A Sense of Doubt blog post #1814 - Writing Fiction: Story Openings and Endings

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1814 - Writing Fiction: Story Openings and Endings 

Another post from class as I attempted to share with students on techniques in fiction. Here on openings and then a shorter, second post on endings.

SUBJECT: Story ADVICE: your OPENING

Hi again, it’s me. I have more stuff to share about fiction.

I love Robert McKee’s story but it doesn’t really speak to starting a short story or even a novel for that matter, not on the sentence level.

A short story has limitations compared to a longer form. A writer needs to be mindful of not wasting words. Every word is important in a short story because, well, you know, it is short.

The two most important parts of your story are the beginning and the ending. Not to suggest that the middle is unimportant, but without a strong beginning, it’s not going to matter. No one will read the middle if you don’t start strong. Likewise, the ending has to be satisfying or the reader will not appreciate her experience, and he may not read your next story.

Strong openings come in all types. Your story doesn’t have to start with a bang. It needs just enough to grab the reader’s interest.

One thought is to chop off the head of your story. I have found in my experience that I write a lot of preamble. If you have a lot of preamble, find the place where the action kicks in and cut out the rest. You can always fit in any pertinent information the reader needs as your story unfolds.

Here’s some of my recent favorites, not all time favorites. I would need more time to get those together, but I did choose a couple all time faves.

The italics are mine for emphasis and text distinction between titles and a few of my comments.

From "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" by Alyssa Wong

As my date—Harvey? Harvard?—brags about his alma mater and Manhattan penthouse, I take a bite of overpriced kale and watch his ugly thoughts swirl overhead. It’s hard to pay attention to
him with my stomach growling and my body ajitter, for all he’s easy on the eyes. Harvey doesn’t look much older than I am, but his thoughts, covered in spines and centipede feet, glisten with
ancient grudges and carry an entitled, Ivy League stink.

Wong’s narrator makes her personality known right away, and we also have a first sentence hook in establishing that she can see thoughts above his head. If that alone does not intrigue you enough to keep reading, the final sentence that establishes that sometimes to her the thoughts look like bugs should hook you.

From "I Have No Mouth, and I must Scream" by Harlan Ellison

Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to
the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

Ellison was a master. And, yes, many of my examples will be fantastic fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror). This Ellison story is one of my all-time favorites. The description is raw and stark. There is some figurative language, such as the “oily breeze,” unless that is literal oil in the tech-rich setting. I have no idea why the palette is pink, but it seems gross in contrast with the reflective floor and computer cavern. Paired with the title (Both of these stories have amazing titles), and I can’t imagine someone not wanting to read on.

From "Time Variance of Snow" by E. Lily Yu

The Devil made a mirror. A physicist broke it and shards fell through reality and changed everything forever.

Brand new story, not even a year old. Two sentences. Hooked? I am.

From "Give Granny a Kiss" by Madeline Ashby

Jack had lived through this same moment before, with human women.

Madeline Ashby is a fresh, new, and exciting writer. Check out her novel COMPANY TOWN, which is so good that just telling you about it makes me want to read it again.

One sentence!! Hooked, right? So simply. You should have lots of questions. I do, and I want to know more.

From "Lich House" By Warren Ellis

The white room is bleeding to death.

A white vestibule, with white floors and white walls and a
lit white ceiling. The only other color is red. A crack in
one wall, exposing a raw fistula in the bioelectric packeting. Blood leaks from the hole, down three inches of slick white wall, to pool on the floor. A broken heart in the interstitial net of veins and wires that makes our houses live and breathe.

Somebody has murdered the house.

Warren Ellis is one of my favorite writers. He is my favorite writer of comic books. He shares a weekly newsletter (free) called Orbital Operations. Check it out.

Ths hooks me because after all that colorful and bloody description, he distills it all into one sentence: “Somebody has murdered the house.” Is that a metaphor? Or can someone actually murder a house? Is it alive?

Don’t you want to find out?

This next one is gross. I know you may think Ellis’ was gross but not compared to the next one. Keep reading at your own risk.


From "God is an Iron" by Spider Robinson

check out the full story (with notes) at

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-1780-god-is.html

I smelled her before I saw her. Even so, the first sight was shocking.

She was sitting in a tan plastic-surfaced armchair, the kind where the front comes up as the back goes down. It was back as far as it would go. It was placed beside the large living room window, whose curtains were drawn. A plastic block table next to it held a digital clock, a dozen unopened packages of Peter Jackson cigarettes, an empty ashtray, a full vial of cocaine, and a lamp with a bulb of at least a hundred and fifty watts. It illuminated her with brutal clarity.

