Prepared by: Pam Hauck
Posted on: April 18, 2002
Reposted on: May 11, 2003
Reposted on: May 9, 2004
Reposted on: May 12, 2005
Reposted on: March 30, 2006
Exercise: Opening Up
Open books you like and read their
openings. Do they start with a
bang or
more subtly, planting a question or a seed? What in the opening makes
you
want to continue reading?
The best stories grab a reader's attention
with the very first
sentence and
hold it till the end. Whether you are writing a short story, novel or
memoir
your first few paragraphs have the ability to persuade a reader to turn
the
page and see what happens next. That makes effective openings one of
the
most important elements of writing.
Effective openings set the scene and give
readers a sense of time
and place
while answering Who, What, When, Where and Why. They introduce
intriguing
characters sometimes faced with conflict or a major life change.
J.R.R. Tolkien begins the "The Hobbit" with:
In a hole in the ground
there lived a hobbit. Not
a nasty, dirty, wet hole,
filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor
yet a dry, bare, sandy
hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it
was a hobbit-hole, and
that means comfort.
There is much here to draw in the reader.
What is a hobbit, and why
does it
live in a hole? Note the vivid descriptions of uncomfortable holes. And
finally - I just knew as I read that that this hobbit's comfort was
soon
going to be disturbed...
"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe opens with:
Once upon a midnight
dreary, while I pondered,
weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my
chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."
Poe introduces an intriguing character in
conflict. He sets this
scene in a
chamber and establishes the time as midnight. There is a sense of the
end of
something and the anticipation of something new. The tempest outside
the
chamber door piques my curiosity and I want to continue reading.
The full poem can be found at
http://www.bartleby.com/102/84.html
Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg starts
"All Over But The Shoutin'"
with:
My mother and father
were born in the most
beautiful place on earth, in the
foothills of the Appalachians along the
Alabama-Georgia line. It was a
place
where gray mists hid the tops of low, deep-green
mountains, where redbone
and bluetick hounds flashed through the pines as they
chased possums into
the sacks of old men in frayed overalls, where old
women in bonnets dipped
Bruton snuff and hummed "Faded Love and Winter Roses"
as they shelled
purple
hulls, canned peaches and made biscuits too good for
this world. It was a
place where playing the church piano loud was near as
important as playing
it right, where fearless young men steered long,
black Buicks loaded with
yellow whiskey down roads the color of dried blood,
where the first frost
meant hog killin' time and the mouthwatering smell of
cracklin's would
drift
for acres from giant, bubbling pots. It was a place
where the screams of
panthers, like a woman's anguished cry, still haunted
the most remote
ridges
and hollows in the dead of night, where children
believed they could choke
off the cries of night birds by circling one wrist
with a thumb and
forefinger and squeezing tight, and where the cotton
blew off the wagons
and
hung like scraps of cloud in the branches of trees.
Braggs establishes his credibility as a
story-teller with this
opening. As
the details of his Appalachian culture begin to unfold, there is a
strong
sense of place and I'm pulled into the scene. I want to continue
reading to
find out how his parents survived this harsh and hard, oppressive
poverty.
For an opening full of suspense, the first
seven pages of James
Patterson's
thriller "Violets Are Blue" can be found at:
http://www.bookbrowse.com/index.cfm?page=title&titleID=924&view=excerpt
Assignment: Write an effective opening
using 300 words or less. Make
it
compelling and pique our curiosity. Tug on our heartstrings and make us
care
what happens next to your characters. Your main objective is to pull us
into
the story and make us want to read more.
For the purpose of this exercise, it isn't
necessary to write a
complete
story with a beginning, middle, and ending. This will allow you to use
your
300 words to focus on an attention-grabbing opening.
When critiquing submissions, let writers
know if you found the
opening
interesting. Did it grab and hold your attention? Do you care about the
characters and want happens to them? If you were reading this in a
bookstore
would you want to buy the book based on the first 300 words? Let the
writer
know if and where your interest waned. Address what might make the
opening
more interesting.
Pam Hauck's wrap-up
Posted on: April 28, 2002
Thanks to everyone who participated and
helped make this week's
exercise a
success. Each of you did a great job.
We have seen a broad variety of approaches
to writing effective
openings.
Some started with a bang while others subtly planted questions that
begged
for answers. We were introduced to intriguing characters in conflict
that
piqued our curiosity and met other's that made us care about what
happened
to them through narrative and dialogue.
I found the critiques especially
interesting this week. They
reminded me
that reader's tastes and interests can be as varied as writing styles.
Hopefully, the submissions and critiques
have helped all of us learn
more
about writing effective openings and what persuades readers to turn the
page
and see what happens next.
Thanks to Rhéal for helping me
develop this exercise and the
opportunity to
present it. I appreciate everyone's response and wish you all the best
with
finishing what you started.
Pam Hauck
Pam Hauck's wrap-up
Posted on: May 18, 2003
This is the second time we've run this
exercise, and once again, it
was a
success.
The approaches to writing effective
openings were varied. We were
introduced to
interesting characters in challenging situations from several different
genres.
Some submissions made us feel reader's sympathy while others pulled us
into
different, unknown worlds.
When reading and critiquing submissions, I
found it challenging to
go beyond my
personal tastes as to whether or not I liked a piece, and dig deeper to
explore
what worked or didn't work to make the opening effective. Perhaps the
next time
we run this exercise we'll find a way to make the critiquing process
more
objective.
Hopefully, we've all learned more about
the importance of openings
and what
interests readers.
Thanks to all who participated and I wish
you the best with
completing what you
started.
Pam Hauck
Pam Hauck's wrap-up
Posted on: May 15, 2004
Thanks to everyone who participated in
this week's Opening Up
exercise. This is
the third time we've ran this, and once again, it was a success. The
level of
participation was high for both submissions and critiques.
Several submissions grabbed the attention
of readers with the very
first
sentence, held it for 300 words, and left us wanting more. Some left
unanswered
questions that made us want to turn the page and see what happens next.
Others
presented interesting characters in crisis that made us care about what
happens
to them. We were exposed to different cultures, various time periods,
and
ghosts. Some of us were exposed to genres we seldom, if ever, read.
Once again, the critiques remind me that
reader's tastes and
interests are
varied. Most were able to go beyond personal preference and examine
what worked
or didn't work to make the opening effective.
Hopefully, we've learned more about
writing effective openings and
what
interests readers.
Thanks again to all who participated and I
wish you success with
finishing what
you started.
Pam Hauck
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.