My previous blog post shows how useful it is to model your openings on the successful openings of other published writers and this second illustration utilizes a ‘model’ from Pulman’s The Tin Princess.
The book opens with the following engaging first line and is a superb model for any student feeling stuck or under pressure in an examination.
‘Rebecca Winter, talented, cheerful, and poor, had arrived at the age of sixteen without once seeing a bomb go off.’
(Now any Jane Austen fans reading this will notice that this opening relies a good deal on Pulman’s adaptation of Austens’ opening to Emma; ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, rich and clever…‘ so writers do model writing! Borrowing from other writers helps us to refine our own style.
Pulman cleverly involves us in his novel through the immediate naming of his character-which encourages identification; an emotive use of the rule of three; the identifying information about the protagonist’s age and then the shocking ‘climax’ of the seemingly throwaway detail involving the ‘bomb’.
These ingredients generate immediate interest and offer easy signposts for both the reader and the writer to follow on with. They also bring in EMOTION straight away.
For instance we know that if the character is’ poor’then she will presumably need to acquire some income and perhaps this is why she embarks on the adventure in the first place. Furthermore if a ‘bomb’ is mentioned, then it has to go off. We have been promised and so it must be!
So we can MODEL an opening upon the opening to The Tin Princess quite easily:
Sandra Jones, sad, brilliant and an orphan, had arrived at the age of twenty one without the acclaim she deserved for her unusual invention.
Toby Wright, argumentative, generous and good looking, had arrived at the age of seventeen without once seeing a time machine or a football.’
Irina Bezuhov, smart, sassy and ambitious, had arrived at the age of eleven without once enjoying a black coffee in London’s Ritz! ‘
Once we have an opening packed with such narrative ‘ingredients’ all we have to do is ‘unpack’ the possibilities in the rest of the story.
I love Garcia Marquez’s opening lines:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the
boat the bishop was coming on.
José Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned
Geoff