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Fictional Narrative Basics - Beginning
Completion Date: End of Week 1
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Another place to look for inspiration for starting your own story is in how other fiction writers start their stories. Most writers face the same set of challenges when starting a story--in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's quote on the bottom of page 19 in What If?, he says "In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. [For us, story.] Theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample..." In the contributor's notes of Best American Short Stories 2000, Marilyn Krysl echoes Marquez's thoughts, saying of her story, "The Thing Around Them": "Writing the story hinged upon fine-tuning the tone, style, and diction of its first paragraph. I wrote drafts of the paragraph and fiddled with it for weeks..."
Look at how the authors anthologized in What If? have approached the challenges discussed by Marquez and Krysl. Typing out the first paragraphs yourself is a great exercise for learning how authors you admire approach a problem. Having read only the beginning paragraph, what would you expect the theme of each story to be?
Click on the "Submit Response" link below and type out the first paragraph or 200 words (whichever is longer) of your selected story from Best American, then answer the following questions:
- What is the first thing your author chooses to present?
- What characters do we meet in the first paragraph?
- What questions are raised in your mind as a reader?
- Why do you think the writer chose to start the story this way?
- Is the beginning of your story similar to any of those in What If? How is is different from them?
In addition, please post your response to the coursework craftbook.
Beginning Exercise 3 (Req.) - Submit Response
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