attention by telling him/her what this is all about in terms of characters, plot and/or context. Most of us seem to prefer starting with a narrative and/or a description and to bring in dialogue later on, although the type of beginning depends also on the genre of the story -- e.g. an introspective story could start with internal or external dialogue more easily than an action story. Starting with something peripheral to the main story isn't something many of us seem to favour, although it is a way to show the reader that the fic's setting is larger than what they see and to expose something tangential but meaningful about the characters or the context.

In general we seem to begin from the beginning i.e. start shortly before the flashpoint that sets events in motion for the rest of the story. This allows the writer to present the main characters through actions that are revealing of their personalities/backstory, while a bit of description allows for context exposition and can act as an "establishing scene" for the narrative. Flashbacks can be useful to expose context but can also go wrong if the reader feels "cheated".

As for how we proceed, we pretty unanimously stated that we jump in and write. Depending on how much outlining we've done, we either start from a general idea and let the details come as we type, or we have a very clear idea where we're going and simply transfer our thoughts to paper. It was mentioned that drafting a beginning can be useful just to get the feel of the story.

The vast majority of us find that writing the beginning is fairly easy, the difficulties start when you have to continue One thing that can make writing the beginning difficult is a situation where it calls for a specific type of scene (e.g. a battle, political intrigue) that the writer has trouble with. Another one is to get the tone right, but it's always possible to go back and start from scratch. We might also have to revise or even discard the beginning we wrote as we make progress in the story, because the narrative takes on new dimensions and calls for a different exposition or even for a different entry point.

 

Week 7: Famous beginnings

To continue this conversation about how to begin a story, let's discuss a little the beginnings of classic/famous/successful novels, or more generally beginnings that made an impression on us as readers and that we would like to try to emulate.

You'll find below a selection of famous beginnings (thanks to divapilot for helping me put this together). There's a little bit of everything in there, first person/third person, exposition/dialogue/introspection, flashback/flash-forward/in medias res, etc.

What makes, in your view, these beginnings memorable or meaningful? Do you find them engaging/intriguing as a reader? Or do they turn you off from continuing the book? What do they tell you about the book you are about to read? Are these writing strategies that you've already experimented with, or that you would like to experiment with? Why or why not?

The selection below is only meant to start the conversation. It goes without saying that you don't need to comment on every one of them, just on those that you find interesting (in a good or bad way). Feel free also to quote the beginning of any other novels that made an impression on you and explain why.

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Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones

Spoiler

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn’t happen.

In my junior high yearbook I had a quote from a Spanish poet my sister had turned me on to, Juan Ramón Jiménez. It went like this: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” I chose it both because it expressed my contempt for my structured surroundings à la the classroom and because, not being some dopey quote from a rock group, I thought it marked me as literary. I was a member of the Chess Club and Chem Club and burned everything I tried to make in Mrs. Delminico’s home ec class. My favorite teacher was Mr. Botte, who taught biology and liked to animate the frogs and crawfish we had to dissect by making them dance in their waxed pans.

I wasn’t killed by Mr. Botte, by the way. Don’t think every person you’re going to meet in here is suspect. That’s the problem. You never know. Mr. Botte came to my memorial (as, may I add, did almost the entire junior high school—I was never so popular) and cried quite a bit. He had a sick kid. We all knew this, so when he laughed at his own jokes, which were rusty way before I had him, we laughed too, forcing it sometimes just to make him happy. His daughter died a year and a half after I did. She had leukemia, but I never saw her in my heaven.

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

Spoiler

In my younger and more vulnerable years 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 that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction — Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament.”— it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude

Spoiler

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades’ magical irons. “Things have a life of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. “It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.” José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: “It won’t work for that.” But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. “Very soon we’ll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house,” her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades’ incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armour which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armour apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman’s hair around its neck.

Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice

Spoiler

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.

“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

“What is his name?”

“Bingley.”

“Is he married or single?”

“Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? how can it affect them?”

