Basics

The key to any good story is the beginning. The first line should be strong enough to evoke curiosity but not enough to "ruin" the ending. The opening should be assertive and intriguing, encouraging further reading.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't start with the end; a classic example is W.R. Burnett's Goodbye to the Past: Scenes from the Life of William Meadows.

What should you consider? First things first, we start with the basics.

1. Tone

2. Voice

3. Placement

These three points are vital in determining your opening.

- The tone of your line will tell your readers what to expect. Your word choice and decisions regarding dialect and colloquialisms will have a direct impact. The length of the sentence should be included, too, as something short will pack more of a punch than something long and drawn out. You want to leave the character's emotion out of the opening line but use it as a reference in conjunction with the most important plot point. If the significant event in the story is a murder, then focus on the mystery of finding the killer, before diving into the characters' feelings.

- Choosing which voice to use and demonstrating it from the first sentence will allow the reader to affirm their expectations from the start. All point of view options have been explained in a previous post which I shall link below (at the bottom of the post). If you wish to write from the point of view of a character, choosing which character opens your story may be the intrigue you are hoping to portray to your audience. For instance, your protagonist is a boy who grew up in an unhappy family home before leaving on a ship to travel the world, only to return home with a fortune to find that his parents have incurred debt - what will he do as they beg him for money? Open the story with the words of the nanny, who reflects on what he was like as a young boy, as if she were being interviewed about the ordeal at a later date.

- Lastly, placement. This refers to which point in the storyline marks the beginning of the telling. Staring at the beginning is traditional and allows the reader an ongoing urge to know what happens next in chronological order. Starting in the middle provides a need to know what has happened between the characters for the plot to have reached this point. Starting at the end relies strongly on the emotional outcome, thus intriguing readers through a desire to understand why the end is the way it is.

Your opening line is unique; just like when meeting someone, first impressions count. Little can be said for the clichés that have played their roles well other than they are clichés for a reason, but they are best avoided in the opening line.

I challenge you to experiment, practice with a piece of writing you are not fond of, and change the opening line and only the opening line - you may start to like the piece after all.

Point of View Post