Hatrack River Writers Workshop: opening ideas

This is topic opening ideas in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :

I was thinking -- maybe it's just me, but...

When I read an opening and it describes somebody/thing doing something ordinary like going through a forest or whatever, it just doesn't interest me. I'd like something unusual about what is happening or in how it is presented right then and there. Just telling me or even describing for me how you character woke up, or was going through the woods looking for something ...I don't know how to exactly describe what I'm talking about, but it falls flat just when "I" need something interesting. Even if it just eloquent prose...that can work. But something.

Anyone else bothered by this?

I mean, so you have an elf walking through the corridors of an underground passageway. Now if the elf is walking quietly on air six inches above the gravel...now I'm more likely to be interested.

This isn't about the story itself. The story might be wonderful, but I need something interesting to keep me reading.

Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :

I give openings some grace. When I open a book, I think the author has made an implicit promise that something interesting is going to happen soon. As a reader, I like to give the author a reasonable number of pages to set the stage, not least so that I can understand why the interesting thing is interesting.

Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :

The amount of leeway the reader gives is variable. But what you're talking about Arriki, pretty well describes how I feel about the "hook" (in the broad sense of the word). I think, actually, your reaction is pretty universal. What is NOT universal is what kind of thing is intriguing. For some people, the mere mention of an elf would be enough to keep them reading. For some, the underground corridors would do it. For some, those things (especially in combination) might make them think "Oh, no, another D&D story," and that's the last chance that story would get with them, even if they were totally wrong about it.

However, even though the specific reactions are not universal, you'll find a lot of agreement in what constitutes an effective opening. Lots of newbie writers use the type of opening you described because they already know what's coming up, and that knowledge, combined with the description, creates the right mood for them. Getting told by others that "nothing is happening" just makes them feel that "all those people simply don't like the same kind of story I do." If they read the same type of opening in someone else's story, though, where they can see it by itself, they think it's dull. (This is why one learns so much more from critiquing than from being critiqued.)

I think some of the major hooks (still in the broad sense, and in no particular order) are:

action (but WHY what's happening has to be clear, and the character must be drawn well enough in a VERY short time that the reader cares about the outcome)
mystery (but in the context of knowing MOST of what's going on--we've had this discussion numerous other places)
interesting character
really striking use of language
an innovative setting or idea.

Those are off the top of my head; I'm sure there are others. Anyone else have any to add? A list like this might be good for posters on F&F to look at it. They could see which (if any) they were going for, and whether they were doing it as well as they'd thought. Or they could add what they're after to the list.

[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited January 30, 2007).]

Posted by oliverhouse (Member # 3432) on :

To Rick's point, I wouldn't consider an elf walking on air to be intriguing at all. While this elf may not match Tolkien's elves, it's no surprise that an unusual creature is doing something unusual.

More important to me is something ordinary in an unusual situation. To get concrete: March's issue of _Analog_ starts with part one of "Queen of Candesce" by Karl Schroeder. Its first line is, "Garth Diamandis looked up, and saw a woman in the sky." The next few paragraphs were, for me, very confusing, but I sorted through them eventually in part because I wanted to understand how there could be a woman in the sky. Sure enough, by the time I was done with them, I understood how it was possible, and I had learned about the unusual setting of the story.

Mr. Schroeder's prose might stand some tweaking (says the amateur) -- I would have been happier with a more direct description of the environment, and I think that might have been possible even though he was trying to avoid an infodump -- but I was hooked anyway. The first sentence was excellent because (a) it gave me the name of the MC, (b) it put me firmly in his POV, and (c) it gave me a person (not the MC, in this case) in a very unusual situation, and as he unveiled how that situation could be possible I came to understand both that world and the MC.

Similarly, I recall a story by Philip K. Dick ("Stability", I think) that opens with the main character swooping through the air, landing, folding his wings, and stepping into an office. The story had nothing to do with flying -- it had to do with the man and another man inside the office -- but the opener worked because it pulled me out of the world I'm in and into the story world, and set me up to learn what the story was really about.

I'm willing to stick it out longer with published stories because I assume that someone thought the material is worthwhile. If I were reading slush, I think I'd have a lot less patience.

Regards,
Oliver

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I like plain, clear language and solid POV.

I still might be put off by serious plausibility problems, really offensive subject matter, or other things having to do with the content of the story. But a lack of clarity or confused POV is the biggest hurdle to my desire to invest more time in a story.

Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :

Rickfisher said -- . For some people, the mere mention of an elf would be enough to keep them reading.

I’m thinking that mentioning an elf in the opening of a romance novel or a mystery novel or a novel of social fiction would be (assuming the mention made some sort of sense and was handled well) much more intriguing than the mere mention of an elf in a fantasy novel. The elf is common and familiar in fantasy which makes the mere mention less interesting and to form the hook there was to be something different and interesting about the elf.

With the underground corridors, which COULD be more expected in romance, mystery, even social fiction but which are out of normal happenstance in most human cultures (a novel read by some people who normally live underground with lots of corridors would not be intrigued to the same degree as those of us who live on the surface of a planet) you would normally have a better shot at the mere mention working to draw the reader into the story.

Intriguing opening, then, might be based more on presenting something unusual to the genre or an something ordinary presented in a new way. Also, openings can be effective based on the sheer superb quality of the writing, but that’s a different direction to solving the problem.

Does that make any sense?