Hello friends,
Today I published a great article, "How to give your stories great openings and endings" by Dan Coxon (published author) and since I could not resist, I included my thoughts as a reviewer on great openers. Here is what I wrote (as a reader/reviewer):
Whenever I read a story, be it short story, a novella/novel or even non-fiction like memoir or say travel book (Yes, I do like to read a variety of genres!), the first thing that I judge as a reviewer is: was the writer able to pull me in the story from the very first chapter? In fact, I can gauge from the opening lines or sometimes by reading first few paragraphs of the book, that whether the story is going to be engaging or not (with few exceptions of course, where the story does get interesting after a slow start!).
That being said, when I am nearing the finishing chapters, I am always intrigued and desperate to find out as to how the writer put all the strings of the story together and gives a coherent and satisfying resolution. For example, in most of chick-lit, it is simple stuff like: was the girl able to establish her own career and be independent? Was the boy successful in winning over the girl? Will she choose guy A or B?
In a memoir, it depends mostly on which phase of writer’s life is emphasized and at which stage is the writer going to finish it? (Read “Unimagined” to know what I am talking about!) If it is theme based, then I want to know the stance of the writer, which side is he/she taking? What is his/her opinion? How he/she perceives that topic/phenomena/dilemma? The perfect example could be Caitlin’s book, “How to be a woman” or “The Funny Thing Is…” by Ellen Degeneres.
Okay, so that was how I felt on writing the first and the last lines of a book, needless to say, a very subjective opinion as I…
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Posted on March 5, 2012 at 12:35pm
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