I didn't have a glib answer. I'm MUCH more coherent on second or
even third draft! So I have been pondering the question.

I mean, yeah, you CAN open that way. I've read some really
brilliant openings like that.
BUT...
But, those brilliant openings themselves were couched in such a
way that THEY aroused an emotional response in the reader.

The opening to C.S. Friedman's IN CONQUEST BORN describes a
character. The description is vivid and emotional.

The opening to Bernard Cornwell's THE BLOODY GROUND describes the
setting and makes the description -- which is active and vivid
-- an emotional metaphor for the whole Civil War that is the
setting of the story.

These are rarities. Most of the more enticing openings "I've"
read use some other way to rouse the reader's interest.

Build for an emotional response. That's the big difference. In
a story opening you are not describing the scene and the
character for the benefit of some artist who will paint the
bookcover illustration. That's not the point of the written text
right there, now is it? No! You want to arouse interest in the
reader and you do that through arousing SOME emotion in the
reader. Curiosity is a much-used one. But there are other
emotions which can do the job as well or even better.

That's the difference. A really good description works on the
emotions, not merely on giving dry, factual details of landscape
or hair.

It can be done well, but when it is, there is always some subtext or something beyond the details, something that arouses an emotion in the reader. And not having that emotional draw is how I see a lot of openings posted here turning out bland and relatively uninteresting.

Kind of like the writers are not looking past the movie in their head to finding a way to EVOKE feelings about it in their readers.

Anyway, no one has mentioned this aspect of openings and so I thought I would.

By "description" I suppose you mean "The sun was bright" or "Sara had bright red hair in ringlets"? If so, I'd agree -- not interesting, usually.

I also submit that description is often boring because it is static ("hair was brown," "sky was dark," "the wind was blowing," and so on). Description can be dynamic (for example, if you use action verbs instead of "was"), but it can still be boring because, as arriki says, it doesn't usually give the reader any reason to care.

Ask yourself when you look at what you've written for your opening if it can be called a "weather report" and then find some other way to bring your reader into your story.

Tony Hillerman starts a lot of his chapters with "weather reports," but he usually does it through the point of view of Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn, and he shows what his character thinks about the weather and ties it to whatever that character may also be thinking about. And that gives the reader a reason to care.

This can be short, as in

Captain Smith looked astern with his eyeglass. He couldn't see the pirate ship that pursued him, but he knew it was there. If he could have turned them away by dumping his cargo into the sea, he would have.

Let me try this for example: this is just something I'm writing on the fly right now, just to serve as an example of what I'm talking about:

Insertcharsname felt the breeze press against his back; his attention was elsewhere as the storm clouds were moving in. Something even more ominious stole his attention.

I make no exceptions. Unless the description somehow IS a conflict, it is not going to work for me as an opening.

How's this -- not great writing but an attempt at pure description that could evoke an emotion (curiosity) in a reader.

No wind ever stirred the trees in the glade. The sparse grass that filled in the open spaces between the trees grew right up to the edge of the glass dome. Over in the small reflecting pool a fish leaped out of the water, hung briefly in the air and returned to its home with a loud splash. The only other sound was the swish-swish of a broom as John, a deaf mute, swept dead leaves up off the steel path and carefully stored them in the cart trundling along behind him.

Here there is a subtext -- we aren't in Kansas, are we? Why is there never any wind? Oh, because this is under a glass dome. Why is it under a glass dome? And how is it that a fish "hangs" in the air however briefly? The path through here is steel?

To me, this is a perfect hook. It promises us a book in which we can be curious, especially about fads (and the book does deliver); it promises to be funny; it gives us the voice, and it makes me like the narrator. And it really *is* a book about finding where fads come from (among other things).

The fact is, there is no one right way. If you can make a physical description opening work, then go with it. A lot of successful authors have. If you prefer to start with some internal conflict, then go with it. A lot of successful authors have done that, too. Whatever works for you, or more accurately, whatever works for your story. I find the use of the words "never" and "always" to be kind of silly when talking about writing methods.

