Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Modified by Me Using PhotoShop
The beginning of a story can be the hardest part, especially crafting an effective start with some type of crisis point as @jayna mentioned in her past Writing Tip of the Week #2: Adding Conflict. It is essential to grab the reader’s attention early and hold it to the next point of movement/fascination/interest.
This is how plot arcs are created.
A story is fluid and it moves in waves, or it doesn't move at all and loses the readers interest pretty fast. Peaks and troughs of actions and/or emotions are essential. It is these things which bring about that fascination and fast paced visual reading of a good novel.
You all know that feeling, when you can't put a good book down, or stop reading until the end of a short story. The words seem to disappear into a flowing visual narrative, like a movie acting out behind your eyes.
The image below shows the most basic three act structure using tension as a technique to initiate and drive the story.
CC Source
This is the challenge for this week: I am going to give you an opening, partly inspired by an idea @stormlight24 had in a discord conversation, which leads up to a potential crisis/mystery point.
The opening is not genre specific, but it's possible I am erring toward a sci-fi, fantasy or mystery/crime dynamic. Please remember, we are not about stiffing creativity in any way here. If you have you own opening in mind, please feel free to disregard the one I have written, as long as their is a conflict/mystery point which leads on to some type of rising tension/conflict and a climatic ending to resolve the story.
The challenge is primarily about that image and understanding plot arc and how much it can improve your writing. Every writer can have certain aspects of writing in which they shine - I myself am guilty of this with focusing on imagery throughout descriptive narrative - but this is often an Achilles heel. The thing that makes the writer marvel at their own creation, while they miss out on some basic principles and steps that could make their story shine all the more!
Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay
The Opening - The Time Between Times
Jenny crept down the corridor. Each creaky floorboard was mapped out in her head and she stepped from corner to corner like playing a game of hopscotch back at school.
She never thought she'd miss school. Mrs Granger with her funny long nose and that wart on the lip. Her friend Sam had her in fits of giggles flapping his lips as she chalked on the board. A pang of guilt sliced through her belly whenever she thought about their private joke about warty Granger.
They were all memories now. She resisted stamping her foot and kicked the wall softly instead. It was so boring living with her great uncle after her father had died of Covid-19. Now cities were off limits for kids and the whole world was in stasis.
Covid-24 had taken hold and mass-crops had developed some type of antibacterial super strain. We were all shipped off to the country. Child laborers conscripted to cottage gardens and stately homes, organic farms and microbreweries. Anywhere which produced untreated, heirloom varieties of foods.
She giggled at the thought of the text she'd got from her friend Roger.
Working @ Goodachres brewery just outside Guildford. I drink as much as I make and spit in every second bottle. Goodachres' supply the underground parliament, C ya Soon Jen lol 😜
She stepped across the corridor to the next spot and a loud creak split the stale air. Shit, she'd forgotten the sequence. The grandfather clock loomed large ahead of her, only two meters distant.
The tippy-tap of typing stopped in the study a few doors down and she held her breath. A creaking and shifting noise from just beyond the door froze her in place. She leaned in to the wall and held her breathed, scared of her uncles reaction if he saw her near the clock again.
His obsession with antiques, and that clock was not normal.
Don't touch.
Don't go poking about... and especially that clock.
I don't even want to see you look at it.
She carried on, moving from safe spot to safe spot until she stood before it. A mahogany monster staring down at her ticking with that maddening repetitive metallic beat.
"Father," a loud call echoed down the corridor.
She spun around and saw Billy, her cousin at the top of the stairs grinning.
A loud stomping came from the study and the door was flung wide, just as that obnoxious brat piped up again.
"Father, Jenny is messing with the clock again."
Uncle Steven strode down the corridor, fists clenching at his sides "What have I told you about touching that clock."
Jenny hunkered down knowing what was to come. She steeled that place inside, swallowed the bile down to that diamond hard spot in her stomach which turned her blood to stone.
As she stared up at her uncle, his upraised fist shaking she could see the reflection of the clock face in the dusty portrait on the wall. One second to twelve.
Tick.
His fist began to descend.
The first bell of twelve midday chimed.
His fist halted.
The second bell didn't come. Dust motes drifted across the sunbeam in the corridor, illuminating and settling on the two wax work dummies.
The clock face lay still.
© Rowan Joyce, all rights reserved (with permission for anyone to use as the start of their story for this challenge).
As you can see I have written to the crisis point. In this case between Jenny, her uncle and the clock's seeming suspension of time.
Some people might argue I write more back story than is necessary, and that it would have been possible to get to crisis point with a quicker build. But this would have been at the sacrifice of character development, each author is different. In my opinion 500 words is a reasonable count in which to build setting, history and reach a character crisis/conflict point, I would have done more revision if it had stretched much above the 500 word count.
I shall be publishing my own @raj808 ending to this story and taking part in my own challenge to fulfill the most basic three part character arc.
I will also be actively reading all of the short stories from this challenge, looking for the best to submit to @ocd's
Daily Community Curation magazine, which usually includes a vote of at least $5 minimum to post.
