APPENDIX 1

HOW TO START YOUR
STORY AND HOW TO
END IT

This appendix is made up of two separate excerpts from published fiction. Commentary on each excerpt can be found following the excerpt.

EXCERPT 1

This is the opening of chapter 1 of The Savage Day, by Jack Higgins. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, © 1972 by Jack Higgins.

Commentary

Line 3. (The first line of the excerpt) Speak of starting swiftly and not trusting the reader to be patient! The first seven words of the novel establish action already in progress—and dynamic, dangerous, violent action at that.

Line 6. The phrase “my own cell” establishes that the story is to be told from the viewpoint of a first-person narrator. Again, the professional writer does not wait to establish such things.

Lines 10–17. Note the use of sense-appealing concrete details. Nothing abstract here: “shouted” command, “volley of rifle fire,” the “steady beat” of the drum. A few carefully selected words set up the harsh story world in a strong physical sense. And by the end of the short paragraph we know where the setting is, what it is called, how it is set up, and how the viewpoint narrator fits in.

Lines 18–21. We learn how long the narrator has been there, and the fact that some prisoners wait years for a trial. Although there has been no sign of an opening change to jar the story into forward motion, even the situation prior to the change is threatening in the extreme.

Lines 31–32. “… when everything changed.” (Italics supplied here.)

This excerpt gives a professional novelist a thrill of delight. It seems perfect. It starts with a colorful situation that is already ghastly for the central character, who is introduced at once. Threat is established in the opening lines. Then a change comes—and the story must start moving forward at once.

EXCERPT 2

The opening of chapter 1 of Dropshot, by Jack M. Bickham. Tor Books, © 1990 by Jack M. Bickham.

Commentary

I hope the reader will forgive me for using some excerpts from my own published work. It’s done not out of a desire for ego-gratification, but as a convenience: I know my own work, and can recall my intentions at the time I produced it; thus it’s to be hoped that my commentary will make sense.

Lines 2–3. The change is specified at once, with no delay of any kind: the arrival of a letter. The time and place of opening are also set up in the first dozen words.

Lines 3–6. Concrete, physical details are designed to establish the setting not in the abstract, but at the gut level of physical sensing.

Line 8. A second “hook” for the reader. (“What does he mean, he’s crazy? Why is he crazy?”) A change—in the form of a letter—has already come, although we don’t know its contents as yet. But as in the Higgins excerpt previously examined, the change hits a character already in an abnormal, threatened state.

The moral (again): Stories start with change. And in today’s world they do not start subtly or slowly.