FEATURE
From the Reading Chair: In the beginning... Ahead of her upcoming structural editing workshop, Laurel Cohn explores the importance of an effective opening when writing fiction: what works, what doesn’t, and the creative decision-making behind it all.
Beginnings are crucial. If the beginning of a story is weak, chances are no one will ever get to the middle, let alone the end. You don’t have to grab the reader by the throat to engage them (although that might work), you can gently seduce them with a beguiling voice, you can tease them with a curious premise, you can charm them with an interesting character. I love that frisson of excitement as I turn to page one of a new manuscript. Most of us approach reading a new work with similar anticipation. We are hoping to be transported, beguiled, enticed, to have our curiosity piqued, to be held by someone else’s take on things. Opening sentences It’s all about tone in the opening sentences and paragraphs, and using the tone to convey a sense of the narrator, the setting, the situation and the atmosphere. English writer Allan Ahlberg says, ‘It’s like the way a piece of knitting is defined by the first row of stitches on your needle. It is the first three or four sentences that establish the feel and rhythm of a book.’ A good opening sentence is simple, raises questions or is surprising in some way. The very best opening lines draw us in because they are like portals to a whole universe. They give promise of what is to come. Irish writer Colum McCann says, ‘A first line should open up your rib cage. It should reach in and twist your heart backward. It should suggest that the world will never be the same again.’ Sounds melodramatic, but even a subtle heart nudge can be profound. Here are some of my favourite opening sentences: • Short story: ‘I don’t know how to begin about Effie but I’ve got to because I think you ought to know
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about her.’ Timothy Findley, ‘About Effie’ in Dinner Along the Amazon. • Novel: ‘If rain had come, things might have turned out differently, that is what I think now; but there were children in Outer Maroo who had never seen rain.’ Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster. • Essay: ‘Death is ordinary.’ William T. Vollmann, ‘Three Meditations on Death’ in Rising Up and Rising Down. Opening chapters Writers have more than the opening sentences to pique the interest of an agent, editor, publisher or judge; they have a specific number of words, pages, or chapters. Opening chapters need to introduce the key character/s, set the scene in terms of time and place, present an incident that raises a question or a problem to be solved, establish the voice, and build the tone set in those opening sentences. Australian writer Cate Kennedy advises writers to ‘get straight into it. Stories should start on the brink of change, on the precipice of action, and at the latest possible point in order to engage and involve a reader.’ She uses the analogy of the theatre. ‘When the lights come up on an empty stage, how long do you think an audience will sit patiently waiting for something to actually happen? Scarily, the answer is seven seconds. Something of this kind happens in prose, too. A page spent describing furniture or the weather is a page in which you waste your reader’s time and lose their attention.’ I agree with Cate. I sometimes see manuscripts where the opening chapters are laden with unnecessary details or too much backstory, as if the writer doesn’t trust that the reader will be able to engage with the