What I see is that a lot of people think of using an establishing shot (description) maybe because a lot of movies do that. Well, if you don't like the first ten seconds of a movie you can't/don't get up and walk out of the theater. By that time you've either paid at the box office to see it or rented it and you'll give the story a bit more time to warm up.

written stories don't usually get that leniency.

Anyway, when you're laboring under the ispiration of a muse...anything goes. But when the well of your creativity is as dry as Death Valley, it might be nice to have some guidelines to pour over for ideas and insights.

That's what I keep thinking the mass of us here could do: cobble together some insights and ideas on where to look for problems in descriptive openings.

Like, is the description active or static?

That example I had of the glass-domed forest glade is a static situation. It has (I think) some underlying aspects to raise a question (curiosity) in a reader's mind. Not any real hard draw, but not entirely without some kind of draw.

The next paragraph would probably be where something intrudes or happens to turn that static situation into an active one. Right?

So, what are the strengths and weaknesses of a static description?

What are the problems with an active description?

You can have a description of something active that -- from a situational standpoint -- is still static. What are the problems there?

AND...description can describe setting, it can also describe a character or anything else. There's a nice opening over in Fragments and Feedback which opens with the description of a strange tatoo!

Okay Wbriggs and Silver3, you mentioned outstanding descriptive openings. Would you mind posting the first 13 of them for us to look at? I'll go find the two I mentioned and post their first 13. Then we can all look at the same stuff in one place.

"written stories don't usually get that leniency."

A book you can pick up, and put down if it doesn't hold your attention -- before you pay for it.

As a reader I normally dislike beginnings that jump right into dialogue, and beginnings that start off action-packed with a car chase or something.

As a reader I don't care about the characters at the beginning, and I won't care about them until I've walked with them for a while through a story, well past the first 13 lines, and beyond the first chapter, for that matter. At best I might get a little curious, and I'm likely to be as curious about setting as I am about who's doing what, or who's saying what. An example that comes to mind is the beginning of The Hobbit, still for me one of the most memorable first paragraphs I've ever read.

But that's just me.

As a writer, I try all the "tricks", mostly because I'm insecure about what I write and it doesn't take many critiques from fellow aspiring writers to realize certain things are mandatory in our world, and others forbidden.

So I guess the idea is make whatever you open with interesting and to the point, then get the story in motion. I've never heard a non-writer negatively criticize a story for starting with description of the setting. Keep in mind this is in the context of novels, since I don't know any non-writers that read shorter fiction, except for coerced kids in school.

A description that describes some unique place can work though it too is stronger with a subtext undercurrent.

Same goes for descriptions of people.

I think you can get to know a character in the first thirteen lines. Not that every writer can manage that every time, but some niggling little something, an action, an opinion blurted out, something can make a character interesting enough to read on.

And if you mention some non-normal fact about a character -- like the John sweeping the leaves in that glass enclosure being a deaf-mute -- then the question pops up as to why it was mentioned. Why is it noticeable that he is deaf and mute and how will that play out in what is about to happen?

A single oak tree in a garden is rather ho-hum aside from maybe the question of why only one. But a single oak tree in a garden and it sheds leaves of gold, now there is something interesting. A bit crude, but inherently interesting for at least another paragraph, don't you think?

If you open by telling us Miss X is scared we aren't quite as likely to believe you (show vs tell) as if you opened describing her reactions that allow the reader to draw the conclusion: she's scared out of her wits! Or, open with describing the setting, and the reader once again can draw his own conclusion: I'd be scared out of my wits! Either tack could evoke the emotions of fear and worry/concern in the reader. Which is what you want, isn't it? For the reader to FEEL something (aside from boredom)?

A rule of thumb I remember reading somewhere: if you could begin reading from the second paragraph with no detriment to the story, then the first paragraph was unnecessary.

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I understand that. I just feel that you're rather quick to shoot down the "movie establishing shot" really only because either it's a "newbie mistake" or because of its connection with a media that many writers tend to snob at (not to imply anyone here, it's just a pet peeve of mine when people tend to snob one medium for another while completely ignoring the advantages and characteristics each medium presents).

