This made me curious, so I went back and examined several anthologies (including WOTF) and SF magazines to see if this was common in those as well. It's not. Most stories began with dialogue or discription of some sort. There were about 3 out of every 20 stories where the first word was a name. I did not include the first person "I" in this number; most of the first person stories did begin with "I". Of the other stories, many had either a name at the end of an attributive phrase or elsewhere in the first sentence. Many had neither. This may just be a byproduct of syntax and/or style. As an exception, I have several anthologies specifically of Asimov's stories, and he did commonly use first names as a starting point. However, there does not appear to be many recent stories that do this.

I don't know how important this discovery is, but I thought it worthy of mentioning and discussing.

In the obverse, I've read too many stories that leave naming a focal character until late into a story; meanwhile, others are named as they come into play. Naming a focal character enhances immersion with the focal character; that's the awesome power of naming. Whoever is first named is who a reader by default first identifies with.

Jane Doe watched the herd of plantains bound past her and down the alley. Yikes. Who's the proper subject? The plantains are the ones performing the more active action. Jane is a passive bystander so far. However, plaintains bounding by her is an influxing cause that might in the next sentence lead directly into her injecting her person into the action or her view of the event.

I've often been complimented (on my rejected stories) about lying the genre out right away. So, when I started the challenge, it was to try and achieve this in an assorted amount of ways. Some people seem to be trying to tell the whole story in one sentence, others seem to be coming in at the ending, and still others seem like they are telling a joke (not even a feghoot).

I do not have anything within the last couple of months, but I will use some examples from Asimov's Dec '08 and Feb '09 editions.

Dec 08:
1st story - An MC named after a short dialogue of 4 words in an attributive phrase
2nd story - after 72 words (3rd paragraph)
3rd story - a secondary character after 155 words, and MC after almost 600 words
4th story - after 182 words (3rd paragraph)
5th story - after 71 words (5th sentence)
6th story - (first person) "We" introduced in 2nd sentence. 172 words before the first character is named.

As a result, we're much more conditioned to getting to the point: showing a character and a problem/conflict without any fooling around. All-in-all it's probably to our benefit, and it's not a surprise that there are identifiable tendencies when we're taken as a group.

But here are my thoughts:

While this is pretty interesting, I personally feel that sometimes we put a little too much emphasis on analyzing our "firt 13" and retooling it over and over until it is perfectly formulaic with "what's in" or what seems to be "in" in the published community. I feel that, rather than obsessing over the first 13, time could be better spent making the writing true to the story itself and not true to some kind of formula or set of imaginary rules. IMO

The reason, which bears reeating, is this: you are trying to hook an editor, whose time is limited, into continuing to read your story. Editors are busy, busy people, and need to be grabbed by a story. If you have an established track record as a writer, your "hook" is your name (this is something repeatedly overlooked by people on this and other sites, who never fail to point out how Stephen King doesn't have januty 13-line "hook" openings; indeed not, Stephen King has a simple two-word hook - his name). If you do not have an established track record as a writer... then your story is the only hook you have.

So make an editor, who might be receiving dozens of stories every day, want to read YOURS, not someone else's.

So you do need a good story - but with a good hook. I've lost count of the number of peopl on here who, faced with the 13-line limit, keep saying "but the story really gets going on the third page" or something similar. If that's true... what are the first two pages doing?

I do feel that intensely focusing on creating a quick hook can rush a writer into the story, but I see this as a beginner writer's burden. I believe we all long for the day when our names would be synonymous with Stephen King and the hook was less of a thorn and more of a rose.

My favorite stories have often hooked me with style over immediate substance. An ethereal beginning can sustain my interest for some time if it is well-written, but ultimately I do need a story upon which to ride.

Beyond that, and in a dynamic synergy of methods, effective openings introduce a focal character, a milieu, a narrator and narrative point of view, an imaginative premise, a dramatic premise, an emotional premise, an overarching question, intitiate immersion through sympathy and suspense and an inciting pressure that influxes (an external influence that presses inward and causes a reaction) or an effluxing pressure (an internal influence that presses outward and causes a reaction), purpose and problem forces of antagonism, motivations and stakes, narrative method (sensation, emotion, recollection, action, description, dialogue, etc.), a tone, a theme, a rhetorical tenor, to enumerate a few introductory attributes that are so numerous they're only artificially divisible.

There's no exact formula for combining introductory methods, per se, not with an exponential number of concurrent possibilities operating in synergistic relationships. There is a model, a shape to an opening. One modeling view begins as a point set in motion moving along a widening line that grows into a runaway train barrelling headlong along a rollercoaster track toward a satisfying peak and resolution.

