Beginnings Daily Writing: December 4, 2018
Novelist Ann Hood writes about the importance of “getting the beginning right,” and like we do, she turned to author mentors to see how it can be done. She went so far as to categorize the best beginnings she could find across her bookshelves (writing avoidance, maybe?). Here’s what she found … why not try them out?
An Introduction
“Call me Ishmael.”
“I am an invisible man.”
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like ..
An “Old Saw” -- or a twist on one
“Once upon a time …”
“It was a dark and stormy night …”
“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road …
Character Description
He was spectacularly clean. You might say ostentatiously clean.
Lloyd Abbot wasn’t the richest man in town, but he had, in his daughters, a vehicle for displaying his wealth.
Setting
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.
The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners.
In Media Res
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
We were somewhere in Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
A Truism or Philosophical Idea
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Dialogue
‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die.’
‘When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,’ Papa would say, ‘she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her …’
An “other” world
When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous vermin.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Endings Daily Writing: December 4, 2018
If beginnings have to seduce a reader into entering the story, endings must deliver on the story’s initial promise. Short story writer Elissa Schappell describes these approaches.
Here’s what she found … why not try them out?
A Symbolic Ending
Bring back a concrete image that appears in the story, even one that at first appeared trivial or disposable. Use it to drive the story’s final moments.
An Epiphany
Maybe your character has learned a major truth from their experience in the story. Close the story with this moment, but make the very last moment one of action, not thought.
No End In Sight?
If you feel this way about your story, bring back the singular, central conflict your character faces. Delete everything in your story that does not move the character toward (or away from) the resolution. Chances are, your ending will be clear.
The Symmetrical Ending
End the story in the same place where it began. Include one important difference, either explicit or implied, to indicate what has changed.
The “Open Destiny”
This option may be the corollary to the in media res opening. The action has ended, but the characters may not have explicitly figured out what just happened.
The trick is having set up enough prior to this moment so that your reader can imagine a likely destiny for your character.
The Happy Ending and the Sad Ending: actually sort of the same thing.
Happy endings MUST include some sacrifice that was made, to ensure that it was earned.
Sad endings MUST -- up until that end -- give readers some reason to believe that the endings might NOT be the saddest possible.
SPECIAL NOTE: How NOT to end: