Let’s Get It Started

Still talking short stories: have you considered having more than one protagonist? Buddy pictures and most romances have two protagonists. And while this works in Romeo and Juliet, and Lethal Weapon, I strongly recommend you not try it in a short story. There generally isn’t time and space to build enough caring about more than one character. I am not saying it can’t be done, just saying it’s not for us beginners. Once you know whose story it is, I’d suggest you write the opening line. You don’t just want good… you want perfect. It’s a short story: you need to hook the reader in right away. A great first line will entice the reader enough that he or she can’t put the story down. That first line needs to invite us into the scene. It should have some surprises. How can a first line be surprising? How about the opening line of 1984 by George Orwell: “it was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”  I thought this was an ingenious way to show that the world he’s describing is slightly off from the real world. That opening line should also establish a voice. It needs to be clear. For example, does anyone NOT know the first line of Melville’s Moby Dick? “Call me Ishmael.”

If possible, it should tell your whole story in one sentence. How can that be? Take Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Yeah, that just about says it all – we see his entire journey, from the realization of his situation to his total alienation to his eventual death.

Honestly, you won’t see perfect very often , but I want to share and discuss a good example. Gene Wolfe’s book “The Shadow of the Torturer” opens with this line: “It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.” These are the first eleven words of a thousand page story cycle, but look at all they accomplish. First, they establish the first person narrator. They establish that he is looking back on his life. They also help to set the scene and establish a definite voice. How about the first three word? “It is possible…” a little stilted, and maybe overly formal. Suppose he said, “It’s possible”? It wouldn’t establish such a deliberate voice, right? And using a word like “presentiment” – way more formal than “I’ve got this idea…” or “I have a sense that…”  but it doesn’t carry the foreboding that the word “premonition” might carry.  

We’ll talk about scene breakdowns  in your short story next week.