Fantastic Metropolis

Beginning with a bang

I like to sneak into a story. I think it’s a cliché to start with action—with a shout as if trying to wake up the reader. I think the reader will get hooked by lots of things. Even with a bit of philosophy or a nice description. Here are four of my favorite beginnings.

If a golden circle is reflected from a buttercup held beneath one’s chin when a mystic rhyme is repeated, one is destined for wealth.

—Claire Haughton

The house in which any person spends his childhood becomes for him the prototype of all houses whatever.

—Thomas M. Disch

It is said that the memory of smells is the most powerful part of our memory. Hypnagogic memory it is called. I don’t know whether there is a place in my brain called the “Hypnagogue” where all of those memories reside, but there should be.

—Lisa Jarvis

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

—Frederick Busch

One of my students checked almost all the beginnings she had in her apartment, both novels and short stories, and found more than half of them began with the weather. I just checked a batch here and I don’t think that’s true in my apartment. Lots do, though.

I hardly know another teacher who doesn’t say begin in the middle as Aristotle said to do, but I find that a cliche.

No story

I like stories that fool you. You think you’re reading action and yet you’re not. You think there’s a story and it hasn’t even started.

Contrast can make you feel you’re reading a story. It’s interesting in itself. “Delia’s Father” by Lorrie Colwin is ten/twelve pages of contrast of Delia’s family and “our” families, and two pages at the end of actual story. It’s a wonderful story. It’s in her collection called The Lone Pilgrim.

They always say show don’t tell, but that’s not always true. It’s show and tell. And often if you just show the reader doesn’t get the point. You have to tell, too.

My story “Grandma” is several pages of “telling” how it is and how it was. The actual story doesn’t start until the next to last page.

Leaving out

I think a lot should be left out so the reader actually takes part. That seems against the rules, too. There’s a story by Richard Connel, “The Most Dangerous Game,” where the main ending fight scene isn’t there. The writer knows that the reader knows what happened. Actually the beginning problem is left out, too. The protagonist says, “You can’t mean…” And the bad guy says, “yes, I do,” or some such.

Not plotting ahead of time

I like to discover the plot. I get more complicated plots that way than I could ever think up consciously. My subconscious is much smarter than my conscious. Or maybe it’s only when I get myself in big trouble and have to find my way out that I can get a decent plot.

Some teachers I know make the students outline their stories before they begin, but if I plotted ahead of time I’d never bother writing. It wouldn’t be scary and fun and have a sense of being about to fall into the abyss. And I always write myself into a hole three or four times in a story. I always think I’ll never get my characters out of this fix.

I do think you have to have practiced a few plots before you can do this. I feel as if I have the sense of plot in the tips of my fingers.

I used to write structured yet much looser stories. That was the “in” thing then, back when we all loved Eraserhead. Back when many of us were called “The New Wave.” But I’m on to other more formed things.

Rhythms

I’m conscious of rhythms all through a story. When I come up to a shocking bump in the plot, I stop and pull back for a bit. After such a revelation or a bang in the action, I go into a description or a flashback or the weather. I think the reader needs time to absorb what’s just happened. I often write myself a note right on the story, “Stop the story here,” or, “Now for something completely different.”

As part of thinking of rhythms, I like, every now and then, to have a very, very long, breathless sentence (that isn’t run-on). John Barth wrote a whole story that was one sentence and none of it was run-on.

I want to write stories that end up as if roots grew down… found their way into the best ideas, best plot, grew towards their meaning.

Of course this doesn’t mean that I can do it, but this is what I try for.