It's strange how quickly visions come to a writer, when he or she sits down to write , and it's also of course strange how fast they tend to sometimes leave.
Often when I am discussing the "art" of writing with others I try to discuss just how much value I personally like to put on the opening sentence. To me it's the end all be all of the art form - and this makes it quite different from music or painting, & so on. With writing the first sentence is a sort of death knell, because it leaves you trapped (since you must follow it up), but also a sort of very, very simple , and certainly easy, thing to create. Most people to me tend to think of writing as a grandiose project that they could never even begin to contemplate; and in the modern age where long tomes like Game of Thrones and Stephen Kings IT seize the day these people have some reason to think this. But they should also always remember that stories , both centuries in the past and even still today, do not really have anything to do with length. The idea that a "story" has to be 250-300 pages is a false construct.
We hear stories all the time from people in our lives that are incredibly short. We don't consider them any less legitimate for this reason. I tend to take this same approach with my own writing and I would recommend it to others. My basic idea is essentially that I really do just go sentence by sentence. If I get a paragraph, great. If not, just as well. If I manage to get an entire "novel" even better. Oftentimes I seem to land with just a basic short story. This doesn't bother me.
In my experience most of the best stories I've gotten where I really get on a spree, however, tend to be ones that take me by surprise and have to do with something I didn't think I would enjoy so much as I did. For example, in reality, I adore Italy and have researched Italy and very much wanted to set a story, if not a number of stories there, for years. Yet, each time I try to sit down and purposely type up an opening sentence that I know will eventually lead my character to Italy (or already has them planted there) I oftentimes don't tend to get very far. For some reason I just collapse. It's too forced. Too strained. Stories in my experience -- especially the ones that you get on a spree with (i.e. Where 10-15,000 words just seem to get magically written) almost always begin with very mysterious opening sentences. Let me give the reader some examples of sentences now , that randomly come to me ; and which I would use to begin a tale:
The girl looked out of the castles glass window and saw there was some sort of green looking goblin out on the grass. Behind it she could see that a horse was laying dead, flies buzzing all around it. Next to the goblin seemed to be a little girl similar to her; she appeared to be vomiting blood.....
Now we will try to begin something totally new. I will in fact try to purposely type something about- what?- a 16th century type court jester smoking a glass pipe.....
The boy was staring at him. He was naked and shivering and scared. All he kept seeing in his head was the bloody face of his father and the way the knife had looked ripping through his cheeks. The jester! He had popped up in their cabin like he came from thin air in the middle of the night. The boy's mother had let out a shriek . She had seen the jester first. She had tried to cast one of her spells but ...alas! Her magic from Rowan was not strong enough. The jester formed a ball of fire in his hands & he threw it at the boy's mother. She burst like nothing right from the cabin....vanishing. And then he turned on the father. He spoke in a strange tongue then and now , one the boy did not understand. With his long sharp fingers dripping blood he began to light himself the glass pipe taking in a big suck of smoke. He smiled with rotted green mucous filled teeth at the boy. "You will be a jester too now." He said.
As the reader can see this one wound up spiraling onwards for a number of sentences longer than the other and naturally in the process I picked up a number of details that, as I said before, are now- as great as they are-- also going to somewhat 'ensnare me' as a writer in this one constrained spot. There are details here , in other words, that most readers are going to expect me to keep working with repeatedly. The jester, for instance, they're going to want explained, perhaps in great detail. The mother too, and where she vanished, or also where she got her magic, they'll also want to know about. Then too the boy and whether or not he will willfully become a jester or if he will refuse . Plus they might want a description of what, exactly, the jester was smoking in that glass pipe? And , again, where's he from? What's he look like? Does he look completely identical to the typical 16th century jester someone here in our world knows? Or is he different? What's his name? Does he even have one? And what the hell is he doing? Why'd he come for the boy? Does he perhaps have companions? If so- how many?
In many of our most renowned stories questions like this are very carefully answered, especially when it comes to the second to last one. A writer who likes to do what they call a "slow boil" could literally make someone wait 900 pages before getting even a bit of an answer as to why that jester showed up like he did to steal this boy from the cabin. A fairly typical explanation often used in fantasy - like in Harry Potter for example-- would be that the boy is perhaps really the jesters son, or his grandson, or his relative oe something like it et cetera. Most books would probably try to create an explanation eventually and many readers would probably demand one. Gandalf in lord of the rings, for instance, shows up in the first book rather randomly , and is then explained away afterwards in rather great detail. But imagine if Gandalf and his back story had simply never been explained in any way? Imagine if Tolkien had just left him a total mystery (which he somewhat did but not completely). Or imagine too if the Shire, for some reason, had just never been explained either...if the story simply commenced with Frodo and then just took off for Mordor in a fog of mystery. Many readers might think the entire foundation of the tale is gone.....
