Got an idea for a story? Write more than one opening paragraph – it takes the pressure off having to get it perfect. Keep writing openings until you feel the inspiration kick in. This can sometimes take me a while.
Don’t edit your beginning until you’ve completed the story. It’s very easy to focus so much on perfecting an opening paragraph that you never get to the end.
Don’t end the section you’re writing at the end of a scene break. Stop mid scene, mid paragraph or even mid sentence if you’ve got a good memory! It’s much easier to pick it up again.
We tend to spend much less time on the end of a story. The right ending can take time. Write more than one closing paragraph. Then leave the story a week or so before coming back and seeing which one feels right.
When you have a complete first draft. Leave the story another week before you do your final edits. A student I once taught likened it to putting your story in the ‘naughty cupboard’. When you go back to them they will tell you everything they did wrong. This is so true. Mistakes will leap out after a gap of time that it’s impossible to see when you’re close to your work.
Last week I was lucky enough to be teaching at the Writers’ Summer School at Swanwick in Derbyshire. Beautiful place if you haven’t been there. One of my courses was about winning writing competitions. Just for fun we had an opening paragraph competition, which was won by Tony Greenfield. He was kind enough to let me reproduce his winning paragraph.
But first, here are my three top tips for writing an excellent opening paragraph.
The paragraph must have a good hook – and be intriguing enough to make a judge want to read on.
The writing must be original and strong.
We need to care about the character.
Many Congratulations to Tony for getting all of these things right – in a ten minute workshop, I might add. And many thanks to everyone else who entered. There were 50 entries. There wasn’t a bad one among them.
Here is Tony’s winning paragraph:
Eulogies can be wrong
Thank you for coming to my funeral last week. Hundreds of people were there but the only two I knew were you and George. I knew George was there because he spoke a eulogy. He said many good things about my life. My life, he said, had been ordered and planned to succeed. He was wrong. I always ran from plans.
