In The Lab this week, we talked about openings. Not how they hook the reader—though an opening has to do that—but about the integrity of the opening as the door to the rest of the story.
I described my theory of openings: The atomic material of the story should be present from the very start, and the work of the story is to combine those atoms into a variety of narrative molecules.1
In other words, openings should contain the major elements of the story, such that reading through the story the first time feels like an ever-unfolding movement from the starting point, and looking back at the opening comes to take on ever more meaning as you read. After finishing the story, the opening may look like a map that you didn’t yet know how to interpret.
Yes, openings also have to hook the reader. To me, this is not so much about big promises or declarations as about the permeability of the voice, its authority and idiosyncrasy.
But as a writer, I find it more fun to think about openings as a struct…
