Openings...
Jan. 19th, 2006 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI've been thinking a bit lately about openings, and, in particular, the catchy in media res opening sentences and where do you go from there.
I've got a bit of habit of writing great opening lines that also seem to lead into a paragraph that I can't seem to write. I'm starting to think now that it's the opening line itself that's at fault, or at least the way it fits into the story.
The Clay Boy story and the Silver Bear story both start out with very similar sentences. "It was nighttime when the soldiers came..." and "There were screams in Nikola street, as the priests went about their work." The problem is with what happens next. With the Clay Boy story, I can follow up straight away with an emotional riff about the protagonist's family, because everything is tied in with protagonist's viewpoint. He's there, witnessing it, and it's his emotion that the scene is really about. This version works. If I follow up instead with a more detailed build up, with lots of background and worldbuilding, then the scene falls flat.
In the Silver Bear story, following up with an emotional narrative doesn't work. My current theory is that it's because there isn't really an established narrator. There isn't someone to channel the emotion, whether a character or the narrator themselves. And following up with more detailed worldbuilding doesn't seem to work either, because the emotional hook has already been laid. Either the opening starts to sound like a gimick, or the world building sounds like it doesn't fit the story.
If this theory is correct, then I think I could get away with it if I either switched to a more intrusive narrator, or just dropped the opening line and started with the scene setting.
I've got a bit of habit of writing great opening lines that also seem to lead into a paragraph that I can't seem to write. I'm starting to think now that it's the opening line itself that's at fault, or at least the way it fits into the story.
The Clay Boy story and the Silver Bear story both start out with very similar sentences. "It was nighttime when the soldiers came..." and "There were screams in Nikola street, as the priests went about their work." The problem is with what happens next. With the Clay Boy story, I can follow up straight away with an emotional riff about the protagonist's family, because everything is tied in with protagonist's viewpoint. He's there, witnessing it, and it's his emotion that the scene is really about. This version works. If I follow up instead with a more detailed build up, with lots of background and worldbuilding, then the scene falls flat.
In the Silver Bear story, following up with an emotional narrative doesn't work. My current theory is that it's because there isn't really an established narrator. There isn't someone to channel the emotion, whether a character or the narrator themselves. And following up with more detailed worldbuilding doesn't seem to work either, because the emotional hook has already been laid. Either the opening starts to sound like a gimick, or the world building sounds like it doesn't fit the story.
If this theory is correct, then I think I could get away with it if I either switched to a more intrusive narrator, or just dropped the opening line and started with the scene setting.
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Date: 2006-01-19 04:55 pm (UTC)