How does your story begin?

[Righmath]

Give it to me. The first three sentences/paragraph of your story.

I'm currently at a writers bloc after having been after being asked to submit my first chapter to an agent. I cant commit to pressing send as I flitter back and forth between two openings for my book.

One is catchy but perhaps cliche, which then opens up into what could be a prologue (not info dump, but a dramatic setting of the book). The other starts with action, and was my original first chapter opening, but could lack the world building I perhaps desire.

It would be interesting to see what others have started with

 

[Snuggs]

I will happily share later! Right now though, I am currently editing a very messy first draft, so mine so it doesn't exactly have it's start anymore.

 

[msstice]

For your purposes would it be better to find the openings of recently published books in the genre you are writing?

 

[ColGray]

One of my all time favorite opening lines is from Jack O'Connell's Word Made Flesh.

"You are hearing the screams of a short, fat man."


The prologue/1st chapter is very short and slowly pulls back the reader's eye to reveal the MC is a reporter who has been snuck in to watch a ritual murder/flaying, and the reporter's source is narrating. It's a great intro to the world, the antagonist(s), the plot, and the stakes.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Consider looking at Critiques There are multiple opening sections to review.

 

[Snicklefritz]

"It was a dark and stormy night..." is a cliche for a reason.

 

[sknox]

I was late and it wasn't my fault. Some fool of a dwarf had got the mix wrong coming out of Ingolstadt--I heard the coachman say something about impurities in the phlogiston tank that resulted in weak Steam pressure, or something like that. It could have been pixies in the fire box for all I cared.
-- Into the Second World

Talysse flew low to the ground, trying to gain altitude. The wind was treacherous down here, a steady tramontane sweeping tumultuously down from the north, swirling about the tall reeds and the salt hills. The breeze on which she rode sagged abruptly, giving her barely enough time to get her feet down. She touched solid ground and sprang upward again like an antelope, grabbing hold of a new current to ride.
-- A Child of Great Promise

The island was a black fist thrusting out of the Atlantic. We put off from the ketch in a longboat, and I wanted to be anywhere but there. Sprites hate ships, as is well known. Humans think we're afraid of the sea, but that's not it. We're a sensible folk, preferring not to travel on a bunch of sticks over an abyss, hoping we don't sink. We don't jump over fires either. Same sort of thing.
-- Mad House


There are three examples. FWIW, openings are difficult. I don't usually settle on the first chapter until much of the story is in place, for the simple reason that it always feels like there are a dozen different places and ways to start the story, and it feels that way right up until the the right one locks in. Which is very much a subjective experience. And even when I have the first chapter, getting to those opening lines is a further process.

I would never make it as an agent. I don't trust openings. Give me a scene--a full scene--from somewhere in the book's middle. I want to hear how the author handles dialog. I want to get some exposition and some narration and maybe a bit of action. I'm looking for the author's style and command of the language, and I want to get some sense that the author *cares* about the characters and isn't just manipulating them. I don't see how an opening communicates much of anything except maybe a grasp of grammar.

 

[Phyrebrat]

If I were you I’d check out crits and when you have enough posts, you can put the opening up.

Till then we can’t really comment or help; it’s just us throwing our stuff out without any reference to how it might help you. And also we might be wrong.

 

[Toby Frost]

I wrote this a long while ago about beginning a novel. Maybe it will be of some help.

What I think about openings

There are many ways of starting a book. A really good writer could probably start a novel anywhere, and with anything, and the force of their prose would carry the reader on. But, as with all writing advice, the safest thing to do is to maximise the possibility that the reader will want to read...

www.sffchronicles.com