Writing an effective opening is like juggling a multitude of different objects and keeping them all in the air. Seems like a lot to ask of one hundred thirty words, but it's done so invisibly that it seems easier than it really is. One shared feature of published stories is that there's no rushing the rudiments of introductions as needed, another, leaving completing introductions for later on in a beginning, sometimes in a middle, rarely in an ending.

quote:

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If that's true... what are the first two pages doing?

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extrinsic,

I get the impression that you just said something valuable but I need you to translate it from pedantic to English so I can understand it. Call me stupid if you want to, but I just can't carve through that mountain of verbiage. Maybe others have no trouble but I'm not a fan of using complex words to describe simple ideas. Hence I rarely understand what the bottom line is in your posts.

And don't take that as a personal attack. It's just a request with an explanation for the request. Because, believe it or not, I do want to hear what you have to say. And recommend, in a friendly way, that you sometimes find clearer and simpler ways to describe your ideas if you can.

For instance:

quote:

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There's no exact formula for combining introductory methods, per se, not with an exponential number of concurrent possibilities operating in synergistic relationships.

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Is still confusing me. Maybe a clearer way to say that is "There is no perfect way to create the beginning of a story because there are too many possibilities that can act together in too many different ways." Unless that's not what you meant, but that's my best guess.

In that example, I think few readers will follow what you're trying to say the first time through. Maybe everyone here (except for me) has no trouble, but I think as aspiring writers there is some value in writing in such a way that everyone can understand it without difficulty the first time through.

I participated in a nascent writing group this morning until I left early because of it's misguided and disengenious purposes and agendas.

Many terms in my manuscript came under a concerted attack led by the moderator. Bevy, sonorous, and evergreen to name words suffering the most vocal abuse. The opposition to bevy was it didn't apply to quail, more like, you know, it's for groups of young girls and ducklings and baby chicks. What?

Sonorous rumble, well, that one was pretentious. It wasn't in anyone's vocabulary so it didn't belong in my story. Finger-wagging disapproval was the rule of the day.

Evergreen live oak, duh-huh, that was condemned as just plain ignorant. All oaks are deciduous trees. No way on Earth Quercus virginiana is an evergreen species. No matter that it's so in every plant guide book I own or have read. No matter that the writers' group met in a library and ready-to-hand reference books said same. No matter that it's a predominant and cherished species for it's evergreen foliage hereabouts.

I was out of there as soon as it turned really ugly. When the moderator said that my story was personally insulting because it felt like it was intended to cause feelings of inadequacy in readers, the moderator specifically, who seemed more bent on establishing superiority before the group and playing at power politics and one-up-manship than engaging in meaningful discussion.

The moderator led discussion against every term that wasn't in a middle schooler's ready vocabulary. Did I feel unwelcome. No reason to stick around and suffer personal attacks. My patience is wearing thin here too.

I'm not very happy with certain "numbers" of our participants and how they sometimes seem to think their job around here is "gadfly." I hope you'll just ignore such stuff.

But I'm pointing out that this can be a two-edged sword. Your writing caters to people with extreme verbal finesse and as a result you may end up alienating those who can't keep up.

It is a valid thing to think about. If you disagree that's fine, it's a risk you get to take.

But my honest feeling is that if a fellow writer (albeit a rough, amateur, crappy one) has trouble understanding you then you can bet several readers will as well. Most people don't buy books that are a chore to digest.

And while it may sting, it is not a personal attack. Because I'm not talking about your character or you as a person. I'm talking about your writing style.

If that isn't relevant on a writer's forum then god knows what is.

You're free to deflect it as unwanted advice. I don't care.

Just don't take it personally.

Goodbye for now. I have to deal with things in real life.

It's also sad when because of those things, people come here and expect to be able to act touchy or grumpy or a little bit harsher than normal in their comments, and then wonder why such things are not appreciated.

I don't ban people for being gadflies, but I certainly don't appreciate it when they are. Clever little zings may be funny, in their way, but they don't help improve situations.

quote:

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The Old Man and the Sea. I found it intriguing that the character is not named by the narrator at all - that the narrator firmly refers to him as "old man", while the boy refers to him by name (and even then, on the second page). It's only one story - so not a huge demographic to draw on - but as a motivation behind Hemingway's nobel prize in literature I figure I can learn a lot just there.

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I've long wondered why Hemingway withheld names, altogether or until late in an opening. "Hills Like White Elephants," no names, the American man, the girl, who the man calls "Jig," and the woman waitress. Jig is apparently a term of endearment, but obviously means more for the story's sake. A lover, a sportive trick, a lively dance? (It meant something disparaging in the time of the story, but that meaning faded in usage a few years after publication.) Open to intrepretation. Its power, though, puts Jig forward in position.

