Opening paragraphs

[TadOverdon]

If I go longer than 1500 words without sex or a sexual tease I figure I've lost sight of what people are paying for.

 

[Auden James]

Classic

Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram,
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.

That's how it's done: epic opening paragraph.
See Vergil, Aeneis.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmm... I like to think of Lit as a Place to experiment. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn't.

And tell me about what people are pay for here?

I figure they get what they pay for, actually, they get more than what they pay for.

 

[lovecraft68]

Whenever a topic like this comes up, I love how people need to come out with the classics and highbrow literary works.

Meanwhile, there are authors of horror, romance, sci fi, action, and other genres that are better than anything quoted from the "look how well read I am" source.

The opening of Blatty's Exorcist, both the prologue, then the chapter of the first part are second to none.

That is if the erudite scholars here are willing to go slumming.

 

[Bramblethorn]

An attempt at a little more parallelism. ala SimonDoom:

Janet Palmieri wished she'd never have to leave the tower bedroom in the South Pacific island fortress. Her husband Frank wanted only to escape it, but the fading light of sunset offered little help to a man crawling out onto a window sill a hundred feet above a stone courtyard.

In D&D, there's a style of narration that goes like this:

"You enter the room. It's rectangular, about fifty feet by eighty feet, with two rows of granite pillars running the length of the room and a marble fountain at the back, no longer running. There are doors to the south-east and south-west, and behind the fountain a spiral staircase leads up. The walls are decorated with rich tapestries that are now a little moth-eaten. In the middle of the room is a pile of gold coins and on that pile is an angry red dragon."

It's cute as a gag once or twice, but it's not very evocative. If you go through that door the first thing you notice should be the dragon, the big scary thing that might kill you, not the tapestries or the fountains.

This is what your example intro does to me as a reader.

Janet Palmieri wished she'd never have to leave the tower bedroom in the South Pacific island fortress. Her husband Frank wanted only to escape it...

The contrast between Janet and Frank's desires is a nice device, but for me it kinda backfires. At this point it feels like I'm reading about a husband and wife taking a Pacific holiday that only one of them is enjoying. From that I'm starting to visualise domestic discontent, maybe a mid-life crisis. Maybe Frank's "escape" will be heading down to the bar? You do mention "fortress" but it's not clear whether we're talking on old fortress that's been converted into a resort, or what.

And then I hit "crawling out onto a window sill" and suddenly I see that I'd been reading that very wrongly, and I need to go back and reinterpret the previous bit.

This generally isn't something you want readers doing. A switch in interpretations can work well as a dramatic plot twist, especially if a viewpoint character is also experiencing that switch (think "Sixth Sense), but doing it unintentionally just makes it harder to maintain immersion. If it were me, I'd lead with the "out on the ledge" even if that meant losing the nice Janet/Frank symmetry.

Just my two cents' worth.

 

[TadOverdon]

Hmm... I like to think of Lit as a Place to experiment. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn't.

And tell me about what people are pay for here?

I figure they get what they pay for, actually, they get more than what they pay for.

What I post here, we sell at Smashwords. It's working kind of well, so far.

 

[TadOverdon]

Whenever a topic like this comes up, I love how people need to come out with the classics and highbrow literary works.

Meanwhile, there are authors of horror, romance, sci fi, action, and other genres that are better than anything quoted from the "look how well read I am" source.

The opening of Blatty's Exorcist, both the prologue, then the chapter of the first part are second to none.

That is if the erudite scholars here are willing to go slumming.

Well, John D. MacDonald wasn't exactly required American Lit when I was in school.

The Hemingway is easy for me to remember, because I love that opening.

 

[Auden James]

The opening of Blatty's Exorcist, both the prologue, then the chapter of the first part are second to none.

Well let's see. First the opening paragraph of the prologue:

The blaze of the sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man's brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves.

Yeah, not bad. Next the opening paragraph of the first chapter:

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge.

Well, no, not difficult to judge at all, pretty average I'd say. Blatty almost lost me instantly with the simile of suns and blind men's eyes which I find rather overwritten and unrhythmical or "bumping along," if you will. It's not a total clunker because I'd still read on, but how this trumps Vergil, Austen, Tolstoy or quite a few other classics you would have to explain to me; I don't find it self-explanatory.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Intros from a few of mine:

By the time I found the place I was pretty sure going to the work Christmas party had been a bad idea. If there's one thing worse than me alone at Christmas, it's me alone at Christmas in the middle of a crowd; after five months at R. J. Churchill Realtors, working as jack-of-all-trades IT support in our main office in Melbourne, I was well aware that I was the odd one out.