This prompt challenge will last for around a week until next week's prompt.
As my health improves I hope to get back to the more structured Tuesday Fiction and Thursday Poetry prompt structure.
Thanks for reading.
Much love, @raj808
If you're looking for inspiration for fiction or poetry check out our past writing prompts linked below.
Fiction
The Ink Well Fiction Writing Challenge #1 - Realms of Fantasy
The Ink Well Fiction Writing Challenge #2 - Bad Habits
The Ink Well Fiction Writing Challenge #3 - What is Your Major Malfunction?
Fiction Writing prompt #4: Exploring Your Life in Fiction
Fiction or Poetry
The Ink Well Creative Writing Challenge - The Stuff of Which Dreams are Made
Poetry
Poetry Challenge of the Week - Writing Out of your Comfort Zone
Thursday's Poetry Challenge - Exploring Legend
Thursday's Poetry Challenge - As Free as a Bird
I would like to invite any lovers of poetry and short stories to visit the new hive community started by @raj808 with @stormlight24 called The Ink Well.
Also, with the advent of https://hive.vote/ it is now possible to follow The Ink Well curation trail on Hive blockchain. It works just the same as steemauto; simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell (all one word with no @ symbol) and our trail will pop up as an option.
Similarly delegations are possible on Hive using the fantastic https://peakd.com/ Hive Blockchain front end. If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell that supports creative writing on Hive by voting all of our contributors, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/
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Ooh fun! There's some wonderful instruction here. I love this:
Yes, we all have our tics! Mine is that I write things with a slight opacity, hoping that readers will be drawn in by their desire to understand the meaning better and to connect the dots. I am finally realizing that I must face the fact that this is a flaw in my writing!
I'm glad you said we could write our own opening, because I'm absolutely terrible at finishing stories other people have started. I think it's a wonderfully clever way to get people writing, and spur their imagination. But for me, I have to architect it pretty much from the beginning or I feel like some bizarre impostor, or like I'm stealing someone else's story idea. Or like someone has built me a foundation for a Tudor home and I only know how to build Craftsman. If that makes sense. Anyway, I'm hoping to participate this round! I might just start with your opening sentence. :-)
Indeed. Write your own opening @jayna, and it would be great fun if you do use just the opening passage
To be honest that feels like it gives so much back story, but not too much. Jenny is a child, she is in a creeky (old) house and the referance of hopscotch gives the broadest of pre-millennial time frames 😉
I played hopscotch when I was a kid.... ahhhh child of the eighties lol
Have fun with it and I look forward to reading your entry. I'm going to finish mine off today and publish it with a disclaimer saying read no further if you want to take part in this weeks fiction prompt 😂
Thank you, @theinkwell and @raj808!
I have this problem, too. I can do it for a one word prompt, but starting with someone else's style and voice is a challenge.
I wondered what you meant about opacity - I feel my writing is a bit like that, I don't say everything. I like gaps that the reader can fill in themselves, and the tension that creates.
#posh sharing hive on twitter
From the community account
and my account
~~~ embed:1250831925444558849?s=20 twitter metadata:cm93YW5qODA4fHxodHRwczovL3R3aXR0ZXIuY29tL3Jvd2FuajgwOC9zdGF0dXMvMTI1MDgzMTkyNTQ0NDU1ODg0OXw= ~~~
I tweeted it it too 🐝
Cheers dude. I'm not sure how much twitter drive matters yet in the grand scale of things beyond crypto-twitter, but every little helps and that's why I always tag an extra 15 mins onto my workload per post promoting outside hive.
Thanks for the retweet m8 🙂 💪
Ooh, I love it: living with an uncle (great-uncle!), like Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, with long corridors, creaking floors, and taboo places. Why have a clock in the house, in plain sight, if children shouldn't even look at it? And why torment them with the warning:
My dad did this. The colossal metal grain bins. The rod at ground level. The handwritten warning: NEVER PULL THIS ROD. I entertained lurid visions: rivets would pop, corrugated metal sheets would groan and give way, an avalanche of golden corn would rain down on my like lava and bury me alive.
I didn't even have the physical strength to pull that d^mn rod - nobody but Dad did.
Turns out nothing so visually spectacular would have happened. Just, the grain would be released into the trap before the auger had been turned on, and it would involve a lot of hand-shoveling to free up the auger.
After an entire childhood in fear of those black handwritten letters, THAT was all - an inconvenience, a lot of physical labor, but no sparks, no flying rivets, no splitting seams of a towering metal monstrosity, no danger.
No wonder "Well behaved women seldom make history" (and no, it wasn't Eleanor Roosevelt or Marilyn Monroe, but Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who, allegedly, said it first, and wrote a book with that title.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Thatcher_Ulrich
ha ha, well I love it! To remove the sexist cogitations lets just say
well-behaved people seldom make historywhich is true... but I look forward to seeing how you mess with history with this prompt if the muse comes a calling.I'm sleeping on it a now to see what the dream journeying can come up with :)
This is one time I would not be "inclusive" but would add, "Eve was framed." Garden of Eden. Fruit in the middle of the garden. Temptation in plain sight, like this uncle with his clock. So I'm thinking along feminist lines because great uncle = patriarchy, authority, all that, in my mind's eye. Maybe he's the wise man, the wizard, the archetypal mentor, for others. Maybe for me too. If the Muse comes a calling - now that's a thought I will invite, embrace, encourage "The Universe" to deliver!
