• The beginning of your story will hook your readers. If a story starts off and is boring, why would anyone want to keep reading? Similarly, if your ending is weak, your reader will leave your story with a sour feeling.
• Start in the middle of things (in media res). There should be an ongoing situation already in place before the opening of your story.
• There should be a crisis and a character introduced immediately (ask yourself: who is doing what?)

1. Introduce a character
2. Give us a place/describe a setting
3. Raise a question
4. Present a crisis

What is the function of a strong opening?

1. It entices and engages the reader and sets the tone for the whole story
2. It creates expectations for you reader
3. Remember: nothing is wasted, nothing is random

Some tips:

• Appeal to the senses
• Show a need or motive or want
• Present action
• Use an object that is, or will become, symbolic
• Have a character description
• A thought (think of the opening of Pride and Prejudice)
• Prepare your reader for what’s to come
• It’s the point of entry for your story, it must lead to something

They should fit with your beginning in some way. Remember to end strong: nothing’s worse than reading a good story that has an ending that makes you regret reading it!

• Circular: repeats the opening, reflects the beginning in a way. Ex- open with a death, end with a death
• Matching: opens with an image or idea and then ends with that image or idea changing or being used in some way
• Surprise: ends in an unexpected way, but there are hints of what will happen placed throughout the story that become clearer after the ending
• Trick: similar to a surprise ending, but there are no hints along the way. Something completely unexpected happens without any warning
• Summary: ends with the narrator telling the reader what happens to the characters. Jane Austen did this in her novels
• Open: there is no closure; the reader does not know what happens to the characters

1. Imagine an idea for a story. Write only the beginning and the ending. Try to have your ending be circular.

2. Do the same exercise from above, only this time try to create a surprise ending. List what sort of hints you would have placed along the way to accomplish a surprise (and not a trick) ending.