It was the best of opening lines, it was the worst of opening lines.
I have never begun a video with more misgiving.
But that’s fine!
Having an effecting opening line is not nearly as important as we think.
It only determines the tone and shapes reader expectation.
But is a good opening line really important?
Nah.
Most audience members have tremendous attention spans and will be willing to give a book hundreds
of pages to become engaging before putting it down.
It is objective fact that all readers have a near infinite attention span especially
for unknown authors.
That makes it a-okay to put no effort into the opening chapters what so ever!
So if the content of the story’s beginning is unimportant, what should an author put
there?
I know!
The best thing would be to fill it with massive amounts of exposition!
The reader is going to need to know this stuff anyway so why not front load it into the story?
No need for exciting adventure, intrigue, or interesting characterization when we can
spend pages upon pages of explaining the history protagonist’s home town that they will never
return to once they begin their adventure.
Now some say that exposition should be woven seamlessly into the narrative.
By integrating the exposition naturally into the story and spreading it out over the course
of several chapters allows the reader to more easily absorb the information.
However, older works and many classics have used info dumping so that makes it fine for
us to use too!
It’s not like modern audiences have higher expectations or a busy modern world full of
things to distract them.
Readers rarely get distracted when reading a bo–
Bored now!
Actually grounding the audience with detailed and critical background information so they
actually know what is going on sounds dull.
Instead we can start our story by introducing the main character.
There is a lot of potential here.
We could start by showing off a core personality trait or defining character moment, but the
really important thing to start with is how they look!
Starting by describing a character’s appearance sounds much more exciting than establishing
their motive.
And if a little description is okay, then that makes it fine to go completely overboard,
adding paragraph upon paragraph of character description.
Be sure they have a nearby mirror or pond in order to gaze at their reflection.
I suppose that one could try fleshing out their character in the first chapter.
Be sure to establish their core motive, traits, and sympathetic qualities.
Once the audience identifies with the character introduced in chapter one, then either kill
them off or otherwise reveal that they are merely a minor character that will never be
seen again.
Surprise.
That character was just an extra.
Good thing the reader is invested in their fate now before the intro character is unceremoniously
shoved into obscurity by the real main characters!
That won’t leave the audience feeling cheated.
Speaking of feeling cheated, we could start our story with a dream sequence.
Having an abstract dream sequence filled with vague foreshadowing and pretentious symbolism
followed by a character waking up and being introspective will certainly excite the reader
with it’s lack of narrative stakes.
Don’t know what this mysterious ‘symbolism’ is?
That’s fine.
We can skip the dream sequence and just start the story with the protagonist waking up and
getting ready for their day.
I know that my morning routine is the epitome of excitement.
Still having trouble?
Let’s start our story like we start conversations with strangers.
Let’s talk about the weather while neglecting to use it to establish a story’s tone and
atmosphere!
That won’t make a story as forgettable as today’s forecast.
Are you a writer who believes they are a film director?
If so, then one can start by describing the landscape.
Gradually move the story’s starting scene by zooming the camera until focusing in on
the point of view character.
Who cares that it breaks like nearly every POV rule.
The primarily visual medium of movies should easily translate to written form.
Still not exciting enough?
Is the story not interesting until the middle?
Well just move the middle before the beginning and start the story in medias res.
Anything with a fancy Latin name must be a good idea!
And having an exciting action pact opening will totally justify a later boring info dump
no matter how much it derails the previously established pacing.
In most situations, in medias res can be useful tool for framing the story.
That means that it is perfectly okay to assume the reader will be invested in the main character
without any context.
If moving into the future cant make a story beginning interesting, then maybe starting
with the past will.
That’s right.
We need to start with a flashback!
Rather than using that flashback to show a key character moment, let’s instead use
it to reference an event that will in no way shape the protagonist’s outlook or ever
come up again in the story.
Still not enough?
Let’s flashback within a flashback!
That won’t be confusing.
Even better, let’s start with a prologue before going into a flashback of a flashback
and then jump into in medias res.
Speaking of prologues if one is writing a fantasy novel, then I am pretty sure there
is some kind of law that says you have to write a prologue.
This prologue should take place in the distant past and have little to no direct effect on
the majority of the story with most of the characters and events having long since faded
into history.
Has this endless web of prologues, flashbacks, and in medias res left the audience hopelessly
confused?
Eh, don’t worry about it.
Just give them a flow chart or something.
They’ll be fine!