Technical Topics -- Openings

ADVICE THE FIRST -- WRITE THE BEGINNING LAST

Or at least, do the agonizing perfect polish of those first three chapters,
last.

I'm paraphrasing somebody else here ...
can't remeber who just at the moment.

One problem with story openings is that they are technically difficult,
and we write them just when we are least prepared to do so.

We write the opening before we know our characters well,
before we have negotiated the conflicts of Chapters 13 and 22,
before all the 'aha moments' Chapter 8 and Chapter 11.

One way to solve the 'opening problem'
is to sketch out the opening,
finish the ms,
and return to lock down those first three chapters,
last.


ADVICE THE SECOND -- DON'T BE AN AMATEUR

There are some openings
that an agent picks it up and just groans.
Because many many amateur mss start this way.

AAAARRRRGGGGH goes the agent.
You do not want to do this to the nice agent, do you?

Do you want to know what amateur openings look like?

Go thou out to the web and find display sites.
Google -- "writers" "post" "your" "manuscript" "showcase"

Read fifty or a hundred of the offerings.
You only have to read to the point where you know this story sucks.
Look at why you know this story sucks
and don't do that


ADVICE THE THIRD -- SOME STUFF TO PUT IN CHAPTER ONE

Your story has a couple Main Characters. (1)

Your story has something that makes life just hell for an MC. Something that wants to let the air out of his tires and steal his underwear and bite his liver out and chew it up into little pieces and spit it out on the pavement. (2)

Your story also has something an MC would give his right arm up to the elbow for. (3)

Chapter One should contain (1) and either (2) or (3) or both.
It should contain those elements right from the start.

Not the beginning of the element or what will become the element. The element itself.


ADVICE THE FOURTH (AND FINAL) -- STRUCTURE

Do not put in a teaser for a few paragraphs
and then nip away somewhere else --
to yesterday or twenty years ago or Nome, Alaska.

Because wherever you nip to,
it is not as exciting as where you have just been
and the reader knows it.

When you start in a place and time,
with your MC and either (2) or (3) or both,
stay there
for the whole opening scene.


NON-ADVICE --
just an observation.

You can do any durned thing you please,
except bore the reader.
If you write well enough you can start Chapter One with the Vladiivostok telephone directory.
.
.