For me personally I'll tell you it doesn't matter. I don't often care about backstoroes or explanations or even, for that matter, where a story is going, so much as how a story feels in the moment. If anything, I feel a whole other element of deep mystery gets revealed when you leave things --- rven enormous things --- totally unsaid. If you were discussing a scene, say, where a woman (or a man I guess) was being violently raped at gunpoint in a New York subway at night, I wouldn't care so much about what happened before or afterwards perhaps, as I would about the rape itself. A good writer could give me just the utter brutality of the subway rape scene with nothing existing around it and it could be the greatest, and most horrific prose, I've ever read.
Having said that, let's try something else and see what I get:
The knife was trembling in Savannahs hands, and the Tupac song blasting loudly, all throughout the living room. She was very drunk and she knew it and it was because of the fact that she was drunk that what happened had happened. She looked down at the floor . He was lying there sucking in air, blood was all over his face. He almost looked like some sort of fish the way he was sucking it in...his chest was taking big mighty monstrous heaves. She had never seen anything like this before ...of course not....Savannah Watson had never killed anyone before ...but now, Jesus , now he had come at her and he was about to hit her and she had that knife on her and......
She glanced towards the door. The front. It was wide open. She had her Audi parked in the driveway. If she got into it now she could get away she'd be alright...maybe. Maybe no one would know she had been there? She lived 5 towns away down the highway a 35 minute ride. They would think a - what? -- a random bum had come in and attacked him and killed him. Thinking that she began to step away....and then she started to run.
This story might seem like it's one that could definitely be made into a film tomorrow , and it probably could (I would cast Kate Winslet as Savannah), but even having said that, I've got tell you the truth: I was already sort of sick of it even after just two paragraphs. I don't know why exactly. I don't think it was because it was a bad story - but perhaps rather just because it was a story that, for whatever reason, just isn't reaching me today. Where, after all, can I take this girl ...who is apparently named Savannah...that's going to be realistic? I mean, I suppose you could make it a fantasy, but more likely than not, just because of how it has begun , this story here is going to now be constrained in the "realism" box, for the next 400 pages (assuming I kept it going). And of course by being in that realism box that means I have to start providing real avenues for her to walk down. I can't just make it a dream sequence or have her turn into a warlock or journey through a portal and cast a spell and make it al go away. No! She will have to face "consequences".
Most readers in the modern age will probably want her to face at least some sort of punishmen , or they'll want that explanation again. The bloody back story you know? Who was the man lying there? How long did she know him? Why was Tupac of all artists playing? Say, Is Savannah white or black? Is she a white girl who perhaps just murdered a black man? Woah. Whole new freaked out plot there. Or, is she perhaps a black girl who just mirdered a white man? Another al new freaked out turn to take, and they are questions that -- as it stands now --- even as the writer , just like you the reader, still don't know.
Whatever the case, readers will definitely want the entire plot thereafter to revolve completely around this murder, and how Savannah escapes it or does not escape it. But what if, after having this brutal murder scene be the opening chapter, & then perhaps having Savannah rob a bank in the next chapter, what if I just then had her move to Florida and become a hair stylist and ...go on for 400 pages about her opening up a hair salon ? I would be immediately accused of "deviating" from the original plot . This is something I've always found aggravating....this idea that past events must always weigh heavy on a character. What if they don't? What If this lady really moved to Florida and just completely and forecer forgot this night? No one would like that story .....
But OK let's try another and now let's try something a little different that many people will tell me is cheating but which I do all the time: let's jump into another book that's already been written and published and pluck our first sentence (albeit somewhat tweaked) from there.
Here's one from, as previously mentioned, the Game of Thrones book, the first one, Songs of Ice and Fire , right in the opening prologue:
“A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce...."
Ok. We're going to turn that into this:
The shadow of the ghoul began to peak it's head out slowly from behind the Rock and the darkness. Martin could smell the rot of the wood in the air, and then too he felt he could almost hear the sound of what his father , if he were alive and with him, would have called the void. He gripped the handle of his long sword rubbing it with his fingers. If the ghoul came out from the dark shadows completely and emerged to take him, Martin was ready. He would fight to the death. He would have no choice. He would do like his brother Jardan would do, or like his cousin Grandin. Already he could imagine the sound of what the ghoul would be like, of the cry he might let out. He could also imagine what it would perhaps feel like if the ghoul managed to touch him. Martin knew what happened whne a ghoul touched human flesh. It was not good. The skin would....he shook his long black hair in the cold trying to avoid the thought....
