Paula Munier - The Writers Guide to Beginnings: How to Craft Story Openings That Sell

At the beginning of everything is the word.

It is a miracle to which we owe the fact that we are human.

But at the same time it is a pitfall and a test,

a snare and a trial.

Vaclav Havel

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

A.B. Yehoshua

"Tell me a story."

These are words that have resonated with us from our very beginnings as a species. Story is part of what makes us human; in fact, storytelling is one of the few human traits that occurs in all cultures across our known history.

Since the dawn of man, weve gathered around the fire, telling stories to understand the world and our place in it, to process the past and prepare for the future, to entertain and soothe, and, ultimately, to pass on our collective knowledge and wisdom to the next generation. Storytelling is our rage against the darkness, lighting the way for our children and our childrens children.

Our stories live on, to be told again and again and again. This timelessness of story is why storytellers play a sacred role in many cultures, as anointed elders who earn their place by capturing and holding the attention of their people with stories well told from the very first word.

When we answer that call to tell me a story, we take on that sacred mantle of storyteller ourselves. So we need to start strong, too, just as our predecessors did. We need to tell our own stories well, from the very first word.

We have our work cut out for us. Unlike the storytellers of old, we do not command the attention of an audience gathered around the only source of light in the village to hear the only stories being told that evening by the only anointed storyteller in the tribe. We must compete with countless points of light, countless stories being told by countless storytellers, in books and at the movies and in our own living roomseven on our phones.

The competition is fierceand thats why your first words must be fierce as well.

Those who tell the stories rule the world.

Hopi Proverb

The best story openings are fierce enough to grab the attention of readers, editors, and agents. This means keeping a lot of balls in the air. Skillful storytellers are master jugglers: They juggle voice, character, premise, setting, dialogue, conflict, point of view, style, and theme in an endless and seamless circle of story. They toss those story balls and knives and flamethrowers around with a fierceness we havent quite experienced before. And thus we are compelled to read on.

A tall order.

Once I was in a writers group where one of the writers was struggling with her opening. Margaret was a good storyteller, and while her story was solid, her opening did not work. Her first words were unworthy of the rest of her novel, and she knew it. Shed rewritten the first page a dozen times but remained unhappy with the results. She was stumped.

She stayed behind after everyone else had left, and we sat on my sofa and talked about the problem with the opening of her thriller.

When in doubt, I said, look to the masters. And I jumped up and went to my bookshelf, pulled down the first several thrillers I found, and stacked them on the coffee table.

We took turns reading aloud the first page of each novel. When we were finished, we looked at each other and grinned.