Consider this quotation from Saunders’s story “Victory Lap” in Tenth of Dec, “Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs. Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned.” These are the first sentences of the story.
They are good first sentences for several reasons. They suggest an ongoing process (“Three days shy . . .”) or two (Alison has paused) and readers are likely to read on to see how the process(es) resolves. In other words, the sentences presents portents of a possible future. Will the portents be fulfilled?
Another reason these are good first sentences is that they also characterize. Beginning with a character is likely to interest readers, especially if a connection to that character is likely or at least possible. I’ve had a fifteenth birthday, and I’ve even paused at the top of stairs and imagined that my surroundings might be different.
These two strategies are good ways to start stories.
Notice also this moment from the title story, “Tenth of December.” In it a boy is crossing a frozen lake. The ice under his feet has been making odd sounds as he imagines a conversation with a girl he knows. Readers are deep within his point of view or consciousness and have been for several paragraphs.
Maybe you should turn back, Suzanne said.
But wasn’t this feeling of fear the exact feeling all heroes had to confront early in life? Wasn’t overcoming this feeling of fear what truly distinguished the brave?
There could be no turning back.
Or could there? Maybe there could. Actually there should.
The ice gave way and the boy fell through.
The last sentence is a surprise (or it was for me) partly because of its suddenness. It isn’t telegraphed by a word like “suddenly,” for example. It is its own paragraph in a series of short paragraphs, one with dramatically different contents. But another part of what makes the last sentence a surprise is the quick movement from the character’s inner life to an external, objective, cinematic point of view. Readers flash from within the character’s decision making, his deliberations about his own safety, to a flat description of consequences. As much as those consequences may have been anticipated, seeing them on the page is surprising.
We might try similar strategies when we seek to surprise readers.
Writing Fiction 