Welcome to Week 2 – Lesson 2 of our Cooking Up a Short Story Challenge.
Every Monday for 4 weeks I’ll have a new lesson and assignment here to help you write a new short story by the end of the month.
Last Monday’s lesson was about all the elements or “ingredients” you need to cook up a short story.
This week’s lesson and assignment are about Cooking Up Your Opening.
Lesson 2 – Cooking Up Your Story Opening
When writing a short story, your opening is very important because it serves to:
1. Introduce the main character(s).
2. Introduce the time and setting of your story.
3. Set the overall tone or mood for your story and the POV (point of view) that you’ll use to tell the story.
4. Introduce the overall story problem that the main character will want to solve.
5. Hook the reader so he/she wants to continue reading to see what happens to this character as attempts are made to solve the story problem (this might involve some quirky trait for your main character).
Download this week’s handout here, which is a checklist, and have it handy as you listen to this week’s audio:
After you’ve listened to the audio, use the checklist and start writing the opening to your story.
And don’t worry if you don’t feel your opening is perfect.
Just get something written following these guidelines so you can get your story started.
You’ll be revising your manuscript later this month, so you can make it “perfect” then.
If you have any questions, please leave them as a comment to this post.
Happy writing!
Suzanne Lieurance
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