Lately, I’ve become preoccupied with story beginnings. I blame a writer’s conference I went to where I had to turn in the first 250 words of a short story. I was amazed at how little I had conveyed in those 250 words. (I wrote a post about it, which you can read if you want to called “Beginnings, the First 250 Words.”) Last week, I submitted a short story for the first time to a literary journal. As part of the online submission process, I had to copy and paste the first 300 words of my story into the form, along with the title and my name and then attach the word document. I’m guessing that the readers read the first 300 words and if the story pulls them in, they’ll open up the attachment.
Now I’m reading Stein on Writing by former literary agent Sol Stein. In the chapter where he talks about beginnings, he focuses his discussion on the first sentence. About it, Stein asks: Continue reading
