Writing a Good Opening

Where to begin…?

The Problem

Often we can have a really good idea for a story but find starting the hardest part – we know it’s got to be good but can struggle to work out how to do this….

Aims

• To identify what a good opening has to do• To explore ideas about starting points in

narrative• To evaluate alternative starting points, their

strengths and weaknesses

A Good Opening?• Will hook the reader and make them want to

read on – through the style, interesting characters, creation of enigmas….

• Will give the reader the basic information they need to follow the story:– When the story is taking place– Where it is set– Who the main characters are– What is going on

Choosing a Good Starting Point

The first thing to note is that, whilst a story will have a chronological shape (a beginning, middle and end), it doesn’t need to tell its events in that order.One of your first decisions will be where to start your story.

Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov is a Bulgarian theorist who spent a lot of time analysing folk tales to identify the common structure of stories.

He decided that all stories contained the same steps outlined on the next slide…

PHASE DESCRIPTION

EQUILIBRIUM The world of the story before anything happens to kick start the action – normality before the story starts

DISRUPTION Something happens to disturb the status quo – may lead to a series of further disrupting events

RECOGNITION The characters realise something has happened to upset normality

REPAIR The characters work to resolve the disruption and sort things out, often leading up to a climactic scene

RE-EQUILIBRIUM

The disruption is now resolved and normality is restored – albeit the world may be a better or worse place than it was to start with!

Activity 1:

You will be given a sheet with a story outline, split into these five sections and need to match up the section with the correct phase of the story…

Brownie points for anyone who can tell me the film of which this is the actual plot!

Activity 2:

Now you have the plot in chronological order, we can experiment.

Identify three different points at which you could start the story. For each point, try and assess the strengths and weaknesses of starting the story at this point….

Which do you think would be the most effective point at which to begin this story in terms of capturing the audience’s attention?

Activity 3:

Now let’s look at the openings of some published stories.

See if you can identify at which point the story starts and why you think the writer chose to do this and how they make it interesting….

So, what have we learnt about starting stories?

•You don't need to start at the beginning

•Each possible starting point for your tale can interest the audience in a different way

•Consider different points at which to start your tale and find the one that creates the most interest in your tale

Of course, having decided at which point of the narrative to kick-start your work, isn’t the end of the story (!).

There are other choices to be made too:

•Which narrative point-of-view to use – 1st or 3rd

•Which tense to tell the story in – present or past•Which format to tell the story in – conventional narrative, letters, diary, dialogue, stream of consciousness•How to use language effectively to gain attention

These are all worth studying to help you write an engrossing yarn.

And the best way to learn how?

To study the experts – read lots of good literature!