Good beginnings
August 20, 2001 | 12:00am
Now where were we in our running series on creative writing, aka CW 101? Ah, what about beginnings, which no story of whatever kind can do without? (Some stories, whether by design, incompetence, or inadvertence, have no clear endings.)
I’m not talking here about the problem of story material or story sources, but rather the beginning of the story itself, the opening line or paragraph that very often sets the tone of the piece and helps form the reader’s attitude toward the story. This involves what writers call the "point of attack," that part of the narrative chosen by the writer as his or her entry point into the story, which could be as direct or oblique in its approach as the author pleases.
Many authors begin, like film directors, with a panoramic view of the scenery–an extreme long shot of the landscape, defining just the belfry of the church and the mountains in the distance; the camera, or the author’s eye, then zooms in to the town, the streets, a particular alleyway, a house, a room, a bed in the room, the arm hanging over the side of the bed, and the rivulet of blood that runs from the wrist to the polished floor.
In the hands of a master like Nick Joaquin, an opening scene like this can be a tour de force of both language and sensibility. We don’t have the space here to reproduce the first paragraph of Joaquin’s "May Day Eve"–easily the longest first paragraph in all of Philippine literature–but take a look at it and you’ll know what I mean.
Others, perhaps with a clumsier or less cinematic sense of things, might begin with what I call the "chimay chismis" method, by which two maids–one armed with a broom and the other a dishrag or some such prop–chatter away as they perform their morning chores, reliving and assessing the events of the previous evening: "I couldn’t believe how drunk Señor Facundo was last night! He was crying and puking all over the place, and he kept saying this woman’s name–except that it wasn’t the Señora’s! Imagine that, a grown man of 57, and a professor of science, bawling like a child over some woman he met at the barber shop!" (Well, okay, maybe it’s not that bad–heck, I made it up!–but you get the idea: exposition or the delivery of vital information through dialogue, which is an awful way to discover truths in stories.)
Yet others will dispense with the two maids altogether and begin with an involved explanation of the background of the story: "Felisa had been married to Facundo for 34 years, during which she had borne him three sons and a daughter, all of whom were themselves married–with the exception of Filbert, who, on his 27th birthday, brought a man home to dinner and introduced him as his boyfriend. While Felisa could not accept Filbert’s sudden turn of character, Facundo, on the other hand…"
While beginnings like this can be entertaining, I often find myself forced to concentrate on details about characters I have yet to meet and care about, and just as often I tune out of the story. I must confess to a preference for stories that take their time to put me in a setting–to seat me, as it were, in the balcony–before turning on the drama.
This is how one of my favorite stories–Ernest Hemingway’s "Hills Like White Elephants"–begins: "The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun." Very Hemingway, spare and efficient–and I’ll tell you in a minute why it’s good.
John Steinbeck’s "The Chrysanthemums" starts similarly: "The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves."
Both beginnings make the best use of description, which is not simply to give us the physical scene but also to imbue it with symbolic significance–not again in the immediate and wooden way by which too-deliberately chosen symbols announce themselves as "Symbol! Symbol! Symbol!", but subtly and organically, with the significance revealed only upon further reading of the story. Hemingway’s two lines of rail in the middle of nowhere work because they stand for the couple’s relationship itself; Steinbeck’s depiction of the valley as a closed pot prefigures the sense of entrapment that the story’s protagonist feels but cannot express.
You can also begin with pure shock, or something startling enough to jar the reader awake from his or her complacency and retain his or her attention for the rest of the story. Bobbie Ann Mason’s "Shiloh" isn’t shocking in the way Friday the 13th might be, but it certainly has one of the most emphatic first sentences in contemporary American literature: "Leroy Moffitt’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts three-pound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman." And a Wonder Woman Norma Jean (remember Marilyn Monroe’s real name?) turns out to be–but you’d have to read the rest of the story to discover how and why.
In the mail came at least two letters responding to last week’s piece on a painting attributed to Fernando Amorsolo that turned up for auction on eBay. One of them came from a person whose relative anonymity I’m going to let him keep under his eBay moniker, "arcastro." This is what he had to say:
"Today, I was pleasantly surprised when I read your article ‘An Amorsolo on eBay,’ in which mention was made of the frantic, exciting bidding on this particular Amorsolo painting being auctioned from Graz, Austria. I didn’t know there was someone intently observing the proceedings from a distance.
