(no subject)

[skygiants]

At the recommendation of my friend Rahul over at Blotter Paper, I read my first two Shirley Jackson books over the past month or so: The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

I have lots of thoughts, obviously, but my strongest and most envious thought is that Shirley Jackson is one of the best writer of first sentences and paragraphs that I have ever come across.

Look at the opening of We Have Always Lived in the Castle:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantaganet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

DOES THIS OR DOES THIS NOT make you instantly want to know everything else about Mary Katherine Blackwood and her sister Constance and her dead family? It does me! (Everything else about Mary Katherine Blackwood and her sister Constance and her dead family is not that hard to guess in terms of the facts of what went down just from that first paragraph, but it's the way that it plays out that's so creepy.)

Then there is the first sentence of The Haunting of Hill House:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

I liked The Haunting of Hill House a lot - it's the kind of book that features four people in a situation together and starting to like and trust each other and then the psychological horror turning everything wrong, which is probably the kind of that gets me worst - but to be honest, the rest of the book, however excellent, couldn't quite live up to that sentence.

-- although seriously, the book is really good. The heart of it is the relationship between Eleanor, who's lived her whole life without doing anything for herself until she gets the invitation to participate in a psychic experiment, and Theodora, a lighthearted lesbian artist who pretty much only ever does things for herself. Eleanor is the POV character, and the horror is horrible because of how much hope it dangles at first.

Anyway, the thing is, I honestly can't do that kind of opening at all. I always feel like the beginnings of my stories are the weakest part.

. . . well, and the endings. Actually there are a lot of weak parts, ah well. But I've never had that gift of launching in and grabbing the reader's attention with a stunning start; I usually just kind of fumble my way in to what I want to talk about. What about you guys? Do you find brilliant openings jumping into your head, or is an opening just a chore to get through to the meat of the story?

Comments

[saramily]

Well, this is timely!

Yeah, beginnings are hard for me. I've rewritten the current one.. a lot and I still don't love it. I do, however, love Shirley Jackson so I'm glad you've read her now!

Her prose still blows me away, because it's so deceptively simple to read and then you can't actually stop reading it and the stories linger. I still remember how it felt the first time I read We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

[skygiants]

I dunno, I think you have a pretty good beginning! I mean, it may not be the most SPARKLING OPENING SENTENCE OF ALL TIME, but you have humor and action and great character introductions (and I am looking forward to seeing the new version!)

Yeah -- I don't think it's a bad pun to say that her stories haunt you. There's just something, man, her characters will not leave you alone. I am never going to forget Mary Katherine Blackwood.

[aeslis]

Beginnings are so hard because they set the tone and you really have to GRAB people, otherwise they're just wading through words to get to the important stuff, too. Ugh! It always makes me really self-conscious when I try to write. But I was instantly grabbed by the opening line of a book I found recently:

It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

Perhaps you've read it? I actually haven't yet, but that line just drew me like a moth. Doom! Mystery! Weightiness!

Oh, and, belatedly, the title is The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater. It's about... flesh-eating horses? That are raced? Perhaps? ...It's hard to summarize a book you still haven't read, haha.

[skygiants]

Exactly! I feel like I have no idea how to get to that GRAB. If I could wish for one writing-related gift to be magically bestowed upon me by the writing fairy, it would be that.

Ooh, I haven't read any Maggie Stiefvater (though I've heard of her), but that is indeed a pretty good opening line!

[esmenet]

Like everything else w/ me, IT DEPENDS. Sometimes I have the perfect first line, sometimes I have the perfect title (rarely yet occasionally, these two occur in the same story) right off the bat & I go from there. Other times, I start out with some vague idea of what needs to happen later but little to no concept of what needs to happen to start with. (One of the reasons I so rarely actually write the stories I think up is because I spend far, far too much time trying to think of a perfect opening line.)

And, since I feel I should comment on the rest of the post: More books to go on the to-read list! (Actually, a large part of my to-read list is in fact your lj/dw. It's very handy!)

[skygiants]

Sometimes I have the perfect title but far too often I spend ages agonizing over the title . . . I can't spend ages agonizing over the first line, though, because I know if I do I will never start! So I just forge ahead with my bland first lines and hope it improves fast.

(Heeee. I DO MY BEST. >:D I definitely think you would enjoy these!)

[hokuton_punch]

It's always a crapshoot - sometimes I think of the perfect opening line/scene and then have to struggle to get the rest down, sometimes I think of the perfect ending line and have to struggle to figure out how to get there. Never know which it'll be till the line gets stuck in my head and I have to start writing the rest of the fic.

[skygiants]

Man, I am jealous; I can't think of a perfect ending or beginning! Many, many times I have no idea what the end's going to be until I'm halfway into the story. (And half of those times, I shove it at my betas, and they tell me gently, "Becca, that isn't the end. You need to keep writing." And I'm like, "BUT I DON'T WANT TO. ;___; CAN'T IT JUST BE POSTMODERN.")

[surexit]

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

Amazing. I'll never read it, because creepy argh, but that is a wnderful first line.

[skygiants]

IS IT NOT JUST? (But aha yeah, if you don't want the creepy, this . . . is probably one to avoid.)

[genarti]

Sometimes I think of great opening lines! Usually I have enormous trouble coming up with a story to go with them, though; it's as though I've expended most of the creative spark on that first-sentence hook, and don't have enough left to come up with a decent plot.

In general, I think, if I come up a good opening line, it's usually early on in the process. If I write the beginning last, it always feels clunky and merely workmanlike to me. Of course, my feelings may be influenced by the amount of time I've spent cudgeling the beginning into shape, in that case...

[skygiants]

Hah, that also happens to me pretty much the only times I ever come up with great opening lines. OH WELL.

Yeah, isn't it awful how often it turns out that the longer you spend working on something the more terrible it looks? IT'S UNFAIR. Why is effort not proportional to quality?

[genarti]

STARE AT IT LONGER. SEE IF IT CEASES TO EVEN LOOK LIKE ENGLISH ANY MORE!!

Answer: yes. Yes, it does.