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”

“Is that his design in settling here?”

“Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”

Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

Spoiler

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Spoiler

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote

Spoiler

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair’s breadth from the truth in the telling of it.

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva’s composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like “the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;” or again, “the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves.” Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451

Spoiler

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

He hung up his black-beetle-coloured helmet and shined it, he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showered luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole. At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs.

 

Ugh...behind again!

What do I consider the beginning? I'm someone who thinks the entire first chapter is the beginning. You should be able to flesh out your main character in the first chapter enough so that people will want to read.

What type of text do I start with? Description. Most movies start with a 'establishing' shot...I try to follow suit and write an establishing scene. For me, it also sets the bar and makes me write 'establishing' scenes for other chapters...nothing is worse, IMO, than scenes where we see people talking, but there is no movement, no facial expressions, no spatial descriptions. I want to draw the audience into the 'room' with the characters. I just start....and then use 'flashbacks' and expositions to explain how we got to where we are.

Is the beginning easy? I think it is! I've never had trouble starting...it's the 'where do I take it from here' part that gives me trouble!

Dickens, I think, has the best opening lines for some of his novels...which is appropriate 'cause I'm using his title: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...' and 'To begin with, Marley was dead....'
But his text is SO-O-O hard for me to get into! Good thing the Muppets did 'A Christmas Carol'!

 

Such a great variety of opening forays - description - dialogue - and POVs. I am drawn most to the "iI" POV although for my fic, multiple POVs will be needed. For that, you have to balance shifts at just the right pacing without it feeling abrupt. For fic-writing, I love the "You" POV. Haven't encountered it in professional writings.

Straight dialogue as an opening isn't as strong as a blend with description.

 

Here you go!

Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time in the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge....

 

The Lovely Bones and Fahrenheit 451 stand out to me the most. the former I've never read and the latter is one of my favorites. Right off the bat with TLB, the narrator establishes Susie's quirky character and by using the past-tense 'was' you already know something has happened to this character and now you want to know what. So you keep reading and Susie goes on odd, but entertaining tangents that keep your interest hooked throughout the passage. Openings like Fahrenheit are my absolute favorite. How can you not keep reading after that first sentence? It was a pleasure to burn? Why? What are they burning? The questions don't stop as you're slowly introduced to this strange sci-fi world and you need to know more.

One Hundred Years of Solitude also has a strong opening, but personally I feel it quickly becomes weighed down in its own exposition.

Some other openings that have stuck with me:
(Just putting the first paragraph or so)

Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn:

Spoiler

Ash fell from the sky.

Lord Tresting frowned, glancing up at the ruddy midday sky as his servants scuttled forward, opening a parasol over Tresting and his distinguished guest. Ashfalls weren’t that uncommon in the Final Empire, but Tresting had hoped to avoid getting soot stains on his fine new suit coat and red vest, which had just arrived via canal boat from Luthadel itself. Fortunately, there wasn’t much wind; the parasol would likely be effective.

Hiroshi Sakurazaka - All You Need Is Kill:

Spoiler

When the bullets start flying, it's only a matter of time before fear catches up with a soldier.

There you are, steel death whizzing past in the air.

Distant shells thunder low and muddy, a hollow sound you feel more than hear. The close ones ring high and clear. They scream with a voice that rattles your teeth, and you know they're the ones headed for you. They cut deep into the ground, throwing up a veil of dust that hangs there, waiting for the next round to come ripping through. Thousands of shells, burning through the sky - slices of metal no bigger than your finger - and it only takes one to kill you. Only takes one to turn your buddy into a steaming side of meat. Death comes quick, in the beat of a heart, and he ain't picky about who he takes.

With Mistborn, Brandon throws something weird at you (Why is there ashfall?) and then presents it as common place, which leads you to wonder why that's a normal thing in this world.

All You Need Is Kill is a nice example of in medias res done right, I think. It throws you into a battle by first acclimating you with it. How it sounds, how it feels. It's not just alot of confusing things happening at once, you're being placed into the battle.

