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I finally changed how I start a story after a writing group critique
A guy in my online writing group said my first paragraph was like a Wikipedia entry. He said it had no feeling, just facts and descriptions. I used to spend ages setting up the scene, like listing the weather and the furniture. He told me to start right when something happens, even if it's small. So instead of 'The room was cold and the clock read 3pm,' I wrote 'The clock hit 3 and I knew I had 10 minutes before she found the letter.' It felt wrong at first, like I was skipping stuff. But now I look at the first page of books I like and they all drop you into action or a thought. Has anyone else had to totally scrap their old way of starting a chapter?
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gavinb971mo ago
Sometimes that slow setup is exactly the tone a story needs though.
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bettyroberts1mo ago
Oh man, that's such a good point and it reminds me of something that happened to my friend Sarah. She was trying to write a short story about a guy who just lost his job and she started it with him staring at the wall for three pages, and she was so frustrated because nothing was happening. Well her neighbor came over to borrow sugar and they got to talking and the neighbor mentioned how her own grandmother used to say that sometimes you gotta sit in the quiet before you can hear what's important. So Sarah went back and left that slow opening in, but she added tiny details like the ticking clock and the dust motes floating, and when the guy finally gets the phone call that changes everything, it hits way harder because you've been sitting there with him in that stillness. I never would have thought of that myself, I'm always wanting to jump into the action right away.
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Yeah I get that feeling. Once I was trying to fix a story opening and I felt like I was cheating by starting mid argument. But then I remembered a road trip I took where we hit traffic for two hours and the whole time I was thinking about @gavinb97 and how he tells people slow setups can work but man sometimes you just need to get moving. I switched to starting my horror story with a character already running through the woods instead of describing the cabin they just left. The whole thing felt more alive even if I lost some description of the pine needles.
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