How do you start?
Do you start with a face, a place, an image, an action? With humour, shock, sparsity, melodic description? Silence, dialogue, a Shakespearean soliloquy?
I usually begin with the first sentence. Okay, that sounds obvious. I mean that when I start writing, the opening line usually comes out first. It almost always changes in some way, but it’s typically my starting point when opening up a fresh word document (or scrap of paper during a lecture).
But there’s a lot of pressure in the first sentences. It’s like meeting someone for the first time – you want to leave your reader with a good impression. There are so many other stories out there, so why should they bother reading yours? Is it worth their time?
Sometimes this is how I get stuck. I want to write, I have a hazy vision in my head, some sort of image or inkling as to where I want to go, but I convince myself my opening line isn’t good enough. Even though I know it’s going to change. Even though I know it’s just a rough draft, one of many. Even though with my first sentence, I have no idea where the story is going to take me.
But when I’m lucky, getting out the first line is like cracking open an eggshell, and stuff just comes oozing out. I wish I could have these writing sessions more often (don’t we all?).
I always wonder how other writers do it. You know, successful ones. How long do they take to write their opening sentences? How much thought do they put into them?
Today, I’m going to talk about three more stories in the The Penguin Book of Contemporary Canadian Women’s Short Stories, which I chose to read based on their opening sentences.
“Chemistry” by Carol Shields
“If you were to write me a letter out of the blue, typewritten, hand-written, whatever, and remind me that you were once in the same advanced recorder class with me at the YMCA on the south side of Montreal and that you were the girl given to head colds and black knitted tights and whose Sprightly Music for the Recorder had shed its binding, then I would, feigning a little diffidence, try to shore up a coarsened image of the winter of 1972” (Shields 299).
This opening sentence is different from that of most short stories I’ve read, particularly in its length. Despite it taking up the space of an entire paragraph, what charmed me about it was the fact that it works. It works brilliantly. In one sentence, Shields paints a picture of a specific person in a specific place in a specific moment of time, lets the reader know that the ‘you’ the narrator is addressing is undoubtedly important, and that the narrator is reminiscing about an important part of their past.
This one sentence is mighty powerful, and primes the reader for the descriptive, image-filled story they’re about to embark on.
We never find out the gender of the narrator, or really much about them at all, other than their affection for the “girl given to head colds” and aptitude for playing the recorder. But we do find out a lot about how a group of misfits come together and create a special bond that is sadly broken when the six-week course comes to an end. We get a taste of Montreal in the 1970s, the students’ pride in their thriftiness and the tragic backstory of their music teacher. Most importantly, we get a unique story about a group of advanced recorder players whose hesitation and anxiousness about saying goodbyes stop them from exchanging contact information.
We don’t know how much time has passed since the narrator was in the class as they recount their experience, but that it has been some years. We don’t know what their life is like or what anyone else’s turned out like, but we know that the class continues to have an effect on them.
My favourite thing about this story is the beautiful prose, the poignant observations about people and life and emotions, and that the reader is invited into such an intimate circle of people without the burden of dramas or tensions between them.
It’s a special experience that lends itself to curiousity, wonder, and a certain kind of nostalgia for a place we’ve never really been.
“The Nature of Pure Evil” by Zsuzsi Gartner
“Hedy reaches for the telephone to make another bomb threat” (Gartner 127).
What an explosive opening sentence (ha, get it?). It’s sharp, quick, to the point. It gives you a character, an action and a wave of shock and suspense, all in 10 words.
Isn’t it crazy how writers can do that? Put an image, a feeling, a fear in your head – all in 10 words?
Throughout the story, Hedy feigns many more bomb threats, which thoroughly entertain her. She loves watching the swarms of people fleeing the buildings and thinking about how she has affected their lives and stirred up heated conversations.
Her bad habit begins when her boyfriend leaves her for another woman and gets married behind her back. While Hedy copes with her breakup by faking bomb attacks, her co-worker, Brigit, won’t let the subject of Stanley go. She goes on and on about the notion of pure evil (accusing Stanley of committing such) and talks with others about what pure evil is and where it comes from, all without knowing about Hedy’s secret phone calls.
The opening sentence not only hints at the surprises to come in the story, but the stucture itself reflects Hedy’s character: impulsive, quick-thinking, unpredictable. The reader wonders where she got the idea from in the first place to call about fake bombs and why her breakup has triggered this behaviour (especially when she describes a picturesque childhood and no previous mental illnesses).
The reader cannot stop thinking about what Hedy will do next, or if the phone calls will turn into something much larger. Hedy sees herself as innocent of any crimes, and although she isn’t throwing any bombs, she is causing major disruptions and instilling fear in the populace.
She’s a fascinating character to examine, and the way the story jumps right into her actions makes it impossible to not read on.
“Black” by Annabel Lyon
“The old woman upstairs is taking a long time to die” (Lyon 207).
I love this line. I’m a big fan of dark humour, and this brief, shocking sentence pulled me right in. It may seem like it doesn’t revel much, but it tells the reader that someone is dying and that someone else is either annoyed or indifferent about it. And call me creepy (I mean, I was raised on films by Tim Burton), but I want to know that character.
The sory unfolded much differently that I had anticipated. The son of the dying woman is throwing a party of sorts in his backyard as his mother lays dying upstairs in the house. The man is the brother of a menally unstable woman named Lorelei, who abandons her child Suzy and leaves her with a man named Morris, who ends up raising her. Morris is invited to the party (I can’t bring myself to call it a funeral – firstly, she isn’t dead yet; she dies partway through, and secondly, the affair is more like a family barbecue than a time for grieving). Lorelei is there but leaves before even seeing her daughter, and the story continues on with the reader watching Suzy grow up and slowly lose herself to mental health problems.
The darkness is subtle, hinted at through references to the colour black (a classic symbol of death and despair, but hey, the colour goes with everything), and I had to re-read it to fully identify Suzy’s decline. The story starts and ends with death, but is still a very enjoyable read, with humour intertwined with traumas and explorations of the complexities of identity, relationships and the unconventional family unit.
While we don’t find out how Morris and Lorelei break up, or where Lorelei ends up, we do get a sense of who Morris is and how he does everything in his power to make the best life for Suzy possible. We don’t even know what he does for a living, what his upbringing was like or whether he feels heartbroken or lonely, but we do know he cares about his adoptive daughter (and it’s hard not to love him for the little things he does, like put food colouring into Suzy’s ice cubes because that’s her favourite snack, or make her Jell-O when she’s sick even after she’s grown up).
The story is sad, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s a certain kind of sadness, laced with curiosity instead of pain, as the reader is left wondering about the cause of Suzy’s fall – whether her mental health issues are genetic or due to the traumas of her early days.
What’s your favourite opening sentence? What do you look for when picking up a book or short story for the first time?
Or better yet, why did you decide to read this blog post – was it the title or the first line? Let me know in the comments below!