My first story here. Not a spectacular intro, unlikely to grab anybody's attention, but it does at least the scene - the "fish out of water" aspect is a large part of the story.

From September of 1928 a weekly advertisement accompanied by a portrait appeared in all the major European newspapers:

REWARD OF $1000 OFFERED — to any person providing information leading to the location of Josephine Hart, late of Massachusetts, daughter of Mr and Mrs Joseph Hart. Miss Hart is aged twenty-three, five feet eight inches tall, with brown hair and green eyes. Small round scar on back of left hand, beauty mark above left eye. Last seen in Paris, July 19th. Reward may be claimed at any office of Hart and Hayworth Shipping, Inc.

Main intentions here: manage reader expectations (the story doesn't end well for Josephine, I didn't want that to come as a surprise, so the intro goes on to mention that the search is unsuccessful) and to provoke curiosity: what did happen to her?

"Don't go into the crypt," folk said,
"For it's home to ghosts and the restless dead.
And those who go down to the crypt"—so they say—
"Will never return to the warm light of day."

It's a horror story. From reading this intro you already know that somebody's going to go in to the crypt and they're not going to like how that turns out.

Rafi and I had been friends for years, but there were still a few things I hadn't figured out about her. I knew she was a fellow nerd—we'd been playing Dungeons and Dragons together for five years—and I knew she liked cats and sci-fi, and worked for an architectural firm.

I knew "Rafi" was short for Rafeeqa, and that her family had come from Iraq as refugees when she was eight, after her mother died. I knew she was Muslim and wore hijab and drank lemonade on D&D nights when the rest of us had cider, and that our party of heroes had to get by without her wizard for a month every time Ramadan came around. (She assures me that this is why Gandalf and Dumbledore kept disappearing at inconvenient moments. I am unconvinced.)

Here I wanted to establish that Rafi has enough differences to the protagonist to create some challenges, but also enough in common to develop attraction. Her religion is important in the story so I wanted to establish that, but also give some idea of how she interprets that - something personal that she doesn't attempt to impose on her friends. And I wanted to reassure readers that this was going to be relatively light-hearted, so there's a joke.

"So," I said to Sigrid, "we're cutting our travel budget but increasing training. By the way, have I mentioned how good that coat looks on you?"

Sigrid and I haven't worked together for several years now, but her office is on the same train line as mine, so every other week we share the ride in to the city. If there are two seats together, we'll sit and chat. More often it's standing room only, and we'll share a stanchion and lean in to talk as the commuting masses press around us.

Not the catchiest of intros, but in this one I already had a catchy title ("The Floggings Will Continue...") and I wanted to keep my readers guessing about how it turned out. I also wanted to create a contrast between the mundanity that book-ends this story and the perversity in the middle. If I didn't have that title to set expectations, I would be writing the intro differently, trying to make it a bit more hooky.

"I'm thinking of becoming a kept woman," said Anjali, as calmly as if she'd been commenting on the quality of the café's coffee.

Curiosity hook, establishing major theme of the story.


Tells us a bit about Rafi, implies that we're going to get to know her a lot better, indicates that her religion might be relevant to the story but also gives readers some idea of the mostly-

 

[ElectricBlue]

Arriving late to the party - Australians need their beauty sleep too, dontcha know - the OP's opener, short as it is, has too much exposition for me.

Whoa, fuck, that's a long way down.

Frank Palmieri brushed a bead of sweat from his brow, but kept crawling.

Meanwhile, his wife Amanda tidied her cuticles and primped her hair. She'd put her itty bitty bikini on later, and spend a lazy morning admiring Tadeo's taut bottom as she lounged by the pool. He did look divine in those shorts.

Thus establishing action, tension, character, and intrigue. Simon would be proud .


Shameless self promotion time (since the OP asked). Here are a couple of mine:

The spider in the top hat got out of the long black car, tapped the silver head of his cane on the vehicle's long black roof to signify to the driver, begone: return in the morning, be discrete. The spider stepped across the sidewalk to the hotel entrance with a four-footed side shoe shuffle, elegant black and white spats on his feet, thin red stripes down the side of each trouser leg. A dapper fellow, he wore a small red rose in his boutonnière, delicately scented. Its petals curved inwards and outwards, just like a lady he knew, her curlicued and scented centre like an elegant crystal flute laced through with incarnadine red.

Promises to be different, n'est ce pas?

It was the movement that first caught my eye.

That automatic sequence of movements done by muscle memory, repeatedly and without thinking, dexterous and complete - the red nail fingertips of her right hand, several silver rings on her fingers, flipping open the top of the box. One finger aligned the flipped up lid so the angle was right, then two fingers grasped the filter and pulled a cigarette out.

