Beginning The Story

The way to tell a short story is to begin at the beginning and tell it straight through to the end. This sounds simple enough; but it offers many difficulties. Of these none is greater than to "begin at the beginning."

First, of course, the story must be well in mind. It is a bit of action, a structural form of narrative. Now the problem is to make the beginning of the written tale coincide with the beginning of the development of plot. For the purpose of illustrating let us choose two fairy tales, "Cinderella" and "Jack and the Bean Stalk."

To go back a bit, let us understand clearly that plot results when the true course of events is clogged or dammed. There must be an obstacle to overcome. There must be a struggle of forces. It seems simple enough, therefore, to say that the beginning of the story can not antedate the appearance of the two forces.

This would be all very well were it not for the question of clearness. There is no strength, no picture upon the canvass, unless the situation itself stands out boldly. This narrows the problem down to the medium between the conflict of forces and the explanation of the origin of this clash.

"Cinderella" begins: "There was once upon a time a beautiful girl who was living with a cruel stepmother, for her own mother had died, and her father had married a woman with grown-up daughters who were very vain and ill-natured." This is the preliminary setting, or, if you will, the prologue. In "Cinderella" it is presented most artistically. It is essential, it is compact, it prepares the reader for what follows.

But it has its disadvantages. The story proper has not begun. The plot has not unfolded. All this preamble is not a structural part of the narrative, and in this busy day the reader who can not find his story under foot, his for the stooping, is not very apt to dig through the sand and rocks that hide it. Other fields are too near.

This fact, toward which the whole world of literary toilers is gradually working, makes it imperative to capture ,the reader's interest at the outset. A favorite bit of advice is to make the first sentence plunge the reader into the action of the story, forcing each sentence to carry the story one step, nearer the climax and sifting in the necessary explanations as the story progresses without clogging the action at any point.

There's the rub! "Sifting in the necessary explanations." Too many writers who adopt this plan simply invert the two sections; they give us the story first and the regular explanations second. Even so, however, something has been gained. The reader has dipped into the narrative; his curiosity is piqued. What would have bored him at first now holds him closely. True, the interest must slump when the action slows, but the writer who has the skill to capture it at all can usually work out his own salvation.

The "sifting" process, however, furnishes the real key to the story that grips the attention from the initial to the final sentence. It might be termed practically the absorption of the prologue.

Now, whereas "Cinderella" begins with an explanation, "Jack and the Bean Stalk" sifts the prologue into the main body of the tale. The giant, it will be recalled, had killed Jack's rich father, but the story does not begin by reciting this fact. Jack is a big boy living with his mother in great poverty. Just before his encounter with the giant, toward which the whole introductory passage rushes like a river, the fairy appears and shows him justice and right are his. She gives him the past history, not baldly while the opponents await the battle signal, but as a means of quickening the action, of spurring Jack on to his task, of providing one of the conflicting forces of the plot. The prologue, sifted fine through the whole story, comes not as explanation at all, but as a prod to the rush toward the climax. The explanation has been transformed to action.

It will be seen, therefore, that there are three ways of beginning a story: with a prologue, with the prologue in the second part, and with the prologue absorbed. Some stories demand one or the other of the first two methods of introduction. Their number, however, is few; and the tale that is artistically related, that moves forward constantly without any misconception or confusing action, and that absorbs the prologue and transforms it into an integral bit of on-rushing action, is the story that editors and readers are searching for the world over.

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