REVIEWING OPENINGS

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REVIEWING OPENINGS

• a refresher BEGINNINGS
• drops the reader into the middle of action
• provides a good deal of the necessary background
  information to get your reader up to speed
• must establish the major dramatic question
• You need to start at the "right" timenot two
  days beforehand.
• It is fabulous when you begin at the point of
  change.
• You should provide a sufficient amount of
  exposition, but remember that the reader wants to
  get to the action.

2
REVIEWING OPENINGS

• Hurson's Their Eyes Are Watching God
• Ships at a distance have every man's wish on
  board. For some they come in with the tide. For
  others they sail forever on the horizon, never
  out of sight, never landing until the Watcher
  turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams
  mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
• Now, women forget all those things they don't
  want to remember, and remember everything they
  don't want to forget. The dream is the truth.
  Then they act and do things accordingly.
• So the beginning of this was a woman and she
  had come back from burying the dead . . .  

3
REVIEWING OPENINGS

• Hornby's High Fidelity
• Prologue
• THEN . . .
• My desert-island, all-time top five most
  memorable split ups, in chronological order
• Alison Ashworth
• Penny Hardwick
• Jackie Allen
• Charlie Nicholson
• Sarah Kendrew
• These were the ones that really hurt. Can you
  see you name in that lot, Laura? I reckon youd
  sneak into the top ten, but theres no place for
  you in the top five those places are for the
  kind of humiliations and heartbreaks that youre
  just not capable of delivering. That probably
  sounds crueler than it is meant to, but the fact
  is that were too old to make each other
  miserable, and thats a good thing, not a bad
  thing, so dont take your failure to make the
  list personally. Those days are gone, and good
  fucking riddance to them unhappiness really
  meant something back then. Now its just a drag,
  like a cold or having no money. If you really
  wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me
  earlier.
• One
• NOW . . .
• see p. 35

4
REVIEWING OPENINGS

• Fielding's Bridget Joness Diary
• Prologue
• New Years Resolutions side by side

5
REVIEWING OPENINGS

• Sparks's The Notebook
• Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story
  end?
•  
• The sun has come up and I am sitting by a
  window that is foggy with the breath of a life
  gone by. I'm a sight this morning two shirts,
  heavy pants, a scarf wrapped around my neck and
  tucked into a thick sweater knitted by my
  daughter thirty years ago. The thermostat in my
  room is set as high as it will go, and a smaller
  space heater sits directly behind me. It clicks
  and groans and spews hot air like a fairy-tale
  dragon, and still my body shivers with a cold
  that will never go away, a cold that has been
  eighty years in the making. Eighty years, I think
  sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my
  age, it still amazes me that I haven't been warm
  since George Bush was president. I wonder if this
  is how it is for everyone.
• My life? It isn't easy to explain. It has not
  been the rip-roaring spectacular I fancied it
  would be, but neither have I burrowed around with
  the gophers. I suppose it has most resembled a
  blue-chip stock fairly stable, more ups than
  downs, and gradually trending upward over time. A
  good buy, a lucky buy, and I've learned that not
  everyone can say this about his life. But do not
  be mislead. I am nothing special of this I am
  sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and
  I've led a common life. There are no monuments
  dedicated to me and my name will soon be
  forgotten, but I've loved another with all my
  heart and soul, and to me, this has always been
  enough.  

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REVIEWING OPENINGS

• King's Apt Pupil
•   He looked like the total all-American kid as
  he pedaled his twenty-six inch Schwinn with the
  apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban
  street, and that's just what he was Todd Bowden,
  thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy
  one-hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of
  ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly
  tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow
  of adolescent acne.
• He was smiling a summer vacation smile as he
  pedaled through the sun and shade not too far
  from his own house . . .

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REVIEWING OPENINGS

• Palahniuk's Fight Club
• Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that
  Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the
  first step to eternal life is you have to die.
  For a long time though, Tyler and I were best
  friends. People are always asking, did I know
  about Tyler Durden.
• The barrel of the gun pressed against the back
  of my throat, Tyler says, "We really won't die."
• With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we
  drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the
  noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and
  there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes
  because it travels so fast. To make a silencer,
  you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a
  lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows
  the bullet to below the speed of sound.
• You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow
  off your hand.
• "This isn't really death," Tyler says. "We'll
  be legend. We won't grow old." 

8
WRITING EXERCISEJR 49 Examining Openings

• Prompt what patterns do you notice between the
  various openings? what strikes you about the
  authors' choices?

9
IMITATION FLUENCY

• Excerpted from Hurston's Their Eyes Are Watching
  God
•  
• It was a spring afternoon in West Florida.
  Janie had spent most of the day under a
  blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had
  been spending every minute that she could steal
  from her chores under that tree for the last
  three days. That was to say, ever since the first
  tiny bloom had opened. It had called to her to
  come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown
  stems to glistening leaf-buds from the leaf-buds
  to snowy virginity of bloom . . .
• Excerpted from Student-Writer Malia Dean's
  Imitation
•  
• It was a winter morning in Pearl Harbor. Paul
  had spent most of the night in a downtown Waikiki
  bar. He had been spending every minute that he
  could steal from time to escape the horrors of
  the possibility of death which could occur at any
  moment and remembering the loves claimed every
  day for the fight of freedom. That was to say,
  ever since the first moment of realizing his air
  tubes could be cut without warning had opened his
  eyes to live in the moment. It called him to come
  and gaze at the painted ladies and submerge
  himself into a world of mystery. The starch white
  neatly pressed uniforms illuminated the night
  like fireflies, as they lumbered about the
  streets looking for an opening to seek refuge for
  the moment before moving on to the next lighted
  tavern willing to serve another drink . . .

10
WRITING EXERCISEJR 50 A Few Lines of Imitation

• Prompt imitate one of the following openings, by
  utilizing the author's sentence constructions to
  describe your protagonist.
• He looked like the total all-American kid as he
  pedaled his twenty-six inch Schwinn with the
  apehanger handlebars up the residential suburban
  street, and that's just what he was Todd Bowden,
  thirteen years old, five-feet-eight and a healthy
  one-hundred and forty pounds, hair the color of
  ripe corn, blue eyes, white even teeth, lightly
  tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow
  of adolescent acne. He was smiling a summer
  vacation smile as he pedaled through the sun and
  shade not too far from his own house . . .  
• The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window
  that is foggy with the breath of a life gone by.
  I'm a sight this morning two shirts, heavy
  pants, a scarf wrapped around my neck and tucked
  into a thick sweater knitted by my daughter
  thirty years ago. The thermostat in my room is
  set as high as it will go, and a smaller space
  heater sits directly behind me. It clicks and
  groans and spews hot air like a fairy-tale
  dragon, and still my body shivers with a cold
  that will never go away, a cold that has been
  eighty years in the making. Eighty years, I think
  sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my
  age, it still amazes me that I haven't been warm
  since George Bush was president. I wonder if this
  is how it is for everyone.

11
WRITING EXERCISEJR 51 One Avenue for Opening

• Prompt let's try one avenue for opening your
  novelsimply drop your protagonist into an urgent
  moment (or point of change) and write.