They could have been touching her clitoris, the movements so precise, the purpose so similarly exquisite.

I was three tables away with a direct line of sight.

That seemed to work for readers, grabbing them in.

 

[SimonDoom]

Frank's actually got a bigger primary problem than getting out of the tower: he's got no way off of a small island. He's upset, pretty paranoid, and his "planning" goes only so far as going out through a window to give himself eight hours start before his hosts know that he's left the building. Succeeding paragraphs in the story elaborate the situation.

I think this is better, but if I were you I would start off with a modified version of the fourth sentence:

When he was sure his wife Janet was asleep, Frank Palmieri got out of bed, walked softly across the floor to open the window, and crawled out onto the window sill.

This is the thing that's actually happening at the time. It's the most significant thing, and it's the weirdest and catchiest. The rest is backstory.

Your first paragraph is parallel, but the problem is that it doesn't situate the reader with one character's perspective. Is the story about Frank, or about Janet? In your very first paragraph, you're head-hopping.

Get the reader into the action and into one person's head right away. Get them invested as soon as possible in the interesting action of the story. The rest can follow.

 

[XerXesXu]

It’s becoming clearer now. Try again.


‘Frank would abandon Janet and hazard his life to escape her paradise.

He havered on the sill of the fortress window, cursing the setting sun for being too bright to veil, yet, too dim to illumine that escape. In eight hours he would either be free, or in the clutches of the Novaks.

The fort etc'


What’s the significance of the surname?

 

[TadOverdon]

What’s the significance of the surname?

None in particular. I wanted a European origin that would not be as specific as English, French etc. Novak is a Slavic name common to a number of eastern European countries.

 

[8letters]

>>>>>>>>>>>>
To Janet Palmieri, Kai'ulau was a South Pacific paradise that she never wanted to leave. To her husband Frank, the island had become a trap that he needed to escape.

First, he had to get out of the fortress.

Novak Global Traders had provided guest quarters for the couple in the tower of an old French fortress that served the Novak family as both home and business headquarters. There was a door opening out from their suite into a corridor which led to a long stair down to the great hall, and a window carved into the basalt outer wall of the bedroom, perhaps a hundred feet above a stone courtyard.

When he was sure that Janet was asleep, Frank crawled out onto the window sill.

The fading evening light offered him little help. He guessed that the window was a modern update to the edifice, created by enlarging a narrower opening - probably an embrasure from which a defender could have fired into the courtyard below. The wall itself was about six feet thick. Frank felt his way along in the close darkness until his fingers found the outer edge.

Fighting vertigo, he stuck his head outside. In the gloom below he could just make out a narrow set of stairs cut into the outer face of the building. There was a landing below him. It was impossible to judge the drop in this light. It might be as little as fifteen feet but could be thirty.

Who had the colonists meant to defend themselves against here, back in the nineteenth century? No one seemed to know. They'd built their fort on Kai'ulua's highest coastal promontory. The place commanded a clear view of the shore, less than a mile to the south, as well as of the narrow lagoon harbor entrance several miles east. But for all their determined defense preparations, no attack had ever come. Pyramids of rusted and mossy iron balls stood unused outside the walls beside cannon tumbled off their rotted wooden carriages. The invaders the French had feared must have deemed the island not worth the powder and passed it by. So had the rest of the outside world, since the beginnings of time.
<<<<<<<<<<

I'm not knowledgeable about nineteenth century forts on Pacific islands. That being said:
* All the walls I've seen of fortress towers are smooth - no window sills
* I'm highly doubtful there'd be a staircase on the OUTSIDE of the tower. My impression of fortress towers is that they'd be essentially hollow with the stairs running up the inside. Occasionally, you'd have platforms that would cover half or all of the tower at that level
* I'm not seeing the point of going out the window. Why not tell his wife at bedtime that he just remembered an email he had to send today, so he was going back to the office? As you said, getting out of the bedroom is easy; getting off the island is hard

 

[gordo12]

I'm not knowledgeable about nineteenth century forts on Pacific islands. That being said:
* All the walls I've seen of fortress towers are smooth - no window sills
* I'm highly doubtful there'd be a staircase on the OUTSIDE of the tower. My impression of fortress towers is that they'd be essentially hollow with the stairs running up the inside. Occasionally, you'd have platforms that would cover half or all of the tower at that level
* I'm not seeing the point of going out the window. Why not tell his wife at bedtime that he just remembered an email he had to send today, so he was going back to the office? As you said, getting out of the bedroom is easy; getting off the island is hard

Now that I think about it every castle I've been in had sloping windows on the bottom so weapons could fire down. The window would have had to be altered to crawl on a sill or maybe a more modern fortress built after cannons became popular.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I think I'd simply clarify the situation a bit and leave the whole para as a teaser for the rest:

"For Janet Palmieri, the tower bedroom in the South Pacific island fortress was paradise. But her husband Frank wanted only escape. Thus the fading light of sunset illuminated a man crawling out onto a precarious window sill, twenty yards above the sand."