 

To me, all these great openings show that there is no "one correct way to open a great story". Different things work for different people. But, what most of these openings have in common, particularly The Lovely Bones, is, they all open with telling the reader something, but they also leave the reader with questions as they want to know more.

It isn't a book, but one of the best, yet basic, openings was the monologue opening the Doctor Who episode, Doomsday.

Spoiler

Planet Earth. This is where I was born. And this is where I died. The first nineteen years of my life, nothing happened. Nothing at all, not ever. And then I met a man called the Doctor. A man who could change his face. And he took me away from home in his magical machine. He showed me the whole of time and space. I thought it would never end. … Well, that's what I thought. But then came the Army of Ghosts. Then came Torchwood and the war. That's when it all ended. This is the story of how I died.

This is the opening to one of my favourite books House of the Scorpion:

Spoiler

“In the beginning there were thirty-six of them, thirty-six droplets of life so tiny that Eduardo could see them only under a microscope. He studied them anxiously in the darkened room.

Water bubbled through tubes that snaked around the warm, humid walls. Air was sucked into growth chambers. A dull, red light shone on the faces of the workers as they watched their own arrays of little glass dishes. Each one contained a drop of life.

Eduardo moved his dishes, one after the other, under the lens of the microscope. The cells were perfect—or so it seemed. Each was furnished with all it needed to grow. So much knowledge was hidden in that tiny world! Even Eduardo, who understood the process very well, was awed.

Anyways. I'm currently experimenting with the idea of having a character "remember" as my beginning.

 

ACK!!!! I'm behind too Here are my quick answers to last week.

What do you even consider to be the "beginning" of a story?
The first sentence definitely. I want it to be a good one. But mostly the first post, to me. I want to paint a picture real enough to draw the reader in, and create a scenario/question intriguing enough for them to come back for more.

What type of text do you like to start with?
No formula--whatever seems to fit. Dialogue, description...whatever.

What timeframe do you like for your opening scene?
I tend to write chronologically...so probably the immediate point I'm trying to make. I'll have the character "think back" but that's generally as far as I go.

How do you proceed to write the beginning?
The first sentence is always the bane of my existence. It was that way writing papers in high school/college, and writing here. If I can get that first sentence...I'm gold. I've tried to just do the "start writing" technique...but that usually never works for me. I need that first sentence like a rudder.

Is the beginning the easy or the difficult bit for you?
I'd say its all hard. Starting the very beginning is usually really rough...fleshing it out and making it all make sense as a cohesive story is really hard. Finishing it without doing a la Peter Jackson and having 12 endings is tough.

Week 7:
As to the book openers...my favorite book of all time is called The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcox. Its a collection of chaptered stories about a group of Benedictine monks (I know, I know...you're so riveted!) But it opens up with the first (short) chapter introducing the mother in very blunt terms, and you wonder where this is going. But it's used to frame the rest of the book, as all the stories are told from the perspective of the daughter, being told them orally by the mother. So the beginning--giving you a honest look at the mom so you have a frame of reference of who she is--I've always just thought was fascinating and awesome.

Spoiler

"I wish you had known my mother. I remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, toiling up the hill at the end of the school day, towards the group of mothers who stood at the crest of the rise, waiting to collect their children...The mothers chatted together, plump and comfortable, wearing modest, flowery dresses, pretty low-heeled sandals, their hair curled and tinted, and just that little bit of make-up to face the world in...

But there at the top of the hill, at a little distance from all the rest, stood my mother, as tall and straight and composed as a prophet, her great blue skirt flapping in the breeze, her thick brown hair tumbling down her back....

My mother. She was not a pretty woman, and never thought to try and make herself so. She had an uncompromising chin, firm lips, a nose like a hawk's beak and unnerving grey eyes. Eyes that went straight past the outside of you and into the middle, which mean that you could relax about the torn jersey, the undone shoe laces, the tangled hair and the unwashed hands...but you had to feel very uncomfortable about the stolen sweets, the broken promise, and the unkind way you ran away from little sister striving to follow you on her short legs.

