Getting it right from the off

Here’s some thoughts on starting short stories.

The first cardinal rule of opening lines is that they should possess most of the individual elements that make up the story. An opening paragraph should have a distinctive voice, a point of view, a rudimentary plot and some hint of characterisation. By the end of the first paragraph, we should also know the setting and conflict, unless there is a particular reason to withhold this information.

You might be tempted to begin your narrative before the action starts, such as when a character wakes up to what will eventually be a dramatic day. Far better to begin at the first moment of something interesting happening, though, which is more likely to grab the reader‘s interest.

If you feel compelled to begin a story with dialogue, keep in mind that you’re thrusting your readers directly into a story in which it’s easy to lose them early on. So keep the dialogue to a minimum. One way around this is to begin with a single line of dialogue and then to offer some context before proceeding with the rest of the conversation.

Sometimes a story evolves so significantly during the writing that an opening line, no matter how brilliant, no longer applies to the story that follows. The only way to know this is to reconsider the opening sentence once the final draft is complete. Often a new opening is called for.

John Dean