Everyday Canvas

What Not to Use in Story Openings

This Sunday, I’d like to share a few tips about what not to use in openings in fiction. These are from a friend who knew a few editors and gave me this list.

Although I believe nothing is clear-cut and written in stone when it comes to the writing craft, we might consider heeding these tips, at least for the time being, until they are changed and replaced during the next few decades.

Don’t open your story with:
• A dream
• An alarm clock buzzing
• Explosions and murders unless they are the current story’s starters as in murder/mystery genre
• Scenery descriptions
• Too much tell, not enough show
• Backstory, especially if detailed and long
• The villain, especially in a ghastly action
• Dialogue that has little or nothing to do with the storyline

These we should consider because, over the last three or four decades, beginnings have changed more than any other story structure due to the fact that publishing industry has become a puppet to the sales business and instant visual media, even more obviously than it was earlier, giving the mainstream and literary fiction a very little market space.