Top 10 Worst Intros
(And how to get your story instantly rejected)
by Danny Hankner
Our annual contest is almost here, and I want every author to put their best story forward, so listen close and I’ll tell you a secret: we don’t read every story submitted to us to the very end. In fact, most stories can get rejected simply after reading the opening. But Danny, you say, my story doesn’t get good until the middle! If you, as the author (whose opinion is heavily skewed) agree that the opening of your story is quite dull, imagine how everyone else reading will feel about it. The truth – and this is a conclusion I’ve drawn over decades as both a jaded reader and writer – is that it takes a veteran hand to craft a proper opening; experience is required to know where and how to start a story. And because of that, we can sift the wheat from the chaff without having to read each story through until the end.
Ultimately, if you want to get published here (or have a shot at winning our contest), you’ll have to do the long, hard work of becoming a good writer. There are no shortcuts to this. But leveling up your intro game can be expedited with proper knowledge and better understanding. Imagine two young golfers; one practices daily by himself while the other practices every day as well, but has a former PGA champ coaching him on the side. Which one do you suppose will become better, faster? Assuming all other factors are relatively similar, then obviously the one who has someone showing him precisely what to do and what not do, versus the one stumbling along trying to figure it out himself.
My hope is not to dispirit you – we’ve all been down this road before! – but rather to point you in the right direction so that you, too, can craft better openings (and faster) and start getting published. Now please understand that there can be exceptions to many of the items below, but on a whole, if you wish to avoid the trash bin, then avoid the following at the beginning of your stories
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10. Unpronounceable names: (I’m looking at you, sci-fi and fantasy authors.) Remember when we first learned to read, stumbling and bumbling over every word on the page? Was that enjoyable? Of course not. Every syllable that comes to us that we cannot pronounce is by nature jarring – and if you throw a host of these into the opening (Lord zxhsdug8sidfmn just came back from vacation with the Thulihlisd clan, only to find the StiufisKun empire had been invaded by Greugasxhzvco from the planet YYuuthiosdd) you’re reducing every reader to 1st grade all over again. This only detracts. Pick names – especially in the opening – that we can pronounce without doing mental somersaults.
9. Overly descriptive openings: You know of what I speak: paragraphs describing the sun peeking over the horizon, the wind blowing, the leaves rustling. Description is good, but as in life, we need moderation. Now I’m not saying don’t describe anything in the opening – quite the opposite – you generally need to establish your character and setting in the intro, and the best way to do this is with descriptions, but keep them brief and beautiful, short and snappy. Take the things that are unique and interesting and move on with the story. Believe me, we don’t need a dozen descriptions of how the sun catches your heroine's eyes or her golden hair, or how the garden grows and blossoms and flowers and all the beauty you’ve crafted in your mind. Readers need a taste, not a good old-fashioned drowning
8. Rambling diatribes: We’re inoculated with this opening – a character’s inner thoughts circling on and on and on and on, sometimes about useless and mundane things like worrying about acing a test or forgetting to pick up eggs at the store, to baseless bitching about whatever gripes the character currently has in life – these, I often suspect, are reflective of the author themselves, and instead of writing a story for the world to enjoy, their couching their frustrations with the world as a snooze-fest of a narrative by using a fictitious avatar as their mouthpiece. Regardless of author motive, nothing is happening. Characters and setting are not being established. There is no tension building, no hook, and ultimately no reason to read on.
7. Juvenile shock value #2: Excessive language: There’s nothing enticing about a string of expletives without context or character – in fact, it comes across as juvenile shock value, whether that’s intended or not. Maybe some publishers like or want this (and these are generally small indi mags bereft of readers – I wonder why?), but we find this annoying and obnoxious. There is a time and a place for it, but it comes on the heels of an established character, not bothering our readers’ sensibilities right out of the gate.
6. Juvenile shock value #1:Death/dead bodies/gore/murder): In real life, stumbling across a corpse would be a shock, but in literature, we see this all the time – and even more in rejections than we do in print. Opening a scene with a dead body isn't wrong, but it's obvious when the writer thinks, this is shocking and therefore will hook the reader. It's not, and you haven't. Yes, crime shows almost always open with this – just as action movies open with action scenes – but what excites us on a screen doesn’t necessarily translate to the written word. And for the same reason why ‘action’ scenes from blockbusters don’t exactly work on the page, neither does stumbling across a dead body.
I do need to make a note on your average crime story – when they use this, it’s not intended as a shock value because so many of them do it. But I will say this: opening a story with Detective A walking onto the scene, asking questions and being given info about the crime by Officer B is one of the most cliched openings we see. Again, it’s not wrong, but you need to do something to spice this up (or start the story somewhere else) to excite us. Few crime writers do this, and that’s probably why we’ve published so little crime here. Dear Writer, you have my full permission to think outside the box despite the zombie-like adherence so many other publishers demand.
5. Info dumps and too much back story: This is one of the biggest hiccups for new writers – getting sucked into the idea that the reader must know XYZ in order for the rest of the story to make sense, when in reality, it’s the opposite. Less is more, brevity is the soul of wit…you get the idea. Give us a taste, a glimpse, a hook, and then carry on the story so that we are enticed and want to keep reading. Let that little glimpse be the hook! People are tuning in to read stories, remember, not encyclopedias.
4. Nothing is happening (it's just quite mundane...and boring). Or the main character was ‘just another kid/guy/girl in just another average town. If everything is so boring, average, and mundane – why am I reading? The answer is…I’m not.
3. Cliché opening lines/scenes: "It was just another day": We see this phrase so often that I’m parsing it out from the above because it deserves its own line, despite being a perfect extension of #3. This phrase just might be the most repeated phrase we see, and gives you away as a new author. Actually, there is one opening we see even more than this…
Newer writers will also throw sounds into the opening scene: Thunk! Thwack! Click click click, or Tap tap tap. Or the one we see most…
2.. Wake up intros: Bzz bzz bzz. The alarm clock goes off at 6:00 AM. The protagonist rolls out of bed, drags herself to the bathroom, brushes her teeth, stumbles downstairs for breakfast, and on and on with the morning routine…have I lost you yet? We don’t read stories to relive our mundane lives – that’s what Monday through Friday is for. To hook us in, a story has to engage us in some way, but describing your over-easy eggs and the flavor of your toothpaste is not a way to accomplish that.
1. And the worst way to open your story and out your manuscript as not worth reading IS…Poor writing. And that’s a bit of a generic term, so let’s break this down into two categories (though certainly not limited to):
Overuse of weak verbs: I got into my car, I went up the stairs, he came into the bedroom. Or really long-winded opening sentences: Sally got into the car as she put on her makeup with the sun shining but her car wouldn’t start despite just having gotten it checked out…
Awful dialogue tags. He said annoyingly. She shouted furiously. He espoused genially. She scolded begrudgingly.
Both of these expose an amateur writer - there's no need to read further. Yes, bad writing comes in far more than those two sub-categories alone, but that’s enough for now.
Do you want to get published here, or at other markets, dear writer? Then make sure your openings are stellar, and please avoid these top ten items like the plague.
