Openings and Endings, How do you do it?

[WildLynx]

I have been told time and time again that a story must have a begginning, a middle, and an end.

I am a trained journalist, but fiction is my new challenge. I have a terrible time finding an opening paragraph that really grabs hold of me, and even more trouble trying to end the story.

The journalists mantra for the lead paragraph is Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This does not work well for me in fiction.

How do you solve this with your stories.

 

[Weird Harold]

How do you solve this with your stories.

I try to start with something cryptic -- "I hate my fiancée’s clocks. I can appreciate her sense of humor, but it’s just so damned hard to figure out what time it is in her house." -- Then set about explaining things.

(The quote above is from Two Bags For The Bride -- my most successfull story.)

I try to end with something that sums up the spirit of the story or wraps all the lose ends into a nice neat knot (so I don't get begged for sequels -- I don't like writing sequels.)

If you do like writing sequels, then end with a "cliffhanger" of some sort -- a question, an interruption, or promise.

 

[MaxSebastian]

Story Structure

You're a journalist, so you'll no doubt be used to writing in the inverted triangle style, with all the most interesting/relevant information at the start of the piece, petering away to the less significant details. With fiction you can dispense with that. Flip the triangle the other way if you like. Try a square, a hexagaon... uh... anyway...

With fiction, you do need something to grab you at the start, something to intrigue the reader and get them to carry on. But fiction readers have far more patience than those skimming through a newspaper or a magazine, and what they want is for you to tease them, to release the significant information at a steady rate building up towards the peak of the story. Hold something in reserve to surprise them, perhaps. The story doesn't need to be resolved or clarified until the end.

Fiction structure generally can be a very personal choice. I like to make my beginning a kind of promise for the reader - a bit like a standfirst in a feature of a magazine or newspaper. It promises the reader something in return for their commitment to read your piece, without revealing enough to ruin the suspense.

You might want to start by mentioning something that occurs later in the story (i.e. probably the crux of the piece) - but very briefly so as not to ruin that all-important suspense - then after the first two or three paragraphs, move back and show the reader how the characters got to that point.

You might want to simply start with a slow build-up to the peak of the story from some point in time where the foundation stones of the story were first laid in the characters' lives. Be careful not to be too slow in building up the story with this method, though.

You could even start with the main action of the story and only hint at the backstory - though this is what screenwriters need to do for movies, you don't have to do that in fiction. Be very careful not to overwhelm the reader early on by this method, and be careful not to make the revealing of the backstory either too scant or too overbearing (and flashbacks in fiction can be very badly done without due care and attention).

I personally find the middle of the story the most difficult, because once you've grippde your reader's eyes, you then have to keep them going without boring them, but without bombarding them with all your big guns until the climax of the story. You have to leave them something for the ending.

In various publications, including the very wonderful 'Story' by Robert McKee, the advice is when writing stories to move from event to event, varying the pace so that the full-on parts and the more relaxed parts during the main part of the story have a nice rhythm, rising and falling in peaks and troughs like waves in the sea. Then on top of that you'll also be wanting to build up steadily to the climax.

The climax of the piece in erotica is usually, for me, the most kick-ass sex scene of the whole story. But the climax isn't necessarily the same as the ending, although it should really be very close to the ending to keep the reader from switching off after that explosive peak.

It's nice to include a twist in the tail, but that's not necessary and not often done here at Literotica. Try to put something in the ending to make the reader think, however, because you shouldn't see the ending of your piece as just the end of your piece. It's also the prime opportunity for you to make your readers want to read your next story.

With endings, as with other parts of my stories, I like to trust a fair bit to my readers. They're intelligent people - they picked my story, didn't they? - so I feel I can do that. I leave some of the endings 'out there', unspecific so that readers can (if they like) imagine for themselves what might happen in the characters' futures. You could perhaps include something to signify that a whole new adventure is just about to start, like those episodes of the X-Files where the revolting psychotic creature has been destroyed/caught but there's a hint that it has somehow reproduced or found some way to escape.

I think the worst thing you can do is to tack a mini-biography onto the end as they do in true-life movies. 'Jack Bratten became a police officer and is currently working in Staines arresting unarmed Asian youths for the possession of firearms. Suzy Gannet was briefly called up for Prostitute duty with the forces overseas and now does needlework for a charity in Bradford'. Don't ruin your ending like this: it's the end. Leave it! A story has to have a time frame, it has to start somewhere, it has to end somewhere. If you want to explore what happens later in the characters' lives, write a sequel taking place later in their lives.

And it's a good thing for you to make the ending such that readers want you to do a sequel. Then you can either indulge them or not, it's your choice. But you've affected them enough to beg you, so that's a good sign. They'll look out for your next story, you have a readership!

An ending in erotica can even simply be that final explosive orgasm of the characters - but these types of endings can be unpopular. In erotica, we'd like to have at least a hint as to whether the characters stay together or don't.

Hope that helps! I do go on, don't I?

 

[Axeltheswede]

Beginnings and endings

It is tough to follow Max's masters thesis above there. (Just kidding Max, you laid things out extremely well).

