The blank page is intimidating for many people.

Questions can lead to frustration…

Have you ever had these thoughts?

• Where do I begin?• How do I start?• What should I say first?• How do I make my introduction

interesting?• I’m never going to finish this story if I can’t

even write the first line!!!!!

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until blood forms on your forehead.”

Gene Fowler (Biographer)

When asked, “How do you write?” I invariably answer, “One word at a time.”

Stephen King

Here are some ways to help you get started…

What might I include in a description of the setting?

• Visuals…color, textures, landscape, people present, objects at that location.

• Time period… last year, when I was little, after my grandmother’s 90th birthday party.

• Sounds…traffic, nature, voices, action, construction.

• Weather…wind, rain, swaying of trees, snowflakes falling softly.

What do you see?

What details does this author include?

• “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

–Neuromancer, William Gibson

• “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.”

–A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

• “The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.”

–Babbit Sinclair Lewis

Begin by sharing a memory…

• “It wasn’t much, really, the whole Jessica Feeney thing. If you look at it, nothing much happened.”

– Firegirl Tony Abbott

• “When I was little, my uncle Pete had a necktie with a porcupine on it.” - Stargirl Jerry

Spinelli • “Many years later, as he faced the firing

squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember a distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

-One Hundred Years of Solitude Gregory Rabassa

“If you are reading this, it must be a thousand years from now.”

-The Last Book in the Universe, Rodman Philbrick

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” -1984, George Orwell

“It was a pleasure to burn.” -Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

“A screaming comes across the sky.”

-Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

“It was the wrong number that started it, the telephone rang three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”

-City of Glass, Paul Auster

“ The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

-The Gunslinger, Stephen King

Have your characters begin your story with their own words.

“I’ve never seen a worse driver than

you!”

“You better not never tell nobody but God.”

-The Color Purple, Alice Walker

“If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me,” thought Moses Herzog.

-Herzog, Saul Bellow

Tell your reader what is true about life- in general- and how it relates to your subject.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

-Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston

“Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimension of space.”

-Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood

“All children, except one, grow up.”- Peter Pan, J.M Barrie

“When a journey begins badly, it rarely ends well.”

-The Floating Island, Jules Vern

Restate the prompt…

“An important memory for me was when…”

Give away the most important part at the beginning…

“One important memory was when my aunt died.”

Oh no you diiin’t!

Talk to the reader…

“This story is about the time I went to…”

“I’m going to write about…”

That’s just WRONG!

Don’t go too far back in time. Start from the moment the event began.

BAD IDEA!

Start with the exact date…

“It was January 3, 2004…”

What were you thinking?!!

Start with an obvious onomatopoeia…..

Ring! Ring!

Ding dong!

Vrooom!

Not the ‘Ring! Ring!’ Essay again!

Now that you know how to start your story….let’s get back to work and make that introduction amazing!