The Writers’ Workout #3: Openers, and #4: Flash Fiction

Over on The Writers’ Block Discord server, development of writing skills is a central goal. To stimulate development everyone is invited to join in exercises to flex those writer muscles in unexpected ways. To try out new things you might normally not do, practice the mechanics to get a firm grasp on them, and to work on the outcome until it shines.

Writers’ Workout #3: Openers

For our third exercise in the #writers-workout channel, we had our members practice the art of writing opening paragraphs.

Exercise #3: 12 February-18 February 2018-- Story Openers

Write 3 independent story openers/hooks. Use approximately 50-75 words for each opener. The openers should be completely independent of each other. If you need help formulating a strong opening, refer to @thinknzombie's two part post on the topic.

The Purpose

The first line and first paragraph are crucial to hooking a reader. Without that hook that grabs interest, writers risk losing the attention of the reader and their story left unread. Our members were challenged to work on this hook--this essential aspect of a story.

The Side Benefits

We did the exercise in a peer review format--so everyone's attempts went into a queue where we could comment on each other. Through rounds of feedback, we were able to help each other refine the opening paragraphs. This exercise was an utter success across the board, providing members with the beginnings of at least three potential stories. One of @tanglebranch’s openers turned out to be a complete micro-flash fiction piece on its own.

Writers’ Workout #4: Flash Fiction

Following up with the third workout exercise, members were asked to vote on the opener they thought most inspiring. The votes were collected, leaving us with the top 3 where members voted once more. The winning opener was one by @negativer (he was offered 2 SBD for allowing us to use his opener for #4, which he generously donated to @tarc). This led to our fourth exercise in the #writers-workout channel. We tasked our members with writing a piece of flash fiction.

Exercise #4: 23 February-4 March 2018--Flash Fiction

Write a piece of flash fiction of approximately 1000 to 1200 words using the following opener by @negativer:

“I will bring him back, I swear.” Meresa pressed her lips together and looked over her shoulder. The dark chasm behind her gaped like the night sky, threatening to swallow her. Birds descended into the depths in search of food, and raucous cries rose up from the blackness. She gripped the rope in her hands, adjusted her harness, and prepared to leap off the railing. “Let’s go.”

You may make minor changes to this opener, such as renaming the character or changing genders or small aspects of the setting. You may not change the parts that make it a good opener.

From the voting, two other openers were chosen for the top three: @thinknzombie’s and @anikekirsten’s. These were the runner-up openers:

@thinknzombie

I was three when I first began to notice the people beyond the village fence. The heavy eyes of the Imrayda pairs patrolling the village grounds and the way the folk from outside watched us at play through the gaps in the bamboo wall. We had what they did not: parades, presents of polished shell, precious stone, and hand-carved swords of gleaming jaitwood, and their faces showed their hunger for those things that we took for granted.

@anikekirsten

I remember the bees--the real ones. At the turn of spring, they would emerge and hover across the fields in a smooth hum, blending into the gold grass as far as the eye could see. My father loved them. He used to show me around the farm and tell me how to protect and care for them.

The Purpose

Creating flash fiction is a skill on its own, one we challenged our members to work on. Within the word limit, members had to create a complete story using the winning opener, and incorporate a plot, a character arc, and sufficient world-building.

The Side Benefits

For the first draft, we didn’t stress keeping to the word limit, but we encouraged members to try their best--word count can be fixed after the story has taken shape. Through our peer review format, we worked on the developmental aspects of each other’s story. Character arc ended up being the most challenging with the word count limit.

We found that only a few of our members succeeded in keeping their initial draft within the word count. Although this side of the exercise wasn't a resounding success, those who participated to have very nice drafts well on their way to becoming solid stories. We'll definitely be doing more work in the future on writing to a specific word length and trying to find methods that help those of us who struggled approach things differently.
Because we restricted our members to working with a particular opener, many were challenged to venture outside their usual genres and writing styles. Pushing your boundaries is always beneficial for a writer.

