In the Beginning

Beginnings to stories fascinate me - they are also damn hard to write (second only to endings, which take the prize for most difficult).

How to start a story? How to invite the reader into this world you have created? Pretensions aside, that's what it is - a world full of your character constructs in a setting that while having it's roots in reality, is it's own little universe. Heady stuff.

I have always liked the media res opening (Latin for - in the middle of things).
One of my faves from my story Bare-Ass Bridge:

"Don't be afraid," I whispered. "Cut the yellow wire, no the blue wire, no the –"
"Too late," Brian said in his grimmest voice.

Quickly you find out that it is two boys playing army, but I love starting with the ultimate in tension - the cutting of the wire. I planned this one, intentionally, as a tongue-in-cheek beginning.

But I have a growing appreciation of more traditionally story openings. Ones that tell the backstory right away, yet suggest the underlying conflict.
From "Why Wyoming":

It had been twenty years since Harry and Sue had taken a road trip together. Sue said it was twenty-one, but Harry was sure it was twenty because 1986 was the year he'd bought that damn Honda Accord. It spilled oil and chunks of metal across Ontario and into Quebec. They laughed about it now, how they had needed to rely on the kindness of others, Harry holding aloft a set of jumper cables and waving them at passing cars, trying to look forlorn, yet pleasant at the same time. Or in the basement of the national gallery parking lot, smoke billowing from the hood and Harry waving an empty antifreeze jug while Sue slumped lower and lower into her seat. Two decades later they could laugh but a part inside Harry still clenched when he thought of Sue sinking into that seat.

Next time I will look at a few of my fave writer's openings.