"The down-to-the-finish line bidding involved me–I am the ‘arcastro’ who placed 2nd to drpineda (I have a fairly good idea who this gentleman is!). Well, historically I’ve been bidding on eBay for two years and my purchases are a weird lot–from Filipiniana and religious items to vintage coloring books and even action figures. When this Amorsolo item came up, I was at first dubious, and then got intrigued when I got a response from the seller [when I asked] about the provenance of the piece and how it reached Austria. So, with a couple of friends, we pooled our resources and started bidding away. Oh, yes, we lost by a mere $45, but it is obvious that drpineda had a very high maximum bid so even if I bid at DM18,500, I wouldn’t have won anyway.
"But definitely, this has got to be the most exciting bid I’ve ever gotten myself into. (Oh yes, it’s not the first time that I lost to drpineda... I was also planning to bid on this PECO Art book you mentioned, but he beat me to it by buying it outright). That’s how auctions go... you win some, you lose some. The thrill of the hunt is what makes eBay-ing addicting. In the meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to be content with this 1960 Ken doll that’s about to go on eBay for just $15. Cheers, etc."
Well, thanks very much for that letter, "arcastro." It’s a thrill for me as well to be read by people whom I get to know only by their e-mail addresses or, in this case, by their eBay pseudonyms. What’s even more interesting, as you may have discovered, is that the Graz Amorsolo offering was quickly followed up on eBay by a dealer selling about a dozen Amorsolo postcards (I think they were)–although a postcard, of course, is about as close to the original as a pin-up of Assunta de Rossi is to, well, her. A 1970 Amorsolo painting of two women bathers being sold last week by Butterfields of Los Angeles failed to draw any interest at the $19,800 floor price its sellers were asking.
Another eBay search for Philippine items turned up a seller dealing in rare Philippine cowries, with a beautiful Cypraea leucodon on offer and unsold for around $500–quite a chunk of change for a sea shell, but eminently reasonable if you have to dive 200 feet into the waters off Cebu to scour the seabed for a jewel in the murk.
Now there’s a challenge for the ambitious writer: write me a story that features a Cypraea leucodon that (conflating this with the Amorsolo piece) somehow finds its way to a drawer in a cabinet in Graz, Austria, in a packet that also contains a handwritten note beginning with the words: "Dearest Consuelo, My heart yearns for home."
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
I’m not talking here about the problem of story material or story sources, but rather the beginning of the story itself, the opening line or paragraph that very often sets the tone of the piece and helps form the reader’s attitude toward the story. This involves what writers call the "point of attack," that part of the narrative chosen by the writer as his or her entry point into the story, which could be as direct or oblique in its approach as the author pleases.
Many authors begin, like film directors, with a panoramic view of the scenery–an extreme long shot of the landscape, defining just the belfry of the church and the mountains in the distance; the camera, or the author’s eye, then zooms in to the town, the streets, a particular alleyway, a house, a room, a bed in the room, the arm hanging over the side of the bed, and the rivulet of blood that runs from the wrist to the polished floor.
In the hands of a master like Nick Joaquin, an opening scene like this can be a tour de force of both language and sensibility. We don’t have the space here to reproduce the first paragraph of Joaquin’s "May Day Eve"–easily the longest first paragraph in all of Philippine literature–but take a look at it and you’ll know what I mean.
Others, perhaps with a clumsier or less cinematic sense of things, might begin with what I call the "chimay chismis" method, by which two maids–one armed with a broom and the other a dishrag or some such prop–chatter away as they perform their morning chores, reliving and assessing the events of the previous evening: "I couldn’t believe how drunk Señor Facundo was last night! He was crying and puking all over the place, and he kept saying this woman’s name–except that it wasn’t the Señora’s! Imagine that, a grown man of 57, and a professor of science, bawling like a child over some woman he met at the barber shop!" (Well, okay, maybe it’s not that bad–heck, I made it up!–but you get the idea: exposition or the delivery of vital information through dialogue, which is an awful way to discover truths in stories.)