Comments from Participants

Since the point of this article isn't just to share the exercises, but to talk about how it helps, we'll let our participants speak for themselves on what they got out of the exercise.

@tinypaleokitchen

The openers exercise was a very interesting one, and it really made me think about those first lines. I knew they were important. But the focus on the opener tends to disappear when I think of the story as a whole. Working on just the opener was really helpful in that respect.

Writing a story from @negativer’s opener was a lot of fun. Mine turned out to have a bit of a steampunk vibe, and while it’s out of my comfort zone as far as writing goes, I do enjoy reading steampunk. I, too, was a failure as far as word count went. I’ve managed to pare it down some, but I didn’t get anywhere near the required length and I don’t think I’ll get there as I started out with a fairly tight draft to begin with. I do want practise flash fiction in the future. It’s a daunting challenge, but one I want to conquer.

@therosepatch

The openers exercise was a lot of fun. As a reader myself, I’ve always enjoyed crafting opening scenes to hook readers in. If it doesn’t hook me, it’s not going to hook anyone else. I was even able to add a little bit of sci-fi to one of them, a genre I still haven’t written at all. I’m excited that I now have a beginning to three completely different stories, and I hope to one day explore those stories more.

The next exercise was a bit more of a challenge. I wanted to turn this into a fantasy story, as fantasy is my favorite genre and I hadn’t written any for a while. I had an idea, but I struggled with pulling it out of my brain. I wrote it, but I wasn’t feeling it, and the initial word count limit loomed over my head, especially when I first reached that limit and the story wasn’t finished. But once we figured out my character’s arc, I finally started to enjoy the story. Unfortunately, I ended up with the longest piece (roughly 1800 words), but by then the word count limit had been cancelled.

I do need more practice writing short flash pieces. I’ve had some experience doing 50 word pieces but those are just fun little scrimmages. But to craft an entire arc into 1000-1200 words on purpose? That’s a bit more of a challenge, and one I hope to achieve some day.

@tanglebranch

The openers were fun, and something I know I need to work on in my writing in general. I am aware that I can write great beginnings that hook the reader, but I tend to bury them three or four paragraphs in, where they lose their effect. So this helped me get into that mode of snagging the reader with the first few sentences. Bonus! I managed to create a stand-alone micro-flash piece in the process, somehow magically. So with some polishing, I think you might see that from me in the near future.

Writing from @negativer's prompt was also a challenge, because, like @bex-dk, my ideas (at least the ones I have on purpose) tend to be too large for a thousand words. I shaved and shaved and got the story in at 1199 words! But upon further review, I had more than one main character, so if I had focused on a single arc, perhaps my tale would have ended up comfortably flashy. Hindsight is 20/20, right?

@nobyeni

Okay, my two cents? I still have no idea what makes a good opener. It should hook, yes, but there is not really a clear formula, more of a gut feeling. That said, I loved this exercise, because I felt there was nothing at stake, so I could just write random things without them having to be a full story. I actually really liked my openers in the end, and will probably go back to them later to see if there is a story waiting to happen.

The Flash fiction one was right up my alley. Although @negativer’s opening was horrible for me. I don’t do descriptions, or things about the environment, how things look. And that is why I like writing flash pieces, 500-800 words I mean. That requires a clear arc, something happening which is not too big. Yes, there is a backstory, but it isn’t necessary to know about it in order to understand the story, it is only necessary to know it to write reliable and convincing characters. But I never really thought about this, but seeing what others did, and comparing it to my approach, made me realise more about my strengths and about what I can explore more. Which I did, by writing my first longer and more detailed story that wasn’t based on plot, but on the world it took place in. A great experience. This writing exercise made me both aware of this possibility for growth and gave me the confidence to actually try it out.

@negativer

Since my prompt was the source for this particular round, I kind of already had a story I wanted to write before the trigger was pulled to start the round. Which ended up being a bit of a burden.