You got it nailed down Carol. The uncle figure is very much a patriarchal (and in my version of the story abusive) recluse.
But as always, just have fun and if things aren't flowing creatively, no worries 👍
There will be more prompts coming from me now that I'm 100% sure I'm on the road to recovery. Today, I will even be planting my tomato plants at in the greenhouse I have on a friends allotment 😃
Yay!!! Raj is ON THE ROAD to RECOVERY!!!!
Wishes and Prayers do get answered!
Did you ever take up the 20-minutes, twice a day Deep Breathing routine? I blush to confess, I'm not that dedicated. But I need to write a review of that book for Amazon Vine, with or without my having put the routine to practice.
I love your prompts - and your flexibility in allowing The Ink Well-ers to stray from the prompt if so inclined.
May your tomato plants thrive as awesomely as your writing does!
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You have very skillfully taken care of parts one and two, should be fun to see if I can take this anywhere :)
I don't know if it is something you would consider, but back in the old times of crazy amounts of contests on steemit, me and a friend would often end up coming back to how much language choice changes a story, and lament how that never really featured in any contests. It was FTS that inspired us, we would play around rewriting the openings from time to time (entirely in private and for practice) but I just thought i'd mention it because it worked really well with something like this (although this opening is maybe a bit balanced and prime to go anywhere - the more stylized or direct the original the more fun we found it to rewrite) where people were invited to rewrite the events of the opening in their own words as well as finishing it. We just always enjoyed looking at the original, and each others, and seeing how much the same events changed depending on the slant and perspective we each chose. That said, I know it wouldn't be for everyone, and having something like this with a somewhat editable opening is a great prompt!
Hi @letalis-laetitia
Feel free to re-write the beginning, or even make a new one. My primary purpose is to try and encourage people to follow the simple three act structure. It is a perfect, simple way to curtail the flights of fancy (that I myself am 100% guilty of doing) and maintain that plot structure in short stories particularly.
At some point in the future when I'm fully recovered I'd be happy to do this or some type of iteration of it. Or even just you and me proofreading, and re-writing a short story of each others as an exercise for the other writer to see the stylistic differences and nuances that they like (or dislike) about the other writers work. This is the type of thing I did in Uni all the time and it was very helpful 🙂
I just wish I had the energy I had at that time of my life when I was in uni 😒
P.s. this is raj808 writing from the community account. I'm going to be releasing my full story inspired by the three point arc structure later today, and shake the dust off the raj808 account 😃
I love the way you give writers liberty to respond to a prompt in any way the muse leads them. Sometimes it's a word, or a sentence that creates an association. It's best to let those associations flow. And once that has happened, of course, writers must discipline the stream of ideas into something logical and meaningful (to readers).
I saw my sentence and hope there is time to do it justice.
A great beginning..rich fuel for the imagination.
Amen to that agmoore. I am an anarchist down to my blood, maybe people in the US would call me a libertarian, although I don't think I'm a Ron Swanson style lover of freedom... hmnnn after watching this mini-clip I am remembering that the only differences between me and Ron is that I don't love meat, or own a woodshop in my garage, but other than that we're pretty much the same. Gotta watch this clip agmoore, it's pure gold.
Gotta love Ron 😂
Hmnnnn maybe I'm not 100% a Ron
Anyway, I am always looking to give as much freedom as it is possible to give with my prompts while still providing some educational value. In this case the value comes in the structure element of the prompt, and encouraging people to focus on that graphic and produce a story with those types of progression/elements.
People say things like 'quality is subjective' etc 😂
They are wrong; style, tone of voice, political leanings and personal likes are completely subjective in writing, but in creative writing a story isn't a story with out at least a beginning and an end. There should be something in between as well lol
That is cool that you spotted a sentance to jump off from and I look forward to reading your entry 👍
P.s. this is raj808 writing from the community account. I'm going to be releasing my full story inspired by the three point arc structure later today, and shake the dust off the raj808 account which has seen 3 posts in the last 14 days
Thank you Raj! What a great response. I never watched that show so Ron Swanson is new to me. Delightful clips :))
I love The Ink Well. I feel at home, and hope to become more supportive of the community.
Meanwhile, get better soon.
Here's my response. Good experiment, learnt lots doing it :)
@shanibeer, I love this!!! I still can't comment or upvote of SteemPeak or PeakD or whatever. But I want you to know I appreciate this, especially the way Jenny finds Roger again:
Then the task masters, then the escape, and those closing lines. So beautiful!
I LOVE IT
One could only try... let's see... be safe & well everyone! :)
https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@iamraincrystal/the-future-ends-today
I did it!
https://hive.blog/hive-170798/@carolkean/killing-time-fiction-writing-prompt-5-the-magic-starts-at-the-beginning