The Beginning

This morning, I overslept and almost missed my flight to Chicago, which would connect me to my flight to London.

My heart raced when my eyes caught sight of the clock. "6:10 am!" I screamed as I leaped out of bed and ran for the shower. I was flying standby on an 8:00 am flight, and had planned to get there early and settle in to wait for an available seat. Instead, I was in a whirlwind of toiletries, shoes, socks, bags, jacket, glasses, spinning toward the door and the car--panic button lit up. The mob of passengers swarming the ticket counter accelerated my heart rate even further. It wasn't until I got my ticket, boarded the plane, and took my seat that I was able to breathe in and out normally.

All good stories should begin in the middle of the action and spill over with sensory details. Writers know this, we strive to achieve this in our writing, and we recognize it in the stuff that grabs us and won't let go.

We want to be in the moment, we want our readers to be in the moment, and we want them to know that moment to be true.


Some of my favorite classic stories, however, do not start in the middle of the action. "If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the crossroads." This is the first line in Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers. The line is very conversational, and inviting, but not compelling in a way that would grab a reader.

Then again, some do. From A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, "Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares." Immediately, we're given a sense of place and we know now that there's something odd about driving slowly. Furthermore, why is the girl odd-looking? Again, those sensory details enable the story to leap off the page and into a reader's imagination.

And then some lines just become stories in and of themselves: "All children, except one, grow up." From Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie. That one sentence carries the weight of the story in its simple six words. You can't help but read on.

This summer, I will be telling stories in a variety of ways using different multimedia tools. I hope that these stories will be compelling for you and perhaps spark story ideas of your own.