That does leave me going 'why doesn't he use the door like a normal person,' but let's assume the next paragraph explains that.

 

[Jake_Raazor]

Whenever a topic like this comes up, I love how people need to come out with the classics and highbrow literary works.

Meanwhile, there are authors of horror, romance, sci fi, action, and other genres that are better than anything quoted from the "look how well read I am" source.

The opening of Blatty's Exorcist, both the prologue, then the chapter of the first part are second to none.

That is if the erudite scholars here are willing to go slumming.

Can’t say I am a fan of the opening paragraph of the Exorcist, there is no incentive to read on as I am bored already. Not that I am against wordy opening paragraphs but there has to be something that grabs.

When I was in my teens the opening paragraph to 1984 grabbed me and I still like it.

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.’

And it’s all in the first line, ‘the clocks striking thirteen’. It sounds wrong, ominous, yet mundane. I now want to read on.

 

[Auden James]

Can’t say I am a fan of the opening paragraph of the Exorcist, there is no incentive to read on as I am bored already.

Interesting to see that you and I had almost exactly the same reading experience (though I was not so bored as to not read on at all).

When I was in my teens the opening paragraph to 1984 grabbed me and I still like it.

And with good reason, for 1984 is another classic, though a modern one!

 

[TadOverdon]

* All the walls I've seen of fortress towers are smooth - no window sills
* I'm highly doubtful there'd be a staircase on the OUTSIDE of the tower. My impression of fortress towers is that they'd be essentially hollow with the stairs running up the inside. Occasionally, you'd have platforms that would cover half or all of the tower at that level

These are useful questions, thanks.

With respect to the first, I may be struggling with incorrect/uninformed terminology. I thought that the horizontal top of a window opening was referred to as a head or lintel, the sides as jambs and the horizontal bottom as a sill. Certainly there'd be no protruding or decorative sill, but what does one call the horizontal lower structural surface of the opening other than a sill? I haven't found architectural diagrams online indicating a different term, and I don't have a construction background myself to draw on.

As Frank assumes, the window in question is a modern improvement to the structure, anyway; as we'll learn later, the Novaks have been in a continual process of building out and retrofitting the three century-old structure for comfort and practical reasons since shortly after the Second World War.

The question of the staircase (which could be disposed of if necessary) is a good one. The drawings and image references for fortresses, castles, citadels et al. that I can find don't make it seem unreasonable for there to be steps or stair access on the outer walls of buildings inside the protective walls of the compound, such as in the case of the wall at Harlech castle:

https://i.imgur.com/gM7jvNG.jpg

The towers at Harlech are round. I was thinking of a fortress with a square tower, and not necessarily at the four corners. Which begs the question, of course: just because an outer stair doesn't compromise a castle wall, does it follow that putting one on a tower wall makes sense?
https://i.imgur.com/nGqjq3e.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/4KfSq2E.jpg

I must admit that I don't know, and maybe I should just discard the detail. Spoiler - It's not like poor Frank's ever going to get to use it, anyway.

Now that I think about it every castle I've been in had sloping windows on the bottom so weapons could fire down. The window would have had to be altered to crawl on a sill or maybe a more modern fortress built after cannons became popular.

The fortress was built in the age of cannon, and the window - which was originally a loophole designed not for cannon but smaller arms - has been altered.

 

[8letters]

With respect to the first, I may be struggling with incorrect/uninformed terminology. I thought that the horizontal top of a window opening was referred to as a head or lintel, the sides as jambs and the horizontal bottom as a sill. Certainly there'd be no protruding or decorative sill, but what does one call the horizontal lower structural surface of the opening other than a sill? I haven't found architectural diagrams online indicating a different term, and I don't have a construction background myself to draw on.

I think the problem is the phrase "Frank crawled out onto the window sill." That makes me picture the ledges that went around early skyscrapers. Assuming that there's no glass in the window, he'd stand up in the window once he reached the end. No need to mention the sill. Or maybe I'm just an idiot, and everyone else got the reference.

