What’s the best way to start a story?
Sometimes negative examples are as valuable as positive ones. Seeing something done the wrong way can help you understand the right way to do it.
With this in mind, my favorite discovery last week was the Lyttle Lytton contest, in which participants compete each year to create the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. Here were some of my favorites:
“Schlormp” went the knife as she plunged it into my heart, breaking it not only physically, but also emotionally, since I loved her.
I awoke to find sunlight shining through my bedroom window, like it was the middle of the night and thousands of flashlights were outside my window.
My feet ached but my new trainers still looked sharp and so did my murder knife. Both were red.
“Ouch!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, filling the scenery with a scream that I did due to pain.
Actually, those are so bad that they probably aren’t all that instructive. But I hope you laughed along with me!
Insight inspired by Adam Cadre (founder of the Lyttle Lytton) and all the brilliant contestants.
Then there are openings to novels that break the rules so dramatically that you have to keep reading, like Flannery O'Connor's first sentence in The Violent Bear it Away:
"Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. "