There is no one size fits all answer to how to start a story and citing your own personal preference as the 'right' way is not a helpful tip. but he's been successful for 200 years, so obviously there is an audience out there for that way of writing. I think it's Hardy that is famous for ridiculously long descriptive passages - like in The Mayor of Casterbridge - and a lot of people don't like them. I think the opening of a story and the right way to do it is going to change depending on genre, length, whether it's the first story in this world or a sequel - and there should be no hard and fast rules as to what is the 'right' way to do something. they're all the beginnings of narrative passages. It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen ![]() Last night I dreamed I was at Mandaley again. Dursley of number four Privet Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal thank you very much. ![]() It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife. When I think about all the great first lines of literature that I can quote from the top of my head: And the fact it is used commonly suggests most people are OK with them. but just because he doesn't like an opening narrative passage doesn't make it a mistake. He says 'I found' which suggests it's him reading rather than asking other people what they think. Who decides if it is slow moving or not? Wayne says he did a recent survey of 377 X Files authors - and this is what he found was the most common mistake but I'm unclear as to if he means he asked 377 authors and this is what the majority of them said they didn't like (which I suppose is fair enough and quite robust research) or does he mean he just read the work of 377 different authors and as he believes this is a mistake he saw it happen lots of times. Hmmm - for me I guess I would have to ask what constituted a 'slow moving narrative passage'. Start with lively action, capture your reader's interest by quickly introducing a mystery, and you'll be assured that they will stay with your story. Avoid their mistake and you'll stand out as a better-than-average author. Starting a story with a slow-moving narrative passage was the most common mistake I found during a recent survey of 377 X-Files authors. So here are my thoughts - I'd love to hear yoursġ) Avoid Starting a Story With A Long Narrative Passage: Readers are more interested in reading about something as it happens (showing them action) than they are about reading a character or narrator telling them what's happening. (Not that I want to prejudice anyone against Wayne and whether or not he is the best person to be giving advice on improving quality of content - but the Buffy Board version of this calls it 'twelve tips', Wayne's website titles it 'Eleven tips' and as the end he writes ' just follow these ten tips.' I've counted - the Buffy Boards got the number right!) And I thought it might be fun for us to discuss how much of these we do, which ones of these we agree with and if there's any here that actually we think is bad advice.
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