And...whether it is truly free, or there still are restrictions to what can be included.
'Free' can mean you take the opportunity to set the scene rather than get into the action, maybe even set up a frame, where the beginning and ending paragraphs are totally out of sync with the body of the story, or maybe you introduce a narrator. 'Free,' to me, means anything other than getting into the meat of the story.
So any rules for beginnings apply to both and must be used on both.
As to the free paragraph -- use this rule cautiously. If I say your first paragraph sucks and didn't grab my attention (which I might say more diplomatically ) then your response can't be, "But it's my free paragraph." On the other hand, if I tell you that your POV didn't get established until the second paragraph you could ask as a follow-up, "Did the first paragraph grab your attention?" Actually, you can never use excuses no matter what in responding to critiques...it's just not the way to do it. But hopefully you took my meaning.
[This message has been edited by JmariC (edited August 02, 2005).]
Something stirred on the winds of fate. It came from the east, where hordes of Langari troops posed to strike, but it did not begin there. It came from the west, where scores of peasant refugees stumbled blindly forward in their desperation, but it did not begin there. It came from the north, where the peace-loving trees burned in magical fires, but it did not begin there. It came from the south, where Fate herself studied her skein, trying to determine what had gone wrong, but it did not begin there, either.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited August 02, 2005).]
The first paragraph still needs to be *good* even if you need to write it differently than the rest of the piece for some reason.
On the other hand, if you drop that same paragraph of Omni into the middle of the second page it'll totally throw the reader out of the story.
The first paragraph is free, is an OSC saying, but I think that out of context it's often misinterpreted. As others have said, the first paragraph still has to be interesting.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited August 02, 2005).]
But if you look at it the other way, the first paragraph is what "binds" the second paragraph and all later paragraphs. It's freedom comes at a heavy cost to the rest of the story. You know what they say, "freedom isn't free" and "with great power comes great responsibility" and "eternal vigilance" and all that.
In the end, your first paragraph is only "free" in the same sense that your entire story is "free". Free, because you don't have to pay anyone for it (if it's yours, I mean). Free, because you can write whatever you want. Free, because you're a writer, and this is what you do.
You create those rules in your second paragraph.
OSC also specifically said that the first paragraph is free in a short story. That implies that novels are a completely different animal.
In my own mind, the first sentence of the first paragraph is freer than the rest of the paragraph. In fact, to me, the first paragraph has a freeness gradient from start to end.
I disagree that Christine's paragraph is an example of a good free first paragraph. It doesn't do the job of pulling in at least one reader (me). Here are some good examples of a free first paragraph.
Harlan Ellison, I'm Looking for Kadak
quote:
You'll pardon me but my name is Evsise and I'm standing here in the middle of sand, talking to a butterfly, and if I sound like I'm talking to myself, again you'll pardon but what can I tell you. A grown person standing talking to a butterfly. In sand.
David Gerrold, A Wish for Smish
(actually makes liberal use of this because there are paragraph breaks between three of the first four sentences.)
quote:
Do you know why they call it slime?
Because the name Smish was already taken.
Lennie Smish was a lawyer. A Hollywood lawyer.
Let me explain that.
Larry Niven, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
quote:
At the ripe old age of forty, Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger!
Learn from masters.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited August 04, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited August 04, 2005).]
In many ways, it's like jazz improvisation. There are a great many musicians who can improvise a great riff, but it takes a true master like Louis Armstrong to make it sound like the improvisation is written in the sheet music. Armstrong rarely went into the arpeggiated riffs of most jazz musicians, but you'd be very hard pressed to find anyone who knows jazz that will say he wasn't one of the best.
My point is that the free paragraph in the hands of a grand master level talent never looks out of place, and you must really study the piece to even notice that the writer is doing it. The writers probably don't even recognize it themselves in many cases. They just know what works. That's why openings (and endings for taht matter) are so difficult to get right.
Does that make sense?
The truth is, I don't usually use free pragraphs. My example above was pulled out of my butt and was intended to represent a generic (and cliched) fantasy opening. I find free paragraphs (as I thknk of them) as a chance to set the stage before the actors come on. Or, to use a movie reference, like a camera zooming in on the opening scene, but starting from a distance.
Basically, I think if there is any other way, that the free paragraph needs to go.
It's just that EVERY SO OFTEN it takes a while for the main character to become aware of the main action...this is uaually for clunky reasons that represent poor story-telling (ie the author feels the need to go through a "typical morning" for us so we have a baseline and understand their world). But as I said, EVERY SO OFTEN there is a good reason, or at least a fairly artistic one. I'd say in my lifetime I've read a handful of such paragraphs that work. Most of the time when pepole start in omni, they're describing leaves and forests and showing us their main character from a distance before snapping into his head...bad bad bad form. There is absolutely no good reason to do that.
What have I just said here? Oh yeah, that I permit a certain amount of artistic lisence in that first paragraph, but that I highly recommend not using it, especially to beginners.
By contrast, the other openings are "standard". We have a first person narrative opening and a first person expositive opening, then a simple expositive opening to an essay.
Of course, nobody forced these authors to use these "standard" openings. You can regard it a bit like a game of go. There isn't actually any possible wrong move on the first turn, though there are definitely strong moves and less strong moves. The stronger moves tend to be regarded as "standard", in a sense. And since the best players tend to use them, most early games look pretty similar. But a strong player could use any first move at all if the opponent were someone like me.
The situation is different from a game in that the reader is at a fundamental disadvantage, and is dependent on the writer. If the reader doesn't like the way the story is written, he simply has to forego it altogether. So the intelligent reader accepts reading the first paragraph to figure out whether reading further is warrented.