She was naked. Her skin was the color of vanilla pudding.  Her hair was in rats, her nails unpainted and untended, some overlong and some broken. There was dust on her. She sat in a ghastly sludge of feces and urine. Dried vomit was caked on her chin and between her breasts and down her ribs to the chair.

These were only part of what I had smelled. The predominant odor was of fresh-baked bread. It is the smell of a person who is starving to death. The combined effluvia had prepared me to find a senior citizen, paralyzed by a stroke or some such crisis.

I judged her to be about twenty-five years old.

I spent a great deal of time on the Internet lately to find this story that I knew existed but only remembered a little about it and the author’s name. Tough puzzle.

I have left out why she is starving to death and why she is in this situation, which is explained next and is available from my blog. I can also, by request, share a PDF of the original publication of the story in Omni Magazine in 1979.

I am currently reading the novel from which Robinson excerpted this story.

That description? It’s powerful and deeply upsetting. We learn a lot as he describes the scene, though not who our narrator is. In fact, Robinson does not reveal the narrator until much later, which is not usually a good example for beginning writers. Robinson has a gag for holding back on the narrator. If the story is seen as a joke (it sort of is in the end), the narrator’s identity is the punch line.

But right now, the narrator does not matter. All we care about is the woman and that horrible scene. It could be anyone describing it, and though you might wonder who he is and why he has found her, it’s her and her situation that propels you into the story.

I think it’s brilliant.

From Cory Doctorow’s “The Man Who Sold The Moon”

Here’s a thing I didn’t know: there are some cancers that can only be diagnosed after a week’s worth of lab work. I didn’t know that. Then I went to the doctor to ask her about my pesky achy knee that had flared up and didn’t go away like it always had, just getting steadily worse. I’d figured it was something torn in there, or maybe I was getting the arthritis my grandparents had suffered from. But she was one of those doctors who hadn’t gotten the memo from the American health-care system that says that you should only listen to a patient for three minutes, tops, before
writing him a referral and/or a prescription and firing him out the door just as the next patient was being fired in. She listened to me, she took my history, she wrote down the names of the anti-inflammatories I’d tried, everything from steroids to a climbing buddy’s heavy-duty prescription NSAIDs, and gave my knee a few cautious prods.



Cory Doctorow is another favorite writer of mine. This starter should hook you. I like the first person narration. It starts with a fact that should catch your interest.

Story starters are often easier with first person. In cases like this one, the narrator’s voice and sardonic personality makes an easy draw inward.

And lastly, for me, one of the greatest starters of all time. If you want, lure the reader with a HUGE mystery as described here in regards to one of Isaac Asimov’s best novels: THE PEBBLE IN THE SKY.

http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book001.html

Earthman Beware!

Two minutes before he disappeared forever from the face of the Earth he knew, Joseph Schwartz was strolling down the pleasant streets of a Chicago suburb, thinking about his family.

He was a simple man, a kind man, a practical man not given to wild flights of imagination.

So when he saw the old Raggedy Ann doll lying in his path, he merely smiled and lifted his foot to step over it…

That was the only thing he remembered.

He did not know that it marked the last act of his life on this earth…and the beginning of a terrifying journey into a strange new world where the twentieth century was already ancient history.

Come on... genius: “Two minutes before he disappeared forever from the face of the Earth he knew...”

Wow.

Between the lure of “disappear forever” and the Raggedy Ann doll, Asimov has one of the most powerful hooks in all literature, not just SF literature.

Think about it.

How will your story start. Notice what I shared. Some are 100 words or so. Some are one or two short sentences. You don’t have much time to hook your reader. Though a novel can take 20-30 pages for some people (though many won’t give a novelist that long) stories have at most a page, but if you can hook in the first line, you have a winner.

More tomorrow or maybe Sunday on beginnings and endings.

Peace,
chris

SUBJECT: Story ADVICE: your ENDING

Greetings writers,

I was going to add another insightful post and try for the same length as I did with openings with endings, but I don’t have as much time today. So just a few quick thoughts.

I think openings are easier than endings.

It’s not too hard to think of an attention grabbing opening.

But to wrap up all your story threads and give the reader a satisfying ending is probably the toughest challenge of all.

Writers often fail to deliver a good ending.

I often learn by reading a bunch of openings. I have spent countless hours in book stores reading just the pages of novels or short stories. 

I have never done the same things with endings, and it’s harder to determine the value of the ending without reading the whole story.

Think about it.

Good ending. Strong ending. Strong with the Force. :-)

peace,

chris

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2002.05 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1677 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.