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
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