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Sorry for the misunderstanding. We're not putting down movies or movie writing here. The point of my suggestion that people are imitating movies by trying to do "establishing shots" at the beginning of their stories is that what works in a movie because it's visual, may not work in written fiction.

OSC has pointed out that many writers who have grown up on movies and other visual media tend to try to imitate visual techniques in their writing and in so doing tend to ignore the strengths of written fiction.

Only in written fiction can you really get into a character's head and truly understand that character's motivation. In visual media, you have to guess at the motivation. Even if the character claims to tell you what his or her motivation is, you can't really trust that you are getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Establishing shots usually work because the viewer recognizes what is shown to them, and the convention is that the following scene will take place inside or very close to whatever was shown in the establishing shot. They also work because they are very quick. Written description, on the other hand, can be very long and detailed, which can counter the effect of a true establishing shot.

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A rule of thumb I remember reading somewhere: if you could begin reading from the second paragraph with no detriment to the story, then the first paragraph was unnecessary.

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OSC says something like that when he recommends that anything which can be removed from a story without ruining the story should be removed. If it can't fight for the right to be in the story and win that fight, it really doesn't belong.

I'm sorry my example isn't world class. It wasn't meant to be. It was just a made-up-on-the-spot example of a specific problem.

How could it be made more interesting?

Is it a draw to anyone? If so, how so?

If not -- PRECISELY why not? If you say "because nothing is happening" then we get to what's the difference between this and all/most/some openings that begin with pure description of a static situation? that DO work well?

It's not really a description of an active nor a static setting. It is information. Mildly interesting. Nothing that would get me turning the pages, however. I can't even tell if it's fiction or non-fiction in its first 13 lines.

Not that this is a bad opening. But it's not one of the type I've been trying to discuss here.

The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/sitbv3/re ader/102-5242929-8352915?asin=0061054887&pageID=S00B&checkSum=qR0uhcfLCzqBpCdasVQgoox88pjgAseWa8LrJS4/Ti8=

(the Amazon Reader edition seems to have a few glitches, but I haven't been able to find another copy of the first few pages)

Slightly older: "The Three Musketeers", by Alexandre Dumas:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1853260401/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-5242929-8352915#reader-link

As an aside, I wonder whether part of our impatience with descriptive openings (which were done long before the "establishing shots" and movies ever came to be) is that we've become impatient. We want to have something happen, like in movies, and we perceive descriptions as places where nothing happens. Obviously, judging by the number of 19th-Century books that open with a description of the setting, in the past it wasn't the same thing.

I'm not emitting any judgments, just speculating.

I don't find descriptive openings that much of a turn-off. Sometimes it's just deliciously decadent to snuggle down with a book, open to the first page and relish the opening words as the author sets up the story. No rush, and no pages and pages of scene-setting, but a pleasurable introduction to a reading experience. A feeling like you have all the time in the world, and you want to enjoy each word. Satisfaction from the first page of a book, as fleeting as the freshness of a new box of crayons before the points are all nubby, can't be lost for me because of a few paragraphs of description. But maybe I'm just trying too hard not to be frenzied.

What are some things that do work in a static or in an active opening description? What are things that don't work.

And can we figure out why?

The old who, what, where, when and how...I don't think it's necessary to have ALL of those in the opening 13 lines. Maybe not any? Not if you are opening with description.

Take my crude example above. It had a where and that's about all it got around to in those few lines. We don't know who, unless it's John, but it might not be. We don't know when or how or what, now do we?

I'm looking for guidelines. Things that work in general terms when inspiration fails.

Could we say even that you need at least one of the who-what-when-where-how's in the opening lines?

Of course you can do all of those or any one and still have a dud of an opening.

What is the main factor in making an opening come alive?
Isn't the evocation of some emotion in the reader? Everything else is icing?

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Andre Norton once told me that your story/novel should always begin with who, what, where, why and when -- the same sort of rules that reporters follow.