My mother."

I love Fahrenheit 451--that book was incredibly iconic (and shocking to my young self) and so amazingly written. Glor Sanderson--that man is the king of wrapping you in a world that is so strange and you almost immediately feel like you've been there forever!!

EDIT: Because I forgot how to do spoilers

 

I'm have the exact same opinions as Glor basically. I like Fahrenheit 451 (Though the ending was a bit boring) and the starting sentence makes you want to keep reading. The Lovely Bones, though I have never read it, the beginning makes me want to read it. Now on to the one I absolutely hate, Huck Finn. I could rant for hours about how much I hate the book, but that's not the point right now. The point is the beginning. First of all, it gives you basically no idea what the book will be about. Second of all, it only gives you the ending of the last book, how is that supposed to make me keep reading? Sadly, I did keep reading, hoping it would get better. But it never did. As for the others, Anna Karenina and One Hundred Years of Solitude seem like the only ones that would make me want to keep reading. Not that I wouldn't read the others, just I wouldn't be hooked right away.

 

I love historical fiction and historical biographies. These have beginnings that rope me in if they provide strong interpersonal and well-researched narratives and an easy flow such that you enter into the cultural context.

They have to make you as was mentioned want to know more. The why and what next of what took place.

 

This is an observation that has little to do with the discussion at hand, but -

Reading those excerpts has made it painfully apparent - to me, anyway - that printed and online prose are two different things. With the latter, there seems to be a limit as to how much text I can take in one chunk. I actually had to stop reading several of those intros because my eyes were screaming at me not to. The automatic italicization within spoiler tags isn't helping.

 

For me, most of those beginning immediately made me intrigued, right from the first sentence. They enticed me to read more. Like Glor, I think The Lovely Bones and Farenhight 451 were my favorites.

One of my favorite beginnings is from The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (yes, that Hugh Laurie)

Spoiler

Imagine that you have to break someone's arm.

Right or left, doesn't matter. The point is you have to break it, because if you don't... well, that doesn't matter either. Let's say bad things will happen if you don't.

Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly -snap, whoops, sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint- or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and all together howlingly unbearable?

Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is get it over with as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer.

Unless.

Unless unless unless.

 

Wow, the above excerpt was extremely awesome. I need to read this book now.

 

Wow, mavjade - what a beginning! Had a very SW bounty hunterish feel to it. Right off you get the protagonist mulling over options - and what options! And that immediately makes you think - this is no ordinary run of the mill situation. Basically it snags the reader's curiosity right off. Online or off, that's what a beginning effectively should do.

 

I'll admit, I only got it because it was written by Hugh Laurie and I love him as an actor. But then it turned out I loved the book. It was a lot of fun! I haven't read it in years, and now after typing that out, I want to read it again!

I never thought about it that way, but you are right, it does have a little bit of a bounty hunter-ish feel. And I agree, that's exactly how a beginning should be... in this case a 'what the heck is going on?' feeling that makes you really want to keep reading to find out.

 

So, in this vein of discussion about Openings, today I started a book titled The Forgetting Times. Look it up if you have the time (kek), I think there's samples of it lying around on goodreads, but I think this is a good example of making the mundane (RL) interesting to read about. The opening sentence isn't anything special or stuck-in-your-brain-forever memorable like 451, but I read the sample and bought the book to keep reading when all I read was essentially about a sad, edging-into-her-forties woman having a one-night stand on a beach in Trinidad with a married man. Personally, that doesn't sound at all interesting to read about, yet it was. I believe this goes to show that having an interesting opening hook is great, but you need to keep your reader, well, reading.

So, my question to this forum: What are some books that have had good openings, but had you zoning out after the first page or so?

(Also, I don't mean to step on Chyntuck's toes as far as offering discussion prompts, just interested in everyone's thoughts)