I caught second and third hand snippets of what others were writing, various takes on the prompt that went in wild and imaginative directions. Mine felt more pedestrian by comparison. Even as the #3 exercise wrapped up, after I submitted a tale just a wee bit over the word count limit on the first draft, I wasn't entirely pleased with what I had fit into those 1290 words.

The first round of edits left me with a lot of work to do, which will allow me to get the word count down, trim out some unnecessary redundancy, and possibly flesh out my character arc more.

@jayna

As a short story writer, I find that I often forget to start my stories at a place where something interesting is happening. There are some lessons we just seem to need to learn over and over again, and this is mine. I want to describe the character’s dilemma and maybe a little backstory. But that tends not to be gripping stuff.

Writing catchy story openers, and focusing only on those openers, was an excellent exercise. It forced me to think only of that piece. When your opening lines must stand alone, you hear their resonance, or their shallow, pathetic, thud. And you have the opportunity to turn them into something that will sell your story to your reader. When you think about it, you have only a brief period of time to earn the reader’s trust. You must be the Pied Piper and play a “follow me” tune to keep that reader moving forward.

Having completed this exercise, I know it’s something I will continue doing. I believe it will be a guiding light through that scary forest I find myself in each time I sit down to write.

@dbzfan4awhile

It was a difficult process, allowing others to read and criticize my words. While I don’t consider myself adverse to chopping down stories, especially since I wasn’t super-attached to it beforehand, I do believe the experience gave me further insight. I never realized quite how much I could still grow; and it also gave me the knowledge that, even though I have growth potential, I do have a voice that should be heard. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve decided to do in quite some time.

@bex-dk

The openers exercise was great practice for me and I've got three ideas now that might sometime turn into stories of their own when I need something to work on. As for the flash exercise... Well, believe it or not, I'm one of the failures. I suspect my "natural" length for stories is around 1500, although I'm still hoping the editing work ahead will tighten it up more.

I am happy, though, with where the story is going and the opener pushed me outside my usual comfort zone of writing. Adventure isn't my thing, but that's where it went for me. So although I didn't succeed with the length, I learned more about my weaknesses as a writer and what I need to focus on in the future.

I really need to master those tighter stories for participating in many of the contests here on Steem. My problem isn't word economy so much as having ideas and arcs that are simply too big for the restricted length. I am certain future exercises in the group will help me master this. But most importantly--I'm writing. I'm staying writing. I'm not going to fall off that boat again right now.

@anikekirsten

Learning a lot from @thinknzombie’s posts on how to hook in a reader, exercise 3 was a stimulating challenge that really helped refine the elements that introduce the characters and settings in such a short space to grab those precious few seconds of attention. Using the opening from @negativer to create a piece of flash fiction proved all the more challenging with the word count. I realised that, in focusing on keeping to the word limit and on the plot, I had neglected a character arc. It was also difficult to get the ideas across well enough in such a short space. These exercises made me think about every word and its importance to the story. I’ve now dedicated time to trying to have a complete character arc in as little words as possible, one of the exercise I’ve done was by means of poetry. Flash fiction is a severely underappreciated art form.

@alheath

For me, the openers exercise was an opportunity to leave my comfort zone and write in a style of fantasy that is fairly new to me. My idea is still a work-in-progress, but I’ve received some really useful feedback from the group about how I can expand it which was a big boost to my confidence. This is the first exercise I have participated in, but I plan on taking part in more in the future.

The Next Exercise

If you want to join us in our exercises, come on over to @thewritersblock Discord server (see the footer at the bottom). We do all our exercises in the channel.

We have started working on how to trim our flash fiction pieces even more in a word economy exercise. Why not try it out? Join our server and come into the channel. Or watch out for our next follow up article.

Even if many of us have moved on to a new exercise, you're always welcome to pick one of the older ones from the list. We'll all join in cheering you on, editing the heck out of your work, and helping you have as much fun with it as you can while learning in the process.

If you'd like to read up on our previous exercise, you can find that article right here.

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