Art of the Opening: Laura van den Berg
A friend tells you a story. It makes you pause each time you enter the bathroom, eyes sliding to the linen closet. Each time you pull a fresh bath towel from the shelf, the warm musk of cedar reaching…
Tag: Openings
Art of the Opening: Raymond Carver and Crafting a Hook
I am heaving in the southwestern corner of an open-air outlet mall five days before Christmas. This is the desperate and empty sort of heaving required to stop a sob and close off the valve of emotion. A hiccuping…
Art of the Opening: Melissa Ragsly
In a 2015 review in The Los Angeles Times, the late Pulitzer Prize–winning restaurant critic Jonathan Gold describes an amuse-bouche at Le Comptoir in Koreatown as “a course that takes a cook 10 minutes to plate and that you…
Mystery vs. Confusion
By Sarah Stone In writing fiction, we’re always looking for ways to manage the release and restraint of information, introducing our characters and situations while avoiding the dreaded exposition junk pile at the beginning (many of us do have a…
The Hook: More Than The Opening Line
By Tommy Dean Think about your favorite verbal storytellers, those people in your family who have passed down the history of the joys and tragedies, the small coincidences, and the shared DNA that results in a similar nose, an ornery…