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Your "Who cares?" is exactly my point. The opening HAS (my opinion at the moment) to evoke an emotional response in the reader. A good emotion, not boredom and porbably not disgust and things like that. Who cares goes directly to the problem of evoking that emotional response, doesn't it?

so then...can we agree that the single most important aspect of the 13 line opening is that it evokes an emotional response?

Then what it uses to evoke the emotion should have some bearing on the story told afterwards.

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited September 19, 2006).]

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited September 19, 2006).]

I guess the one I would most want to read had the POV character in a dark closet with a man apparently hiding from some menace outside. But then she switched from that to some description of less urgency. It would work if I actually had the book, but is exactly wrong for an Amazon.com excerpt.

I've decided to move my story opening to a scene where the MC is trying to decide if her attentive admiration of a man who spurned her has crossed the line into stalking. But me changing my story opening has become (at least to me) a running joke.

Were they active? Static? Full of emotionally charged words?

Could you show us the first 13 lines?

The thing I think was interesting is that Perry's characters are not particularly sympathetic, but by involving this reader in what the characters are thinking about and doing right away, he still makes me want to keep reading.

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so then...can we agree that the single most important aspect of the 13 line opening is that it evokes an emotional response?

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franc li said:

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Something that stood out that I never noticed before is the POV character is almost always the very first word.

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Mainly, they put me quickly into each of the characters' heads, and I was caught up in what was going on with each character in each chapter.

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Then what it uses to evoke the emotion should have some bearing on the story told afterwards.

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Silver3 Can we download the first 13 lines of those openings you mentioned? See them in the same format as what we post ourselves?

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From THE BLOODY GROUND by Bernard Cornwell

It rained. It had rained all day. At first it had been a quick,
warm rain gusted by fitful southern winds, but in the late
afternoon the wind had turned east and the rain became
malevolent. It pelted down; a stinging, slashing, heavy rain fit
to float an ark. It drummed on the armies’ inadequate tents; it
flooded the abandoned Yankee earthworks at Centreville; and it
washed the shallow dirt off the grave mounds beside the Bull Run
so that an army of fish-white corpses, scarcely a day or two
buried, surfaced like the dead on Judgement Day. The Virginia
dirt was red, and the water that poured in ever-widening muddy
streams toward the Chesapeake Bay took on the color of the soil
so that it seemed as if the whole tidewater was being drenched in blood.
…

This one is description of a character. Alas, it turned out not
to be a main character in the novel. (A big disappointment to me
as I read the novel.) However, it was evocative description.

From IN CONQUEST BORN by CS Friedman

He stands like a statue, perfect in arrogance. Because his
people love bright colors, he wears only gray and black; because
they revere comfort, he is dressed uncomfortably. His people are
flamboyant, and display their bodies with aggressive sexuality;
he is entirely concealed by his costume. Tight-fitting gloves
and boots cover his extremities and a high collar conceals his
neck. His skin is as pale as human skin can be, but even that
is not enough – cosmetics have been layered over his natural
complexion until a mask of white conceals his skin from the
prying eyes of commoners. Only his hair is uncovered, a rich
mass of true black, as eloquent as a crown in proclaiming his
right to power. It is moderate in length

Opening of "The Dispossessed":

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There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing more important than that wall.
Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside depended upon which side of it you were on.
Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple of large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory.

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Opening of "Grass"

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Grass! Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled carribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicoloured as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses--some high, some low, some feathered, some straight--making their own geography as they grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet, where maidens pillow their heads thinking of their lovers, where husbands lie down and think of their mistresses; grass groves where old men and women sit quiet at the end of the day, dreaming of things that might have been, perhaps once were.

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Opening of "The Three Musketeers"

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On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it. Many citizens, seeing the women flying toward the High Street, leaving their children crying at the open doors, hastened to don the cuirass, and supporting their somewhat uncertain courage with a musket or a partisan, directed their steps toward the hostelry of the Jolly Miller, before which was gathered, increasing every minute, a compact group, vociferous and full of curiosity.
In those times panics were common, and few days passed without some city or other registering in its archives an event of this kind.