I sometimes use an idea I read a long time ago. Richard Brautigan (if anyone remembers this late author) was giving an interview. He was asked how he came up with the beginnings to his short stories and novels. His response was that he started with a simple sentence. Example: Larry was a dork. Then he took off from that point. When he had completed a half dozen pages he went back to the beginning. He said he found his actual start point somewhere in the first dozen paragraphs. He said the point to begin the story usually jumped out at him as the obvious choice.

I know it sounds simplistic. I have used this idea and found it workable. It is almost like getting a car engine warmed up. You find the start point of your story and the conflict a few miles down the road.

As for endings. Maybe poor Richard shot himself before he could explain that part. Good luck.

 

[WildLynx]

I am printing and saving all your great advice.

Some specifics to work on now:

I am attempting a story about a man seducing a woman while the woman is also seducing and guiding the man. There is a certain amount of emotional baggage each brings to this relationship that I think is important to the story and their sexual encounters.

This story begs the question, do I start at the real begining showing the slow build up? That is the obvious, and most natural seeming start, but it has the flaw of being a slow read. The key point of this story (working title: Mind Games) is that both people are manipulating each other, with a "tail twister" ending.

I am trying to write something more than raw pornography.
This may be too complicated for my first erotic fiction effort, but the story has really grabbed hold of me. Hope I can do the idea justice.

I know that isn't much information to work with, but I am interested in hearing various solutions.

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

Beginnings:
My favorite author is Rudyard Kipling. (And he received the
Nobel Prize in Literature while also supporting his family
in luxury on his writings.)
Kipling tended to start out with some sort of philosophical
statement. "You can talk of gin and beer while you're
quartered safe out here and sent to penny fights and
Aldershot it." (Okay, that's the start of a poem; but the
short stories often start the same way.)
I don't find that I can find such beginnings, myself,
I usually start with the first incident of the story.
Some things to remember: (1) The beginning is what
tells your reader what *sort* of story this is. So -- for
one example -- don't tell a story with switched points of
view and then start the story with ten solid paragraphs of
one person's point-of-view.
(2) (Usually) show the main characters right off, and their
conflict -- or other relationship -- fairly early.

 

[Uther_Pendragon]

I have been told time and time again that a story must have a begginning, a middle, and an end.

I am a trained journalist, but fiction is my new challenge. I have a terrible time finding an opening paragraph that really grabs hold of me, and even more trouble trying to end the story.

The journalists mantra for the lead paragraph is Who, What, Where, When, and Why. This does not work well for me in fiction.

How do you solve this with your stories.

:
Endings:
I like to end with an anti-climax. Whatever the conflict
is has been resolved, the main characters have had
explosive sex, and
THEN
they fall asleep in each other's arms.
But that's me. And it isn't *always* even me.
"Hold That Thought" ends with a twist.
"Outage," which got the best response of any of my stories,
ends before the sex does.

 

[MysteryWriter]

In my case it is all in the first sentence

If i start with a strong first sentence then it is easy for me to fill in the rest. If I start with a wimpy one I never recover. One of the other writers and I give each other the first sentence then write around it. Everything else just follows.

 

[MaxSebastian]

This story begs the question, do I start at the real begining showing the slow build up? That is the obvious, and most natural seeming start, but it has the flaw of being a slow read. The key point of this story (working title: Mind Games) is that both people are manipulating each other, with a "tail twister" ending.

Sounds to me like you have a very good idea for a story - I'd say you might be writing with the male character as central, because he is the one doing the seducing while being unsure of how to go about it, and the surprise being that she's seducing him too - or whatever.

But you don't have to start right at the beginning. It's a short story, not a novel, so to some extent I think we can learn from movie screenwriting - and there is no better teacher in that than William Goldman in his books Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?. I would say to everyone interested in any aspect of fiction writing to read these books. Mr Goldman advises writers to start a scene as late as possible. Cut out the smalltalk, get to the importance of the scenes you write - that will keep things from moving too slowly.

You can keep the pace of your story going through a bit of dialogue and a lot of flirtation between the characters, but you don't necesarily have to start where the two of them first meet. He can already have met her by the time you open - but you need to open with some sort of event that changes the status of the characters' relationship, I think.

So one idea would be to start at the precise moment that the male character decides to seduce the female. The point at which he realises that he msut have her. Of course he is riddled with self-doubt and so-on, otherwise the story would have no natural build-up. And with that self-doubt, there is your story's conflict.

I think the trouble with providing help with story structure is in doing so without knowing as much detail about the story as the author does - ultimately, you're going to have to pick something, then write it. You can always alter the structure later, you can always find an editor who will advise you after you've put something down on paper. Don't be afraid of re-writing.

 

[Sateema Lunasi]

My endings are usually weak. It is my biggest flaw in my writing, something I really need to work on. I have good openings though, which tend to be shocking some times. For instance an opening line in a story I have written (not finished yet) is;

Shirly was dead and he was starting to stink.

Okay, there is the schock factor. A person is dead. Second, there is the HE factor, why is Shirly a HE, instead of a SHE? How did Shirly die? Why is the narrator so unconcerned with Shirly's state of being? Why is the narrator so crude?

It makes the reader ask many questions before even going to the second sentance, so they have to keep reading.

By the bottom of page one, you discover that Shirly is really a 250 pound linebacker named Sherman, and that his girlfriend has murdered him, and that the narrator is a nine year old girl.