Once Upon A Time ...

Once upon a time ...
No, wait -- There once was a ...
No, how about -- It was the best of ...

Starting a story can be difficult for me. Usually once I get the idea for a novel, I let it germinate for a while (i.e., months, years), and not until I come up with the opening scene and sentence do I start writing. Here's the opening of a novel I'm working on:

Tristan came in the door just after his curfew of eleven o'clock. I was in my office reading a magazine on vacations in the Caribbean. The photos were about as close as I'd ever get to being there. I was not trying to catch Tristan sneaking in late; he didn't do that. He was a good kid who generally abided by the rules and maintained good grades, and helped keep the household together.
After his mother died, Tristan could have gone down so many different paths. He could have resorted to rebellion, depression or denial. He could have secretly smoked dope in his room or sniffed glue. He could have skipped school until his GPA was flattened. He could have turned into a morose, moody teenager who only communicated through grunts or grim silence.
But he didn't do any of these. In the two years since Emily's death, Tristan has grown several inches too quickly, which gives his face a gaunt look and his eyes a hollowed lack of hope. I know that teenagers tend to slouch, but Tristan did so as though the loss remained heavy across his shoulders.


The opening image of this father waiting to talk to his 15 year old son, and his son telling him what happened after the movie felt like a great way to start the story. I had a vivid image of Tristan struggling to describe a rather disturbing experience he and his his friends encountered outside the movie theater.

Writing about it, however, was really, really boring. I couldn't get the story moving at all. When that happens, it's best to reconnoiter and plan a fresh new start.

Part of my struggle was that Tristan's dad didn't grab me as a narrator. I couldn't even decide on his name. So, on a whim, I changed the viewpoint to Tristan's. I made him a twenty-something grad student instead of a fifteen year old. Here's how it looks now:


"Don't tell me that movie didn't suck, because it did. It was so way like that other movie with the mutants and the Final Girl, except this one, just to be clever, puts it all in, what was it, Egypt, and makes the mummies like zombies, and that stupid curse, what the hell was that about? Did any of you get it? I thought this was supposed to be scary. It was shit."
Freddie bounced around in front of us. When he wanted to make a point, he dove in close to our faces. Samara pushed him away, and Eun-Jai had no clue what to make of him. Most of us scoffed, which egged him on. He expounded loudly while flailing his arms and jumping up and down. "Come on, come on, you know what I'm saying! It was shit! Admit it, it was shit. Samara, you can't say it wasn't shit."
First she looked at me with a suppressed smile before admitting, "Yes, it was shit."
"Thank you! Thank you!" Freddie hailed his victory at passing cars. He made a few dodges out into traffic like a crazed prophet: "Skip this movie! Don't waste your money! It sucked!" A taxi pulled over, and Freddie charged the driver's door. "Hey, man, don't waste your time on this crap!" The driver avoided Freddie by jolting the car forward a dozen feet to get away from us. When the passenger got out, he just shook his head at us and headed into his hotel.


I can't say why, but the second version feels better to me. More engaging. But why? Apart from starting with some action and dialogue instead of a quick history of the characters, it seemed to work better.

As a writer, I have strong opinions about story and language and tone. But when it comes down to my own work, I have to go by gut reaction. And that's a rough thing to do when your brain wants to be purely logical. So, starting over was probably not a bad thing, but I'm just curious why I had to.

More as things progress.