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Actually, we’re only looking at beginnings that are nothing but a description. A description of a character, a setting, a tatoo…a static situation(?)…things like that. There are lots of other ways to open a story. But let’s not widen the field here. Opening with description is a large topic in and of itself.

these two descriptions start out with actions "it rained" and "he stands". have a purpose, vividly shape your facts and language to it, and you'll be just fine

Now that’s an interesting way to look at this. “Have a purpose…” And shape your facts and language – as in choose a fitting and powerful vocabulary in your description?

THE BLOODY GROUND and IN CONQUEST BORN both have a lot of strong words making powerful statements. THE DISPOSSESED was milder but it did raise…what? feelings? To me it seems a little better version of the type of description as my glass dome one. THE THREE MUSKATEERS is more active on the surface. People are running around panicking. Yet it is a static situation so far as the reader has the first 13 lines. In all of these openings it seems we’re waiting for a major character to step into the scene or move or something.

GRASS I have a harder time with. For some reason all the grass descriptions sort of blend together and I -- my fault -- am just not getting anything out of it. Sorry, Silver3. It’s as if I can’t get a handle on what the purpose is of all the grass descriptions. I can't "get" the subtext?

Why isn’t that working as well for me as the descriptions of the battlefield in THE BLOODY GROUND? Anybody else feel that way? Have a firm idea why?

. the static description has energy because things like the glass dome were put there to ensure statisticity.

Hmmm…the glass dome and the wall. Okay, but suppose there isn’t such a limiting factor in the description? Can we find a good example of that? Does it NOT have so much energy for lack of a limiting factor?

that was the point. if you call that subtext, it's subtext,

to me, subtext means a meaning other than the obvious one of the words themselves.

but any hook needs [subtext?] it because good writing requires intentionality.

Hmmm…good writing needs subtext because subtext reveals the intentionality --???I’m confused here. Sorry.

opening with a desciption works when it advances another point/purpose: in a battle, the battlefield itself is a significant player, it's almost a character of its own. the writer's intent (implied by the title itself) was almost certainly to set this up from sentence one. the same would go for "grass." the deaf-mute description above would work for setting up a story about an oppresive or morally stifling society, say, but not so well for someplace where the senses reign supreme.

So, we have to look at that underlying purpose.

If it is just to describe a character or a setting (as if for the cover artist) then the purpose is probably not going to work.

There IS always the case of inspiration, but as a general rule of thumb, you need a good, interesting purpose.

If you describe the character in such a way that a reader would say -- that's one nasty sob. Or, this guy is trouble waiting to happen. Or, something -- then the description probably has a better chance of being interesting.

Say he is tall (he has to bend his head to walk through the doorway and hits the hanging chandelier when he isn't looking). Say he has blue eyes (which are uncommon among the XXXX where everyone has yellow eyes and the first question anyone asks when they meet him is if he has some distant human ancestry). Say he wears a grey worsted suit(with a nice drape of clan colors over the right shoulder as well as a black-and-white checked keffiyah -- arab headdress). Say his shoes have holes in the toes (because of his toe claw rubbing there). His face lights up with a smile (as the scent of fresh blood reaches him).

Hmmm...I think I missed the making my point here.

Purposes that work. Showing something interesting about the character. That he's the bad guy. That he's the good guy. That he is not human, not on Earth, is a mechanic, is a spaceman, is the CEO of a corporation on the Moon...etc.. That he's scared, happy, about to die...etc.. That he's sneaky, a liar, an angel, an intruder, a burglar, etc..

Then there are purposes for setting. That's it's ancient Rome, modern China, the moon, a fantasy castle, tec. Or, that it is hot, cold dark, light. Or, that it is dangerous, soothing, what else?

But, looking over these possibilities I think that the purpose has to be more than just describing the character/setting/situation. What makes a real difference?

Is it opening with a description that merely shows? It still needs to arouse emotion in the reader? Make the reader curious, scare the reader, etc.