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I finally changed how I start a story after a writing group critique
A guy in my online writing group said my first paragraph was like a Wikipedia entry. He said it had no feeling, just facts and descriptions. I used to spend ages setting up the scene, like listing the weather and the furniture. He told me to start right when something happens, even if it's small. So instead of 'The room was cold and the clock read 3pm,' I wrote 'The clock hit 3 and I knew I had 10 minutes before she found the letter.' It felt wrong at first, like I was skipping stuff. But now I look at the first page of books I like and they all drop you into action or a thought. Has anyone else had to totally scrap their old way of starting a chapter?
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gavinb971d ago
Sometimes that slow setup is exactly the tone a story needs though.
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Yeah I get that feeling. Once I was trying to fix a story opening and I felt like I was cheating by starting mid argument. But then I remembered a road trip I took where we hit traffic for two hours and the whole time I was thinking about @gavinb97 and how he tells people slow setups can work but man sometimes you just need to get moving. I switched to starting my horror story with a character already running through the woods instead of describing the cabin they just left. The whole thing felt more alive even if I lost some description of the pine needles.
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