STARTING A STORY
Fred Rayworth
I’ m a member of the Rayne’ s Writers Research group which I think is a Yahoo group and I get lots of e-mails a week, most of which I just file away for future reference. Some strike my interest while others I could care less about. One came up this morning, as I write this( Saturday) and it was a thread about never starting a story with the weather. Someone said it’ s cliché. Oh boy … I have my own theories about starting a story and I’ ve covered them before while talking about the First Page Read from a conference. Then again, there’ s never enough talking about starting stories, so here is one perspective, and probably rehash a bunch of what I might have said in previous articles.
EVERYTHING IS A CLICHÉ
Let’ s get the oilyfink in the room out of the way right off( by the way that’ s elephant in Popeye speak). While he was trying to avoid them, I told another guy in Absolute Write Water Cooler while discussing his ghost story, that everything is already a cliché. I said,“ Just follow your muse and don’ t worry about it.” The same could be said for starting a story. The big difference is don’ t start with“ It was a dark and stormy night.” That’ s just asking for trouble. Also it is passive and doesn’ t start from a character’ s point of view unless it’ s first-person. That’ s one cliché you don’ t need.
Okay, agents will tell you they’ re sick and tired of opening a story with weather, looking in a mirror, bla bla bla … those scream cliché. Oh, and don’ t forget dialogue! Never start a story with dialogue! Oh, and how about a half dozen or more other things.
In other words, it’ s literally( pun intended) impossible to start a story.“ They” want you to find an impossible way to start your story because they’ ve seen them all. A great way to get inspired, right? Say you find a unique and inventive way to do it, then what happens? Soon it will be tomorrow’ s cliché! Then, it’ s back to the original clichés which now become new again.
START WITH A SPECIFIC CHARACTER AND ACTION Don’ t worry about clichés and start with action. Dive right into something
or just plain bored with everything. It’ s especially true with the short attention span generations that have been developing over the past few decades. However
Fred Rayworth
A man of many talents
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WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
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WINTER 2017