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| Tips & Advice Share your tips, tricks and advice. |
07-30-2006, 04:15 PM
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#1
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Scribe
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: MI
Gender: Female
Posts: 57
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Cliche ways to start a novel?
I'm getting serious about writing a novel (I've been doing short stories) and I really don't want to start the book with a cliche. So, I'm asking all of you, what is one cliche opening that you have seen?
__________________
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde
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07-30-2006, 04:30 PM
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#2
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Wordsmith
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Back in Israel
Posts: 10,945
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A great idea for a word game!
"It was raining..."
"It was morning"
"He got up and looked in the mirror"
???
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07-30-2006, 04:33 PM
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#3
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Scribe
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: USA
Gender: Female
Posts: 65
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I would say try not to start off with anything like "A long time ago", "Once upon a time", "Many years ago", or anything like that unless it's really necessary to tell the story. There are other ways to introduce the time and setting that are better.
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"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light." -Edward Abbey <img src="http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/NanowrimoMiniGraph/148477.png" />
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07-30-2006, 04:35 PM
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#4
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: San Antonio, TX
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,164
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Check this out, the one way you should never start out a novel is by describing the weather! I see that, and I run away. Far. Far. Away.
On a completely different note, "Once upon a time..."  I am also in the beginnings of a novel. It's not so much that you start the novel in a cliche way, after all, by the time you seriously edit it, it will be dead. Really. Really. Dead. 
-Cacafire |
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07-30-2006, 04:49 PM
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#5
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Twyford, UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,275
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by cacafire
Check this out, the one way you should never start out a novel is by describing the weather! I see that, and I run away. Far. Far. Away.
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What if your story is about a cloud?
(Don't laugh, it could happen...I suppose)
__________________
"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you"
-"The Wasteland" by T.S. Elliot
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07-30-2006, 05:33 PM
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#6
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Wordsmith
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: South-east UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,887
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The only 'crime' when oprning a novel is to make it uninteresting.
Yes, plenty start with descriptions of gloomy skies, or the protagonist examining themselves in the mirror, etc. Many editors will recommend that you never start a novel with dialogue.
Simple truth is, if you can make it interesting, and make the reader want to read the next sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, you can break any rule you like. Just do it well.
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07-30-2006, 06:19 PM
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#7
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Glasgow, UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,120
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Just start with a bit of action. The reader can follow the excitement of what is happening and, as they do, they will begin to ask why this is happening. And that's what you've got the rest of the novel for.
Have a look at the opening to Ian McEwan's Enduring Love to see a dramatic opening.
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08-10-2006, 01:33 PM
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#8
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Scribe
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: MI
Gender: Female
Posts: 57
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Thanks everyone for your replies.
__________________
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde
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08-10-2006, 01:59 PM
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#9
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Ink Slinger
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Les Etats-Unis
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,568
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by cacafire
after all, by the time you seriously edit it, it will be dead. Really. Really. Dead. |
So encouraging! but, its true...
Editing will probably shorten your novel down by 25% so be careful of that, too. Editing will maul it.
Alice
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08-10-2006, 03:09 PM
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#10
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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The DEEP Midwest
Gender: Female
Posts: 243
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I'm waiting for someone to recommend a novel or story that opens with "It was a dark and stormy night" and is actually worth finishing. 
Maybe it's because I've been exposed to a lot of writing that starts this way, but I personally am getting tired of stories that open with sentences that follow the timeframe-action format:
The summer I was 10, I killed my father.
Marie divorced Charlie on her 40th birthday.
etc.
Such sentences are actually considered good openers from the standpoint of hooking the reader, but after a while even this format can get kind of old, particularly since it's often followed by exposition that begins with lines like "It was a dark and stormy night..." 
__________________
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
from "Berryman," W.S. Merwin
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08-10-2006, 06:07 PM
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#11
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Glasgow, UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,120
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by SilkFX
I'm waiting for someone to recommend a novel or story that opens with "It was a dark and stormy night" and is actually worth finishing.
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How about Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton? |
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08-11-2006, 02:00 AM
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#12
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Wordsmith
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: South-east UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,887
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You mean:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way.
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08-11-2006, 02:22 AM
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#13
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Glasgow, UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,120
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Beautiful. Just beautiful.
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08-11-2006, 09:41 AM
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#14
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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The DEEP Midwest
Gender: Female
Posts: 243
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LOL...I know this is the book...but was it/is it a good book?
__________________
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
from "Berryman," W.S. Merwin
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08-12-2006, 01:56 PM
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#15
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Profound Writer
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Glasgow, UK
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,120
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by SilkFX
LOL...I know this is the book...but was it/is it a good book?
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I couldn't tell you. I can't get past the first few pargraphs. Read it here. |
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