5 Days of Beginnings: Day Three
I hope everyone is having as much fun writing openings as I am!
Today’s guest writer is Jennifer Solheim. She’s the Associate Director of BookEnds and teaches in Stony Brook University’s MFA Program. She’s a beloved friend and a total inspiration. (I can’t think of anyone I know who works so hard, who is so fierce and determined. I find her work ethic and drive endlessly motivating.) We met over a decade ago in StoryStudio Chicago’s Novel in a Year program and she organized a writing group with some of us from the cohort. I still feel lucky I was one of the people she chose for the group— it’s meant for the past decade we’ve had many chats about writing and swapped novel drafts (a treat for me because she’s as fantastic of a reader as she is a writer).
Speaking of her reading prowess, here’s what she had to say about story openings:
Short stories are often about compression and concision, a gasp in and out of a world—at least, many of the stories I love most feel that way. An opening is all about tightness and economy to be sure the language serves the story, the narration, and to set the terms and the rules for reading.
Consider Carrie Cooperider’s recently published flash story (nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, and Best Small Fictions), “Flâneuse.”
What are the chances, I ask you—not one, but two—two! white-stranded gentlemen in as many days sailing past me seaside with their swollen scrota slung to the right of their inseams?
You can listen to the author read this work, which offers its own kind of interpretation; here I’ll pull for analysis the narrative and poetic strategies woven together in this opening sentence to consider how the author sets the rules and constraints for the story.
“What are the chances,” the story begins, a rhetorical address to the reader, a rhetoric of wonder that carries through the entire piece. The narrator invites the reader in with “I ask you,” the first-person narrator set in relation to the reader. Then she turns to an internal rhyme set off by em dashes, “—not one, but two—two!” carrying us forward to the “white-stranded gentlemen” who are the subject of our gaze. Two “in as many days,” giving us the time frame for the story, “sailing past me seaside,” giving us the suggestion of a setting (the accompanying image suggests it’s a boardwalk; a few sentences in, we have confirmation).
Then we get to the meat, as it were (with apologies): “with their swollen scrota slung to the right of their inseams?” These are the chances of the opening phrase: the sight of scrota, and both swollen and hanging right. This final phrase of the opening sentence suggests a narrator’s attention to detail, maybe leering, maybe naïve, a close attention to lowly parts of human bodies. Further, there is the alliteration in the final phrases, drawing attention to the subject of observation: “sailing” “seaside,” and “swollen scrota slung,” a sibilant hiss that traces the sightlines of the narrator.
I’ll leave it to you to consider how this sentence sets up the rules for the rest of the story, and to look on the phrase, word, and punctuation level at the artistry and economy of this first sentence. By way of prompt: I’m taking inspiration today from that low perspective, the gaze upward, and attention to intimate detail to write a story opening.
Thank you, Jennifer!
And she offered this song, saying, When I'm in process with my writing, I regret nothing—and can you picture a small Daschund with this song as her soundtrack?
Hope you find inspiration from that story analysis—and regret nothing with your writing today. <3