I make no apology for returning to one of my big themes for this blog because the subject is so important in any kind of writing but particularly short story writing where you have so few words to play with.
Overnight, we received an entry to the Global Short Story Competition story (July’s remains a low entry, good time to go for that £100 first prize!) which drew the reader in beautifully. Atmosphere, intrigue, a fascinating character and all in the first 20 lines.
However you start your story, the beginning should have The Question, something that hooks your reader. You need to grab them from those first lines.
You can do it with out and out intrigue, of course - ‘the last thing he expected to see was his wife holding the gun’ - but another way is to draw us in with the sheer quality of the writing.
The story overnight did both and by the end of the first paragraph, the character had been so beautifully depicted that the reader needs to know more about him. It‘s job done for the writer in question.
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