November 2014
Beginner
384 pages
9h 8m
English
Content preview from Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies
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Chapter 17
Writing a Gripping Opening
In This Chapter
Working on your opening words
Examining successful types of opening
Often people say to me, ‘I’ve got a great idea for a story, but I don’t know where to begin.’ The answer is simple: just start writing. Don’t worry about whether you’re writing the beginning of your tale or not – just start writing about something that interests you, and feel confident that you’ll find the best place to begin the story later.
When you do start producing your opening lines, you’re sure to find this chapter invaluable. I lead you into the task and describe several types of opening that have kicked off some classic novels.
Don’t be too intimidated by the need to produce a perfect opening that blows your readers’ minds. In the end, the opening line has only one purpose: to make readers want to read the next line … and then the line after that … and so on.
Introducing the Art of the Opening
An old German proverb says that ‘all beginnings are difficult’. The more you sit around musing about the beginning, the harder it becomes.
Most opening lines or paragraphs of books aren’t the first lines the author produces. Many writers find that they need to ...
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.