Why then does Hemingway leave naming the old fisherman until late in the opening? In my analsyis, one reason is because it creates a smidgeon of tension through suspense. The question of what's the man's name rises consciously about the time he's named by the boy. It's answered before not knowing becomes disruptive.

But there's much more going on that supports the naming of the fisherman when he is. Other necessary introductions take place, the narrator and narrative voice first, the predicament, antagonism, the purpose and problems, causation, influx, efflux. The narrator gives the messenger introduction and drops into the background by the third sentence, which allows for the protagonist to move into first position through psychic access. The third sentence also introduces the boy and adds onto introducing antagonism and causation, so that when the boy speaks the man's name, it's timely and potent.

That third sentence introduces the theme, and the overall meaning of the story, merges from the narrator introducing a reader to the salient points of the story to an intimate immersion in the old man's perspective. "But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky . . ." Summary backstory, an introduction of the boy and boy's predicament, and into the old man's introspective thoughts so smoothly that the narrator invisibly drops out of the depiction and is no longer telling the story. Then when the boy says the old man's name, the boy isn't a complete stranger, contradicts what his parents' wishes are, and timely interrupts the old man's thoughts.

PLOT SPOILER ahead.

Salao, that word is undefined in place posing an overarching question, what does it mean. The story answers that question. An old fisherman down on his luck sets out to prove that he's not washed up. When the fleshless marlin skeleton (symbolic for a story plot, a bare-bones manuscript?) washes up on the shore, the word is defined and defines the old man's luck. In that I see that reader resonance with the old man's predicament is established first through summary, recollection, introspection, description, emotion, etc., and then when he's named, the foreignness of the name doesn't interfere with well-established resonance.

My edition follows the word with an explanation--the worst kind of unlucky. I don't have the book before me but it seems to me that it was defined immediately (and I did read it this calender year).

Perhaps I am attributing the paranthetical clause incorrectly, but that sounds like a definition to me. You'll correct me if I am wrong.

PLOT SPOILERS ahead.

My curiosity is partially satisfied by the end of the story. Landing a fleshless marlin is about the worst luck a fisherman can have, no meat brought home to sell, and yet not be reduced to telling a tall fishhouse lie without compelling evidence. There the remains of the marlin are, the fish is that long, was that big, and Santiago caught it single-handedly, proving he still had it in him to fish for his livelihood, but didn't have it in him to deliver the meat.

But still, I wanted conviction. Its Portugese meaning is something like old and/or futile. For me, and from discussions with literature scholars, it's come to mean washed up or has-been, the worst sort of luck for a fisherman depending on fishing to live.

In the context of the story's literal meaning, salao meaning old, futile, has-been, or washed up are quite meaningful. I lean heavily toward washed up because of its maritime connotations. In a figurative interpretation or two, those parallel definitions contribute to meaningful allegorical interpretations or metafictive interpretations. I've two myself, that the allegorical story is of an author's trials in the creative writing and publishing and audience realm, the other of a metafictive interpretation of a manuscript's trials in writing and publishing. Salao says much that resonates with my experiences in both interpretations.

Is landing the marlin carcase a victory or a failure? In the literal story, it's a Phyrric victory. There it is, but there's no meat to sell. In metafictive meanings, it's either a great victory, delivering the bare-bones manuscript to an approving audience, or a great failure, nothing meaningful left after the manuscript has suffered the trials of a critical editorial and audience response process. I favor a melding of both.

If, in a story, I use a word that readers are not familiar with and I say it means 'such and such' I hope that readers will not debate my meaning in the context of my story.

In Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel,"The Road", the author never gives names to his characters-- merely 'the boy' and 'The man'. By some arguments this should distance the reader from connection to the characters, but I found the book very engaging (sometimes claustrophobicly so). I identified with 'the man' more so than if he were named after me. The fact that my son is about the same age as 'the boy' made the story very personal to me.
I noticed the omission of the names but did not find it distracting or off-putting.

PLOT SPOILER ahead.

When the grounded sailboat poses salvation for the man and the boy, the first and only proper noun of import in the novel presents. The power of naming it, and it alone, it potently impacts upon me. Out of a nameless ruin, a symbol associated with ruin, a shipwreck, the name of hope rises. Last to come out of Pandora's Box, hope. Pajaro de Esperanza the Bird of Hope. That's also where I locate the turn away from utter despair and toward resolution occuring in the novel.