Often the opening of a story involves some incident that upsets the status quo. In doing so, the main character faces the challenge of restoring order in the world.
This incident is known as an “out-of-whack event,” which is “when the story concerns a character who stable life is knocked out of whack by an external event,” as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., defines it.
Consider this example of a story opener that employs an out-of-whack event:
Peter Hanswurst sniffed indignantly. A gray circle of withered plants lay in the middle of his field, an otherwise perfect patch of green soybeans alternating with black dirt that ran into the horizon. The hot Midwestern sun beat down on him, and he wiped sweat from his forehead. Hanswurst figured the circle was no more six feet across, a miniscule fraction of the entire field, and one he decided that was small enough to eradicate.
In this story, farmer Peter Hanswurst finds his world out-of-whack: a strange circle of dead plants sits in the middle of his otherwise perfect field. He now will spend the story trying to rid the field of the circle – and face a number of obstacles in doing so.
Starting a story with an out-of-whack event is a time-honored tradition in Western storytelling. Indeed, Aristotle touted it.
Usually the out-of-whack event happens at the story’s beginning. Sometimes it even occurs before the story begins, as the tale starts with the main character already engaged in the struggle to get his life back in order. If the excerpt above started with Peter Hanswurst plowing under the dead plants in the gray circle, the out-of-whack event would have occurred before the story began.
If using an out-of-whack event, don’t wait too long to introduce the incident. If you do, you risk having the story move too slowly and missing out on a great opportunity for a narrative hook.
You Do It
Write a 100-word opening to a story that begins with an out-of-whack event. Describe how the main character’s world is thrown into disarray by some event imposed upon him.
Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell
Tags:
main character, narrative hook, opening line, plot
Posted at: 09:45 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
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Any story you tell by definition has a plot, characters, setting point of view and theme. But to really make a story pop, an author has to interweave and play these elements against one another so that the story has tension.
Tension is the force behind the need to find resolution. It stems from the hook that caught the reader in the opening lines: there’s an interesting central problem to solve. The rest of the story needs to focus on solving that problem.
But the author shouldn’t make the outcome – the resolution of the problem – obvious to the reader. The author should always leave open the possibility that the problem won’t be resolved. Of course, most readers know (or at least expect) that the problem will be resolved. By creating doubt, the writer causes the reader to wonder how the problem will be resolved. The greater this tension, the more likely the reader will stick with you through the story.
Generally, the best way to create doubt is to make the problem increasingly more difficult to resolve as the story continues.
Consider the tension created in what is perhaps the best “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I”. The show opens with what attacks on a Federation outpost and ship that appears to be a Borg invasion. Great anxiety ensues as Starfleet Command hastily organizes an armada as its own leaders admit they’re not ready for the Borg. The problem worsens as the Enterprise engages the Borg, begins to lose the battle and hides in a nebula. The Borg force the Enterprise out and abduct Captain Picard, leaving the crew in the hands of Commander Riker, who is doubtful of his own leadership abilities and finds himself at odds with the Borg expert, Lt. Cmdr. Shelby. Though the Enterprise is able to temporarily halt the Borg advance, an away team sent to retrieve Picard finds that he has been converted into a Borg. As the away team reports this Riker, Picard – as Locutus of Borg – orders the Enterprise to surrender, saying that everything Picard knows the Borg now know and that resistance is futile. Riker orders the Enterprise to fire, or for the crew to kill its beloved, former captain.
The story constantly leaves the viewer wondering how the Enterprise/Federation will overcome the Borg invasion as the situation for our heroes grows increasingly dire. By episode’s end (which was a season cliffhanger), apparently the only way to resolve the problem is for the crew to kill the series’ main character and hero, the man they are most loyal to.
Certainly the story’s settings – aboard the Borg ship, on a world where a colony has been decimated – are intriguing. Certainly the characters – Riker’s self-doubt, Picard’s transformation into Locutus – are fascinating. Certainly the plot – repelling an alien invasion – is interesting. But combining and playing these elements off against one another to create tension – now that’s spellbinding.
You Do It Write an outline of a story in which your main character attempts to solve a problem, such as stopping an alien invasion or trying to stay alive after being marooned on an alien planet. In the outline, make sure the situation grows increasingly more dire and difficult to solve, so that as the story nears its end, the alien invasion appears likely to succeed to the interstellar castaway appears unlikely to survive.
Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality. (c) 2008 Rob Bignell
Tags:
central problem, narrative hook, opening lines, plot, style
Posted at: 10:08 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
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Among the most important words in your story are the ones that begin it. Those words should get the reader to ask, “What’s going on here?” so he keeps reading. In a short story, the author usually only has a couple of sentences to make this happen; in a novel, a couple of paragraphs typically is the limit.
Your opening lines - also known as the grabber or narrative hook - need to deliver some vital information to readers as well. In most stories, the opening lines provide some striking situation that presents the reader with something unusual, and they usually introduce the main character, his conflict to be resolved and the setting.
There are a couple of ploys you can use to create gripping opening lines. First, show two seemingly disparate elements, such as “At 0150 Greenwhich Mean Time on December 1, 1975, every telephone in the world started to ring”, which Arthur C. Clarke uses in “Dial ‘F’ for Frankenstein.” Another ploy is to start with a “distancing move” that shows we’re in a different world, such as “The great eye floated in space”, in Ray Bradbury’s “The Lost City of Mars”. A third technique is to show your main character in a crisis or puzzling situation, such as “Why must they do it one December 28th? John Stapleton considered the question” as Theodore I. Thomas wrote in “December 28th”.
When writing your story’s opening lines, remember that they should:
n Be interesting and intriguing enough to draw reader in
n Be integral to the story, perhaps even holding key clues to how the main character will resolve the central problem by foreshadow the ending
n Establish, without much detail, the main character/protagonist and a problem or conflict that that the main character must resolve; in doing so, those lines shows the main character threatened and indicate what’s at stake for him
n Establish the setting, or at least the story’s place by establishing the scene of where the main character is
n Reveal the antagonist, if only vaguely
n Set the story's tone
n Give the reader a sense that the main character’s life began before the story did; as Ben Bova wrote in “Notes to a Science Fiction Writer”, “this helps convince the reader that … (the main character) is really alive”
You Do It
Create a list of potential opening lines for stories. Develop three for each of the ploys mentioned above (show two seemingly disparate elements, show we’re in a different world and show your main character in a crisis or puzzling situation.
Visit my Web site about writing science fiction, Inventing Reality.
(c) 2008 Rob Bignell
Tags:
catalyst, grabber, inciting incident, narrative hook, setup, situation
Posted at: 10:17 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
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