OPWA: Episode Thirteen · 5:26pm Mar 26th, 2018
Overpriced Writing Advice
Where you can learn the stuff I paid thousands of dollars to have taught to me, for free.
...Or In This Case, I Share The Free Stuff I Find - Pt. 4
(AKA "Blog share: The Importance of Your Story's Beginning OR The Inexorable Foreshadowing")
The last time I did one of these (which was July of last year) it was also a blog share, but just... This post covers everything so well! More to the point, it's a critique post. Peter Selgin is offering real feedback to another author and using it as an opportunity for a learning lesson. I've also tried to do this on this site. Some of you might remember that I had a blog series where I reviewed MLP fanfiction based on their beginning. (I think it was the first 3k words?) Anyway, if you'd like to see some of the feedback and writing lessons I shared, then just click here.
Now, without further ado...
How Your Story Opening Foreshadows (Intentionally or Not) What’s to Come
a guest post from Jane Friedman's Blog by Peter Selgin
At a glance of my blog post's title, one might think, "Duh! Of course beginnings are important." I am not referring to the commonly guessed reason that story beginnings need to hook your readers. This blog by Mr. Selgin is more than that. His in-depth feedback covers a breadth of topics: from sentences having their own plots to respect, to trusting your reader to understand your implications. The one bit of wisdom that really stood out to me though (and why I'm making this post to share this at all) was how the beginning of a tale can foreshadow the rest of the story. Selgin calls back to famous literary examples to support this, and while I'm sure not every successful novel has a perfect/coherent foreshadowing of what was to come... The ones that do tend to be strong literary accomplishments.
Think about your own stories. In what way does your fanfiction or original work start that heralds what shall come? Food for thought!
If you liked this post and would like to see more writing tips, then click here!
Thanks for sharing!