The question of the staircase (which could be disposed of if necessary) is a good one. The drawings and image references for fortresses, castles, citadels et al. that I can find don't make it seem unreasonable for there to be steps or stair access on the outer walls of buildings inside the protective walls of the compound, such as in the case of the wall at Harlech castle:

To me, the issue is that there aren't going to be stair landings anywhere close to 100 feet up the tower.

Which begs the question, of course: just because an outer stair doesn't compromise a castle wall, does it follow that putting one on a tower wall makes sense?

I think medieval castles were designed that if the gate was breached and attackers got into the castle bailey, the defenders could seal the towers, walls and keep, and then continue defending their positions.

Putting the stairs on the outside would expose users to the elements as they used them. If the guard was changed during a bad storm, what's the risk that they'd be blown off a slick stair and fall to their death?

If you want Frank to do some derring-do, I suggest he go out a window with an eye to landing on the fortress wall, and then drop from the fortress wall into the bush outside. He could use a rope he had hidden away for one or both.

 

[TadOverdon]

I don't think Frank's that bright, or that brave, but he is in enough of an agitated state of mind that I assume he'd simply accidentally kill himself if he did get the chance to make the attempt to go down the wall.

He might be bright enough to decide, after his look down below, to try the front door after all - but that's not going to go well for him either.

It's funny that we've written more here about Frank than is in the book, because he's "on stage" for all of about two thousand words of the book. Have I mentioned what sacrificial characters husbands in my stories tend to be?

 

[gordo12]

The fortress was built in the age of cannon, and the window - which was originally a loophole designed not for cannon but smaller arms - has been altered.

Sorry, I was talking about an opposing army. Once cannons came into the picture, stone walls were useless for defence. Architecture changed.

Also, the castle you show had the original gateway destroyed when it was conquered. I believe the picture you show is an inner gateway to the (keep?)

 

[SimonDoom]

I think the problem is the phrase "Frank crawled out onto the window sill." That makes me picture the ledges that went around early skyscrapers. Assuming that there's no glass in the window, he'd stand up in the window once he reached the end. No need to mention the sill. Or maybe I'm just an idiot, and everyone else got the reference.

At first I thought 8Letters was being too picky about this, but the more I think about it the more I think he's right. There's something that doesn't quite make sense about this.

First of all, you need to have a visual picture in your mind about exactly what this tower looks like and how it's constructed, and why, or none of the rest of this makes any sense. What is a South Pacific Fortress? There were no medieval castles or fortresses in the South Pacific, so the medieval castle example is an anachronism. I don't know what a South Pacific fortress is, so this is confusing. I can't picture this in my mind.

And 8Letters is right -- if it's a fortress, then presumably it would be built in a way that one couldn't simply get from the bottom to a window high up the wall, or, conversely, get from the window to the bottom. So where's the husband going? The concept of a fortress seems to conflict with what's going on here.

The "sill" of a window usually is a small ledge-like structure on the outside of the building at the bottom of the window. Its purpose is partly to provide structure and partly to carry water away from the building to prevent water damage. In a residence, the sill typically is so narrow that it's not something a person could stand on. So what's Frank doing, exactly? Also, sills don't go anywhere. They don't typically connect to other sills, unless, as 8Letters says, one thinks of a skyscraper. In The Matrix, Neo crawls out onto a ledge of a skyscraper to get away from Agents. One might call that an extended sill. But he has nowhere to go.

My recommendation: Don't get wedded to your words. It's something we all do and if we want to get better it's a habit we all have to break. First, think through exactly what's happening in the scene. Think it through thoroughly. And once you've done that, start over with the words to describe what's happening, and why. The feedback you are getting suggests people are confused by your paragraph. And that's a big red flag.

 

[TadOverdon]

I just changed "sill" to "well." That'll have to do. This, according to Google, anyway, is a stone window well, and it's what I had in mind:

https://i.imgur.com/F7xlV1r.jpg



It's not a medieval castle. It was constructed in the 19th century. There's a much larger structure of a parallel sort in the Caribbean, but we don't have any use for a huge fortress with three hundred rusting cannon. I figure the settlers here didn't have the time or resources to go that big.

 

[gordo12]

If the guard was changed during a bad storm, what's the risk that they'd be blown off a slick stair and fall to their death?

Slip and fall? Very likely on slick stone. Not a hint of a railing. Men were much shorter in those days. The stairs to the outer wall battlements are narrow in width and depth. Barely as wide as my shoulders. I almost had to turn my feet sideways to walk up one. There are shelters at regular intervals along the battlements that at 5'9" I had to hunker over to fit in.

Those stones get polished too. At one point I couldn't get the car to back up a small incline because the dry cobblestones were polished and slippery like ice. The stairs to the battlements were worn in the same fashion. Polished by countless feet.