Hello everybody and welcome to the continuation of this series, looking at high quality pieces
of fiction and working out what makes them so good, so you can apply the same skillset
to your own creative writing. Today we’re looking at writing an effective opening.
Now what should an effective opening do? Well if we look at Freytag’s pyramid, the opening,
the exposition, should introduce us to key characters and setting. But of course a truly
brilliant opening needs to do much more than that. It should make us want to carry on reading,
or as the top level of the AQA mark scheme for paper 1 question 5 puts it, it should
be ‘compelling’. McEwan’s opening is just that: let’s start by reading it through.
The beginning is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected
from a strong, gusty wind. I was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew in my hand,
and Clarissa was passing me the bottle--a 1987 Daumas Gassac. This was the moment, this
was the pinprick on the time map: I was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the
black foil touched my palm, we heard a man's shout. We turned to look across the field
and saw the danger. Next thing, I was running toward it. The transformation was absolute:
I don't recall dropping the corkscrew, or getting to my feet, or making a decision,
or hearing the caution Clarissa called after me. What idiocy, to be racing into this story
and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by
the oak. There was the shout again, and a child's cry, enfeebled by the wind that roared
in the tall trees along the hedgerows. I ran faster. And there, suddenly, from different
points around the field, four other men were converging on the scene, running like me.
I see us from two hundred feet up, through the eyes of the buzzard we had watched earlier,
soaring, circling, and dipping in the tumult of currents: five men running silently toward
the center of a hundred-acre field. I approached from the southeast, with the wind at my back.
About two hundred yards to my left two men ran side by side. They were farm laborers
who had been repairing the fence along the field's southern edge where it skirts the
road. The same distance beyond them was the motorist, John Logan, whose car was banked
on the grass verge with its door, or doors, wide open. Knowing what I know now, it's odd
to evoke the figure of Jed Parry directly ahead of me, emerging from a line of beeches
on the far side of the field a quarter of a mile away, running into the wind. To the
buzzard, Parry and I were tiny forms, our white shirts brilliant against the green,
rushing toward each other like lovers, innocent of the grief this entanglement would bring.
The encounter that would unhinge us was minutes away, its enormity disguised from us not only
by the barrier of time but by the colossus in the center of the field, which drew us
in with the power of a terrible ratio that set fabulous magnitude against the puny human
distress at its base.
OK quick edit -if you actually want to know what’s going on in this opening, I’ll
explain that at the end of the video. But for now let’s get on with the analysis.
So firstly, let’s look at setting. The quotations highlighted in yellow establish the setting
of the opening.
We have ‘sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wind., which
helps us to visualise the setting. This is added to with the mention of the ‘corkscrew
in my hand’ and the bottle of wine, so we picture a picnic in the countryside perhaps.
There’s further detail added with ‘the field’, and then we understand the season
with the mention of ‘fresh spring grasses’. As our narrator gets up and runs, the description
moves with him, establishing ‘tall trees along the hedgerows’, and clarifying that
the field is ‘a hundred-acre field’ with a ‘fence along’ its southern edge and
a ‘line of beeches’ on its far side.
So certainly, the setting is established, but it’s not all detailed right away in
the opening few lines - bits of information are drip fed through the two paragraphs, and
that’s a nice technique which helps the reader to visualise what they need to at the
precise time they need to do so. For example, we don’t need to know it’s a huge one
hundred acre field when the narrator is opening the bottle of wine, but it becomes more important
when we’re trying to visualise the five men running towards whatever it is they are
running towards.
Next, let’s look at the establishment of character. Firstly we have the word ‘we’
which suggests the narrator is not alone. This is then developed as we learn that ‘Clarissa’
is with the narrator. Other characters mentioned in the second paragraph are those who are
running towards the disaster, including John Logan and Jed Parry.
However, we can also infer something about our narrator from the way he describes the
events taking place. Everything is scientific and rational:
Five men running silently toward the centre of a hundred-acre field
From the southeast The wind at my back
About two hundred yards to my left A quarter of a mile away
This is a character who knows distances and figures - everything is described in a rational,
scientific manner, and that tells us something about what this character is like as a person.
But finally, there is so much mystery in this piece. Let’s look at how that is achieved:
The opening line: ‘The beginning is simple to mark.’ Makes the reader ask the question:
the beginning of what? We want to know the same with the line here ‘This was the moment,
this was the pinprick on the time map,’ Then there’s ‘a man’s shout’. Who
is shouting and why? We don’t yet know. And we are drip fed a bit of detail, when
we are told that the narrator saw ‘the danger’. Again, we have questions: what danger? What
is happening? Was the shouting man the one in danger, or one who noticed it? Clarissa’s
call of ‘caution’ and the narrator’s own judgement that his actions were ‘idiocy’
heightens the tension - what exactly is he running towards? A few lines further we have
another small detail: ‘a child’s cry’. So now we know a child is in danger, but really
we don’t know much more than that. There are some subtle clues which we could pick
out later when we know what happened, but at this point we know nothing more than the
man’s shout and the child’s cry.
And it’s clearly a big deal - ‘Knowing what I know now’ suggests that this event
was not only important in the moment, but continued to be so. Remember, the whole thing
is a flashback, so that in itself highlights the importance of the moment. The narrator
wouldn’t be retelling the story if if wasn’t significant. The emotive language as the second
paragraph comes to an end leaves us in no doubt that this is bad: ‘grief / entangle
/ unhinge / terrible / puny human distress’ - it’s all heightening the tension, and
making this a compelling piece.
So what can we conclude from this? That our story openings should establish character
and setting, but you can drip feed different details throughout, rather than have three
sentences on character, then three on setting, before moving on to action. And crucially,
that one of the ways to make a piece of writing compelling is to not give everything away
- make the reader want to read on to find out exactly what is happening. Again, drip
feed details, but create suspense through holding back too. Now that’s not easy, but
it’s something worth practising.
And to demonstrate this, let me show you how bad this piece could have been if the description
of character and setting all came at the beginning with no inferred meaning, and if the thing
taking place was described fully with nothing being withheld:
If you found this video useful please do give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
OK, so what is going on in this chapter? Any ideas? Perhaps if I show you the book cover
you’ll get it! Yes, there is a huge hot air balloon floating off into the sky. Inside
is a young boy (don’t worry - he’s fine), and outside, dangling from some ropes is the
boy’s grandfather, who is trying to stop the balloon from drifting off in the wind.
So why not go back to the extract and see if you can find the subtle clues that tell
us this is what it’s about.