Writers Lab: First Things First
Morning, Lab Coats! Welcome to our second September Sunday LIVE coming this Sunday, Sept. 14, 11amET.
Beginnings do a lot of heavy lifting. They don’t just start the story, they set us up — for voice, place, character, and point of view. You signal to the reader that you are about to invent a world. You are inviting the reader in and along for the ride.
Think of these first lines:
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”
“Murderers! You can’t have them all!”
“I come from a family with a lot of dead people.”
“His mother was ugly and his father was ugly, but Shrek was uglier than the two of them put together.”
“All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.”
“The only person left alive on the island was a baby girl.”
"Dribbling. At the top of the key, I'm MOVING & GROOVING, POPping and ROCKING - Why you BUMPING? Why you LOCKING? Man, take this THUMPING.
“You can’t know what it is like for us now—you will always be one step behind.”
“A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer. A tool / for RULE.”
“As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.”
Look at the variety here. In one way or another, these lines are taking us all to church. Each of them invites us across the threshold of story deliberately and differently, using comic exaggeration, a jolt of danger, a sly wink, a rhythmic beat, or a whisper of haunting.
In just one sentence, you’re offered several shadings:
Domestic and specific (To Kill A Mockingbird, Charlotte’s Web, The House on Mango Street)
Comic and outrageous (Shrek, Love Ruby Lavender, Each Little Bird That Sings)
Epic/haunting (The Birchbark House, Slaughterhouse-Five, Two Boys Kissing)
Rhythmic and voice-driven (The Crossover, Long Way Down, Out of the Dust)
That first sentence, along with a mighty assist from the first paragraph(s) or stanzas , showcases beginnings as hooks that accomplish different tasks:
they establish character
they define a place or situation
they signal voice
they promise a particular point of view — and sometimes a pole-vault into adventure, mystery, suspense
they invite the reader to settle in and be entertained, educated, moved, inspired, comforted, schooled, etc.
What is it you want your reader to carry away from your story? Keeping in mind, of course, that it’s none of your business what a reader thinks of your story, because once that story leaves your hands, it no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the reader, who brings all of their lived experience to that story.
At the least, you want your intrepid, fickle reader to stick with you! Which means that so much depends on those first few sentences, those opening paragraphs, and your first chapter. Let’s explore what that means for the story you’re currently dreaming of writing or in the midst of drafting or revising. I’ll share my work in progress as well.
Bring your preamble work! It will help you with your beginning.
Sunday, Sept. 14, 11amET on Google Meet. Particulars are below and will also be sent in a Writers Lab post on Sunday morning early, so you can click on the link and settle in at 11amET.
If you want to join us and write together in the Lab, live, on September Sundays, you can do that right here.
