Opening Lines by Allison Symes

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos

Opening lines must hook a reader so they read the rest of your story or article. I aim to write  something which intrigues me, draft the rest, and as I do that, ideas occur to strength that first line. So I go back and do so.

The act of writing something down in and of itself seems to trigger creativity to come up with more and better ideas. It’s a pity you can’t bottle that effect and bring it out when you need it!

As I write a lot of flash fiction, where my maximum word count is 1000 words, the opening line carries even more weight. I see it as doing a lot of heavy lifting. Sometimes I will write circle stories where the closing line is a repetition of the opening one or is similar to it with, say, one minor change. That change has come about due to what happened in the story itself.

I find, whatever I write, as long as I have something down to start me off, away I go happily. It can be finding the way into a piece which can be tricky. This is why I use books of prompts (I’ve contributed to some too), story cubes, random generators, and other prompt triggers to help here. 

Sometimes I will use a line triggered this way directly but mostly I will change something in it to suit my purposes and characters. But I needed that line to start me off.

I like to mix up how I start a piece too. Questions are great because they give me a structure. I’ve used them in stories and articles. My piece then answers that question. So I know what my closing line is likely to be and it is then a case of filling in the middle.

I also like to start stories with dialogue because it seems as if you’re eavesdropping on a conversation and you meet the main characters immediately. Hit the ground running is my motto here.

When I’m reading, the opening line must grip me to make me read on. I can learn from that for my stories. I can also learn from something which hasn’t gripped me. Thankfully that doesn’t happen often but when it does, I look at why that opening line failed for me. It tells me what to avoid.

 

Every so often I have brainstorming sessions in those small pockets of time we all get where you could do some writing but there isn’t enough time to do something major. I will often brainstorm ideas for titles and opening lines. If an opening line still grips me a few weeks after I’d jotted the idea down, then I will write the story up.

I like an opening line for a story to show me character (and with it attitude) and ideally something of the setting. For non-fiction, I want the opening line to show me an interesting premise I want to read more about. No pressure then!