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+
+
+ Stories
++ “One Dollar And Eighty-seven Cents. + That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. The grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek + burned with the silent. +
+ + ++ 1. The Telling Detail + +
++
+ + “One Dollar And Eighty-seven Cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a + time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the silent imputation + of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the + next day would be Christmas.” + + From ‘The Gift of the Magi’, by O Henry + + Sometimes known as the American Maupassant, O Henry’s stories are tightly plotted narratives of ordinary lives with lots + of humour that usually end with a classic sting in the tale that, while surprising, flows with unerring logic from the + story’s premise. + + In this classic tale, we know the whole set-up within a few lines. It is Christmas and Della has no money to buy a + present for her beloved husband James. In their whole house they possess only two things that they really value: his + gold watch and her golden hair. In a formula that has been much copied since, we watch Della sell her golden locks to + raise money to buy a fancy fob for James’s watch, while unbeknownst to her he has pawned his watch to buy her a set of + ivory combs that she has long coveted for her (now departed) hair! + + It is a tale that sounds tragic, but is actually heartening, because in the end the couple are confirmed in their real + gift: the love they bear each other. (Plus, of course, Della’s hair will grow back!) But it all stems from a single + telling detail: that opening cinematic detail of a tiny sum of money, piled up in pennies and scrimped from tense + negotiations with tradespeople, that is all Della thinks she has to show James how much she loves him. +
+ ++ 2. The Paradox +
++
+ + In the beginning, Sanford Carter was ashamed of becoming an Army cook. This was not from snobbery, at least not from + snobbery of the most direct sort. During the two and a half years Carter had been in the Army he had come to hate cooks + more and more. They existed for him as a symbol of all that was corrupt, overbearing, stupid, and privileged in Army + life…” +
From The Language of + Men,by Normal Mailer.
+ + Published in 1953, ‘The Language of Men’ tells the story of an over-sensitive, frustrated serviceman who, after years of + being passed up for promotion and never finding his niche in the army, ends up as a cook – the thing he hates most about + the army. Immediately we are curious: What will happen to a man who becomes the thing he most despises? + + Carter feels that he never manages to understand other men, to feel either equal to them or able to lead them. ‘Whenever + responsibility had been handed to him, he had discharged it miserably, tensely, over conscientiously. He had always + asked too many questions, he had worried the task too severely, he had conveyed his nervousness to the men he was + supposed to lead.’ + + Even after starting to enjoy his work as a cook, the story builds to an incident where the men come to him and ask for a + tin of oil for a fish fry-up they are organising – a party to which he is not invited. Carter stands his ground, and + earns some grudging respect, but then undercuts it all again after the event with his ‘unmanliness’ – the true source of + his self-disgust. + + The whole drama of a man failing to fit in with and gain respect among other men is foreshadowed in the paradox that’s + set in motion in the story’s opening lines. + + ++ 3. The Historical Backdrop +
++
+ A protege of Flaubert and the author of the novel Bel-Ami, Maupassant wrote over 300 short stories, many of them – like + this one – set during the Franco-Prussian war, and showing how innocent lives are swept up and crushed by futile, brutal + conflict. + + This story starts with a brief paragraph of context and another telling detail: the absence of sparrows. At this point + in the conflict, the Prussian army has established a blockade around Paris and is seeking to starve out its citizens. + + The two friends of the title were passionate fishermen in peacetime, and after a chance encounter they convince each + other to go off and fish once again. As well as the hunger they feel, they are motivated by a hankering for a return to + the innocent pleasures of their pre-war lives. + + They slip out past the French lines, to an area where they think they will be safe, but after a brief interval of bliss + the Prussians detect them, with tragic consequences… + + The opening line describes the war situation in vivid, journalistic terms, after which we are plunged into the tale of + these two innocents. In a few telling phrases, it provides context and general background for the very particular + tragedy which is about to ensue. + + 4. The Anecdotal Approach + “Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand + at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines. + + “That’s an… unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.” + + From ‘Cat Person,’ by Kristen Roupenian + + ‘Cat Person,’ reportedly the first short story ever to go viral, tells a simple tale of a doomed romantic encounter. + Margot, a student, meets an older guy, Robert, and they begin a flirtation that turns into a date that turns into a + rather unsatisfactory (for her) sexual encounter. + + Robert starts off as rather funny and charming, but over time we see that he is needy, insensitive, possessive, and + utterly unaware of what Margot is thinking or feeling. Margot regrets the whole thing but doesn’t know how to tell him; + Robert, when he is let down, turns all-too-predictably toxic. In short order he goes from mooning after her to demanding + who she’s slept with to calling her a ‘whore.’ + + This sequence of events struck a chord with many, many people because it is clearly so familiar. The story emphasises + the banality of the whole progression by narrating events in a straightforwardly chronological, anecdotal style, right + from the opening paragraph. This approach serves to underline the depressing banality of Robert’s misogyny while + implicitly asking the question: Why should women have to accept this as normal? + + 5. In Media Res + “And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a party if they had ordered it. + Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early + summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat + rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood + that roses are the only flowers that -parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, + literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by + archangels.” + + From ‘The Garden Party,’ by Katherine Mansfield + + Literally ‘in the middle of things’, an in media res beginning is where the story drops us into the middle of the action + of the narrative, so that we are instantly caught up in events. In this case, we are plunged into the excited bustle of + a well-to-do family preparing a sumptuous garden party, and the story does a fantastic job of building up the + anticipation and painting a picture of the affluence of the hosts. There is a marquee to put up, a band on its way, an + enormous delivery of fancy flowers, fifteen kinds of sandwich, and a retinue of servants to ensure everything is ready. + + Beginning with ‘and’ adds to this effect, giving us to understand that garden-party fever has been going on already for + days, and seeming to hark back to earlier worries about what the weather would be like on the day. But against all this + blithely affluent gaiety comes the story’s turning point: news that a poor workingman living in a cottage nearby has + died in a sudden accident. + + Laura, a daughter of the house, wonders if it appropriate to continue with the party, especially as all the noise and + music and bustle will carry to the grieving widow (who also has six children, we later discover). But just as happens to + the reader with the introduction, she is swept along by the occasion, and only really reconsiders the incident at the + end of a successful party, when her mother suggest she take a basket of sandwiches from the party down to the widow. + Laura’s reaction to this difficult task is initially ambiguous, but ultimately it seems as if again she finds a way to + paint the tragedy in complacently optimistic colours, choosing to find a serenity and beauty on the dead man’s face and + so blind herself to the grim reality of the tragedy and the agony of the grieving wife. + + + 6. The Refrain + “The thing about being the murdered extra is you set the plot in motion. + + You were a girl good at walking past cameras, background girl, corner-of-the-frame girl. Never-held-a-script girl, + went-where-the-director-said girl. + + You’ll be found in an alley, it’s always an alley for girls like you, didn’t-quite-make-it girls, + living-four-to-a-one-bedroom-apartment girls. You’ll be found in an alley, you’ll be mistaken for a broken mannequin at + first, you’ll be given a nickname. Blue Violet, White Rose, something reminiscent of Elizabeth Short, that first girl + like you, that most famous one. The kind of dead girl who never really dies.” + + From ‘Being the Murdered Extra,’ by Cathy Ulrich + + Cathy Ulrich’s extraordinary ‘Murdered Ladies’ flash fictions present a series of stories – there are 40 of them in her + collection, Ghosts of You – which always begin with the same line: The thing about being the murdered + extra/girlfriend/moll/classmate/witch/dancer [etc] is you set the plot in motion. + + It’s a thought-provoking line, which grows in power with every repetition. On the face of it seems strange to see these + women as setting the plot in motion, when they are all victims of male violence. But we start to see that what they set + in motion is actually the story that the people who survive them will appropriate from their lost lives, and blithely + relate in their absence. + + Each woman may set her plot in motion, but in each case she is not alive to explain how everyone gets her wrong, or + projects their own version of events to absolve themselves too easily. We see that this theft of each woman’s own story + is another violence that is done to them, something the stories seek in some small way to redeem. As Ulrich says: ‘Every + story is looking for the lost girl from the title […] I am looking for the lost in these stories. I don’t know if I will + ever find them.’ + + 7. Setting The Rules + “The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to + any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a + priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. + It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods—this is most strictly + forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons—it is there + that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden—they have been forbidden since the beginning + of time.” + + From ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’ by Stephen Vincent Benét + + In any story that seeks to build a world that is not ours, there is some work to be done in establishing the reality of + that world – its customs, its landscape, its people, its rules. World-building stories can sometimes fall down when they + indulge in too much of an expository info dump, as the accumulation of background detail can quickly dent narrative + momentum. + + What’s so clever about the start of this story is that the rules are themselves the engine of the plot. We pan + cinematically across the edges of the story’s territory, and understand the legends and forbidden areas of this world. + But the quest of the narrator – who is indeed the son of a priest – will take him east, into the forbidden Place of the + Gods (about which, of course, we are already very curious). At the outset of the story we do not the time in which the + story is set, what kind of being he is, or where he lives. But all these things will be revealed as the narrator’s + journey through a post-apocalyptic, post-technological world takes him to places that gradually start to seem very + familiar… + + 8. Beginning With The Inciting Incident + “The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a + belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was + ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the + corner and wave good-bye to me.” + + From ‘Charles,’ by Shirley Jackson + + Screenwriting guru Robert Mckee describes the inciting incident as a moment that ‘radically upsets the balance of forces + in your protagonist’s life’. It’s the moment when our main character is plunged out of their normal routine and a + challenge or quest appears which will shape their journey, and with it the rest of the story. It’s common to locate this + point near the start of the story after some introductory ‘normality,’ so that we can understand how the main + character’s life is to be disrupted. + + But here the inciting incident is placed by mystery and horror writer Shirley Jackson – best known for The Haunting of + Hill House – at the very start of the story. Everything that happens flows from Laurie starting kindergarten. Laurie + gets cheekier and less innocent with each passing day, as he brings home increasingly hair-raising tales of an even + naughtier boy called Charles. The whole story deals with the comic escalation of Charles’ behaviour, as reader and + narrator alike become ever more curious to meet the errant child and speculate on what his parents are like. + + I won’t spoil the ending, except to say that there is perhaps a clue in the mother’s lament in the opening paragraph + about the end of an era of innocence… + + Join a worldwide community of writers + Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore + magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl + ut aliquip ex ea. + + Helen Fisher + Job Title / Description + Quotation MarkQuotation Mark + 9. The Thought Experiment + “MY LOVER IS experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t know how it happened, only that one day he was my + lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It’s been a month, and now he’s a sea turtle.” + + From ‘The Rememberer,’ by Aimee Bender + + Aimee Bender’s story begins by asking the reader to imagine something extraordinarily counterfactual: that her lover is + regressing through millennia, going through the evolutionary process so fast – a million years a day, in reverse – that + we can actually track his progress by the day. One day he is a baboon, another a salamander; eventually he is no longer + even visible to the naked eye. + + As with so many of Bendee’s stories the result is mournful, strange, poetic and profound. She takes a surreal thought + like this and turns into a powerful meditation on memory, the difference between evolution and maturity, speciesism and + loss. And it all begins with that challenging idea which confronts us in the very first sentence. + + 10. THE CONUNDRUM + “1-0. Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It’s a + surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia! + + Next door to the embassy is a health center. On the other side, a row of private residences, most of them belonging to + wealthy Arabs (or so we, the people of Willesden, contend). They have Corinthian pillars on either side of their front + doors, and—it’s widely believed—swimming pools out back. The embassy, by contrast, is not very grand. It is only a four- + or five-bedroom North London suburban villa, built at some point in the thirties, surrounded by a red brick wall, about + eight feet high. And back and forth, cresting this wall horizontally, flies a shuttlecock. They are playing badminton in + the Embassy of Cambodia. Pock, smash. Pock, smash.” + + From ‘The Embassy of Cambodia,’ by Zadie Smith + + This subtle and absorbing story from Zadie Smith opens with a mystery: an embassy, set in a leafy north London suburb + rather than a grand central district of the city, and a wall, behind which a mysterious game of badminton is being + played. The rest of the story picks at this mystery and uses the imagined score in the ongoing game-playing as a + backdrop to the unfolding tale of Fatou, a domestic servant to the affluent Derawals, who has escaped servitude and + dodged abuse in Africa only to face privations and hardships in London. + + Each mini-chapter of the story is headed with a score from the badminton match – from 1-0 up to 21-0. This mechanism + provides a rhythmic framework to the tale. We may never learn who actually holds the rackets, but we see that the + back-and-forth motion behind the wall of an embassy – an institution with the power to grant deny or people access to + whole a country – is a fitting counterpoint to the enforced travels of impoverished migrants, and to the desperate + movements of Fatou’s hopes and fears in a world where she has little agency or resources, and only one friend. + + Now you’ve seen how these authors have done it, it’s time to get stuck into actually putting pen to paper – or + fingertips to keyboard – and start writing your short story. For more from Dan, check out his top 10 steps for writing + short stories (with even more examples!). + + Jericho Writers is a global membership group for writers, providing everything you need to get published. Keep up with + our news, membership offers, and updates by signing up to our newsletter. For more writing articles, take a look at our + blog page. + + Dan Brotzel + By Dan Brotzel + + About the author + Dan Brotzel’s debut short story collection, Hotel du Jack, was published in 2020. He won the Riptide Journal short story + competition in 2018, and was highly commended in the Manchester Writing School competition. He is also co-author of + Kitten on a Fatberg (Unbound, forthcoming), a comic novel-in-emails about an eccentric writers group. For more on Dan, + see his website, Twitter, or Amazon author page. + + Share this content: + Share to Facebook + Share to Twitter + Share to LinkedIn + Share to Pinterest + Search... + Search Icon + Table of contents + In this article, author Dan Brotzel shares 10 examples of how to create a perfect opening for your short story. + + 1. THE TELLING DETAIL + 2. THE PARADOX + 3. THE HISTORICAL BACKDROP + 4. THE ANECDOTAL APPROACH + 5. IN MEDIA RES + 6. THE REFRAIN + 7. SETTING THE RULES + 8. BEGINNING WITH THE INCITING INCIDENT + 9. THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT + 10. THE CONUNDRUM + About Jericho Writers + Jericho Writers helps writers with every part of their journey to publication. We offer EDITING, we run COURSES, we + offer some great MENTORING, and we host some awesome EVENTS. Best of all, we offer a great membership service to serious + writers. Come and TAKE A LOOK. + + Most Popular in Writing + Most Popular in Agents/Publishing + Most Popular in Self-Publishing + Ultimate Novel Writing Course + Go from first idea to publishable manuscript in this year-long course combining online tutorials, editorial feedback and + much more! + + LEARN MORE. +
++ 4. The Refrain +
++
+ + Cathy Ulrich’s extraordinary ‘Murdered Ladies’ flash fictions present a series of stories – there are 40 of them in her + collection, Ghosts of You – which always begin with the same line: The thing about being the murdered + extra/girlfriend/moll/classmate/witch/dancer [etc] is you set the plot in motion. + + It’s a thought-provoking line, which grows in power with every repetition. On the face of it seems strange to see these + women as setting the plot in motion, when they are all victims of male violence. But we start to see that what they set + in motion is actually the story that the people who survive them will appropriate from their lost lives, and blithely + relate in their absence. + + Each woman may set her plot in motion, but in each case she is not alive to explain how everyone gets her wrong, or + projects their own version of events to absolve themselves too easily. We see that this theft of each woman’s own story + is another violence that is done to them, something the stories seek in some small way to redeem. As Ulrich says: ‘Every + story is looking for the lost girl from the title […] I am looking for the lost in these stories. I don’t know if I will + ever find them.’ LEARN MORE. +
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