Day 02 – Write Your Opening, Brainstorm the Middle

Write the opening of your story and plan to move past it

We’re starting today by paying off all the hard work you did yesterday, and writing your opening: just up until you’ve shown us the character in the midst of dealing with their problem (possibly the way they always have).

NOTE: at this stage we are not worried about ‘show, don’t tell’. We’ll work on that in a few days.

For today: just draft the story however comes naturally.

  • You might have too much detail
  • You might have no detail at all

That’s OK, We’ve got the rest of the month to figure out what you need to do…

Also today, you’ll brainstorm some of the middle of the story. This is the part where most stories stall. But not this week!

P. S. You’ll need about 45 minutes for each day’s tasks. I’ve broken them up into segments so that if you only have a little bit of time, here and there, you can still do everything you need to do!

Task 1/3: Write Your Opening

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Mastering The Magic of Opening Lines

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Opening lines are hard to write because they have to do so much:

Ask the story question; establish the voice; set the tone of the story; establish the scene

What Opening Lines Must Do:

  • Set up the main question the reader is going to be asking all the way through
  • Establish the voice of the protagonist/narrator
  • Set the tone
  • Ground the reader in a time or place

That’s why I advocate writing the first lines last—or at least tweaking them after you’ve finished the story, when you know what it’s about.

So, how do you make your first line reflect all these things?

Let’s look at some examples.  Continue reading “Mastering The Magic of Opening Lines”