From here I now want to try and see if I can actually jump into a whole other book, or perhaps just another whole section of the George Martin book, and see if we can find another paragraph for our character that way --- instead of just pulling it completely from my own head. Let me look.
Ok I went just a few pages forward and took something that was another direct reference to the same "shadow" thing that is apparently called the Other. I found this:
“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.”
We now type:
The ghoul began to laugh now & then it began to speak in a low and guttural voice. The voice was very frightening for Martin to hear, and it was in a language that he did not recognize, not for nothing. It sounded like the split of hard ice on the surface of some frozen snowy lake , and then he suddenly heard the thrust of a long sword, a second later. A foul smell began to emit from where the ghoul was slithering; and a light some distance behind them then, began to dance, almost hopping, in the distance, leaving a trail behind it. It almost looked to him like fireworks. And before Martin knew, a moment later, he felt a strong thick hand slip over his face and cover his mouth. It tugged at his hair. A voice now speaking in the language of Waghdas- his home--- began to speak. It too was cold like ice splitting.....and chills ran down martins young petrified spine. "Don't ..oh...don't hurt me." The boy muttered.
This particular method of finding first sentences is one I always find particularly intriguing because, even in spite of all the controversy that surrounds "working off another author", I think the reader still has to admit that there's something terribly exciting about seeing the way the story is born based off the way the other one went. In fact, I guess it shouldn't be surprising, but I've often gotten such a kick when I think to do this particular thing that I'll find myself writing considerably more than I would if I just try to rigidly rely on solely my own imagination. The best way I can describe it is to say that it really is almost akin to a form of magic. I wouldn't call it stealing but rather "jumping within something", and/or pulling something out. The fact of the mater is I woul have never thought of that ghoul, or the boy Martin, had I never read just those two first sentences ...and there's definitely something remarkable about that. There is also the fact that, if you do this and you don't keep a log of it as I am now, you end up looking back at it months later and you don't remember at al where you got it from. Usually if you're going to do this I would suggest doing it with lesser known stories maybe. Just in case?
I suppose now that we will do just one more and here I will try to flesh out some details beforehand (like I would usually do in just my skull) before I write it. What do I want this next brief story to be about? Well I think I want to create a sort of mix of the stories up above here already - particualely that one where I mentioned Tupac & the woman with the Audi--- and I want to try and maybe make a female character who seems , in every way, to be of the real world, but who actually is some sort of magical fantasy character. Maybe something like Sabrina the Teenage Witch ...or the Witches of Eastwick...but not a teenager and not in Massachusetts.
She was standing in the mirror with no bra on & just a bright pink & purple glowing flannel shirt (all my girls wear plaid constantly) applying the soft makeup to her lips. It was very bright just like her sorella Gwendolyn had told her it would be. Her siste had gotten it for her as a gift for the Solstice bringing it from beyond the portal from a shop in Avalon. Out beyond the house as she applied the lipstick she could hear cars and trucks passing, birds whistling...a snake slithering too, somewhere upon the side of the house.
It was very early in the morning; and she had been awake for the better part of a week now. On the bed behind her was a man sleeping tied up in a knot under a spell she had cast on him. He was naked save for a pair of boxers. He was a very big man and he had a very big chest and big muscular arms and a beautifully thick black beard. She had found him the night before at Kate Lynn's bar in the center of (where?) town. He was not magical not a magician..nothing of the sort. Just a regular guy now under a sleep spell she wasn't sure she wanted to take off. He looked good sleeping there and she wanted him to stay there . Shania Murik after all had been for a thousand years now the sort of witch and demon who liked to always have a man and a big man at that in her bed.....
Im now going to type something I expect will throw readers off (some) but which is really a plot device I actually tend to use very frequently in many of my tales:
She cast a spell to make her fingernails grow very long and a glowing pink just like the expensive flannel shirt she was wearing and then she began to run the sharp fingers down the mans chest & hairy but so nicely fit belly until she reached the waistline of his boxers. She breathed a deep breath...somehow it never got old. She felt a fine smooth chill run up the back of her long shaven legs & then her hand slipped beneath the boxers . It was warm under there..she grabbed his member. And the second she did the memories surged through her hard & fast of when she herself had had a phallus -- an even bigger one--- 1000 years ago in the ancient times, in Rome. She saw herself as she had been, as the big chested Roman Centurion riding the horse she had ridden then. For a second she almost thought she heard her old wife calling her name. Then her eyes flashed open and she ripped her hand away from the mans phallus....
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