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Isolated Openings

Bebop3

Bebop3

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Oct 24, 2017
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Did you ever have something pop into your head that would make a great opening for a story but have nothing to follow it?

I have about 800 words of a new story and nothing else. I'll just put into storage and wait for inspiration to strike, but it's annoying as hell.
 
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Bebop3 said:
Did you ever have something pop into your head that would make a great opening for a story but have nothing to follow it?

I have about 800 words of a new story and nothing else. I'll just put into storage and wait for inspiration to strike, but it's annoying as hell.
Click to expand...

As I wrote in a different thread:

I have a couple of beginnings, a couple of endings and several scenes in between written down.
The most difficult thing for me is to find out which parts belong together to make a sensible story.
 
Happens to me all the time. And every now and then I write a part of a story where I get rid of the start because one of those great openings just seem to fit there.
 
Sometimes I get book titles in my head and no book to go with it.

I make a note someplace and then add a mental tag about it. That way I start subconsciously generating characters or situations that might fit with the book title. It only takes 1 of those that "fits" and then fleshing out that lead creates a story. Characters show up, the story gets richer, some background gets tossed in, a thrilling plot climax, and voila!
 
For me, a great opening is one that sets up characters and conflict. From there, you just have to figure out how to have the characters resolve their conflict.

So if that's where you are, what's making it hard for you to resolve the conflict? If that's not where you are, then what makes your opening great?
 
I don't think this has happened to me, because the overall idea for the story always comes to me before the introduction. There have been numerous instances of my having started a story and getting bogged down two pages or so into it, but that's not because I have no idea what I want to happen, it's just getting bogged down in the writing.
 
I think this whole thread is about the futility of keeping openings. People have lots of openings. Has anyone said they had too many endings?

Save your endings. Throw the opening s away.
 
One writer's exercise is to think up titles and beginnings. Endings are optional.
 
Bebop3 said:
Did you ever have something pop into your head that would make a great opening for a story but have nothing to follow it?
Click to expand...
I have the opening written. I have the follow-up in my head. It wants out, just not sure in what form yet. :confused:

Good luck with what follows. :)
 
All the time, and sex scenes and random fight scenes, sometimes just paragraphs of an image that hit me.

I have a folder on my desktop called 'remnants' and I pull from it frequently.

Hell, I have a character that leaped full blown into my head once and I had no home for him. Two years later I inserted him by name into book two of a series and in the third installment he's finally been introduced 'in person'
 
NotWise said:
I think this whole thread is about the futility of keeping openings. People have lots of openings. Has anyone said they had too many endings?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've got several of those crying for attention. It's middles that I'm short of.
 
Bebop3 said:
Did you ever have something pop into your head that would make a great opening for a story but have nothing to follow it?

I have about 800 words of a new story and nothing else. I'll just put into storage and wait for inspiration to strike, but it's annoying as hell.
Click to expand...


I have plenty of these "Story Seeds" sitting on my laptop. Sometimes, when I want to write but I don't have any of ideas, I'll pull one out and copy it word-for-word freehand just to see what happens. It's usually a waste of time, but occasionally it sparks something really fun.
 
Done that a few times. A good opening wanders into my head and I write it down. Then I try to craft a story around it and halfway through I get lost. Can't figure out where to go or how to get there. A couple of my favorite lost causes:

Bolting across the expanse of the green plain, the albino struck the leader of the herd, scattering them across the field in every direction, caroming off the low walls and each other. With a soft thump a victim fell and all was still again.

From the edge of the field she relaxed, straightening to her full height and dropping the butt of her weapon next to her foot. She surveyed the results of the attack, taking mental notes of the positions of her prey and selecting her next victim.
Click to expand...

The gentle clickity-clack of the steel wheels across the joints in the rails was almost hypnotic as I stared thoughtlessly out the window into the growing darkness, my coffee cooling. The distant wail of the horns warning traffic at the next crossing of the trains impending arrival almost masked her soft voice.

“May I join you?”
Click to expand...
 
All the time

I have lots of story beginnings.

My highest rated story I turned into a flashback because the opening was the best part. I wrote a new opening. So the climax was an explanation of how the family got together, thinking back on it: my original opening scene.
 
I couldn't really say definitively how many beginnings I've sat down to write with and then wandered off when I got bored with them.

I don't know. I mean, we all know I'm pretty far on the strange side of the balance anyway. But, I think every moment is a potential beginning for something. Whether that something is worth seeing just what conclusion follows from a thousand and one following events is... well, that's just life, isn't it?

So, yeah. I don't think it's anything worth stressing about when art imitates life. When you start to try to make life imitate your art, then it might be time to break out the tin foil beanie.
 
Bebop3 said:
Did you ever have something pop into your head that would make a great opening for a story but have nothing to follow it?

I have about 800 words of a new story and nothing else. I'll just put into storage and wait for inspiration to strike, but it's annoying as hell.
Click to expand...

I have tons of them but I believe not all ideas (good or bad) will make a complete story. It's rare that I go back to one of them.
 
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