Yet others will dispense with the two maids altogether and begin with an involved explanation of the background of the story: "Felisa had been married to Facundo for 34 years, during which she had borne him three sons and a daughter, all of whom were themselves married–with the exception of Filbert, who, on his 27th birthday, brought a man home to dinner and introduced him as his boyfriend. While Felisa could not accept Filbert’s sudden turn of character, Facundo, on the other hand…"
While beginnings like this can be entertaining, I often find myself forced to concentrate on details about characters I have yet to meet and care about, and just as often I tune out of the story. I must confess to a preference for stories that take their time to put me in a setting–to seat me, as it were, in the balcony–before turning on the drama.
This is how one of my favorite stories–Ernest Hemingway’s "Hills Like White Elephants"–begins: "The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun." Very Hemingway, spare and efficient–and I’ll tell you in a minute why it’s good.
John Steinbeck’s "The Chrysanthemums" starts similarly: "The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow leaves."
Both beginnings make the best use of description, which is not simply to give us the physical scene but also to imbue it with symbolic significance–not again in the immediate and wooden way by which too-deliberately chosen symbols announce themselves as "Symbol! Symbol! Symbol!", but subtly and organically, with the significance revealed only upon further reading of the story. Hemingway’s two lines of rail in the middle of nowhere work because they stand for the couple’s relationship itself; Steinbeck’s depiction of the valley as a closed pot prefigures the sense of entrapment that the story’s protagonist feels but cannot express.
You can also begin with pure shock, or something startling enough to jar the reader awake from his or her complacency and retain his or her attention for the rest of the story. Bobbie Ann Mason’s "Shiloh" isn’t shocking in the way Friday the 13th might be, but it certainly has one of the most emphatic first sentences in contemporary American literature: "Leroy Moffitt’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts three-pound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman." And a Wonder Woman Norma Jean (remember Marilyn Monroe’s real name?) turns out to be–but you’d have to read the rest of the story to discover how and why.
"Today, I was pleasantly surprised when I read your article ‘An Amorsolo on eBay,’ in which mention was made of the frantic, exciting bidding on this particular Amorsolo painting being auctioned from Graz, Austria. I didn’t know there was someone intently observing the proceedings from a distance.
"The down-to-the-finish line bidding involved me–I am the ‘arcastro’ who placed 2nd to drpineda (I have a fairly good idea who this gentleman is!). Well, historically I’ve been bidding on eBay for two years and my purchases are a weird lot–from Filipiniana and religious items to vintage coloring books and even action figures. When this Amorsolo item came up, I was at first dubious, and then got intrigued when I got a response from the seller [when I asked] about the provenance of the piece and how it reached Austria. So, with a couple of friends, we pooled our resources and started bidding away. Oh, yes, we lost by a mere $45, but it is obvious that drpineda had a very high maximum bid so even if I bid at DM18,500, I wouldn’t have won anyway.
"But definitely, this has got to be the most exciting bid I’ve ever gotten myself into. (Oh yes, it’s not the first time that I lost to drpineda... I was also planning to bid on this PECO Art book you mentioned, but he beat me to it by buying it outright). That’s how auctions go... you win some, you lose some. The thrill of the hunt is what makes eBay-ing addicting. In the meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to be content with this 1960 Ken doll that’s about to go on eBay for just $15. Cheers, etc."
Well, thanks very much for that letter, "arcastro." It’s a thrill for me as well to be read by people whom I get to know only by their e-mail addresses or, in this case, by their eBay pseudonyms. What’s even more interesting, as you may have discovered, is that the Graz Amorsolo offering was quickly followed up on eBay by a dealer selling about a dozen Amorsolo postcards (I think they were)–although a postcard, of course, is about as close to the original as a pin-up of Assunta de Rossi is to, well, her. A 1970 Amorsolo painting of two women bathers being sold last week by Butterfields of Los Angeles failed to draw any interest at the $19,800 floor price its sellers were asking.
Another eBay search for Philippine items turned up a seller dealing in rare Philippine cowries, with a beautiful Cypraea leucodon on offer and unsold for around $500–quite a chunk of change for a sea shell, but eminently reasonable if you have to dive 200 feet into the waters off Cebu to scour the seabed for a jewel in the murk.
Now there’s a challenge for the ambitious writer: write me a story that features a Cypraea leucodon that (conflating this with the Amorsolo piece) somehow finds its way to a drawer in a cabinet in Graz, Austria, in a packet that also contains a handwritten note beginning with the words: "Dearest Consuelo, My heart yearns for home."
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