In our recent additions to the journal, we have some great examples of how to open a piece. In fact, it was the question about what to write, raised by Timmy0292, that gave me my idea for what I should write here.

How to best begin a piece?

What is the best way to open it?

Well, let’s use what we have here to better understand what for many peole is the most difficult aspect of writing—starting the piece.

I have long found with my students that once you get going, there can frequently be no stopping you. So let’s get you going, shall we?

In fact, let’s start with Timmy 0292’s opening. I agree here with Faintly’s comment, that the beginning of the piece is best stated simply by saying, “I was in my early 40s and looked in the mirror.” I know that phrase gets my attention. And that is what your opener is supposed to do: make the reader pay the kind of attention that locks that reader into the piece. And unless the paragraph is the beginning of an introduction, and not the first chapter, you can also now put aside that last line, since, as readers with a book in our hands, we expect “quite a ride,” and look forward to it. So just jump into our story after that look in the mirror.

Sheila’s piece really benefits from the use of that house description, doesn’t it? Strong, bold and compelling, we are eager to read more. We are all interested in dwellings, since all of us in some way are defined by the ones that house us. Really good choice here. Right to the point, this opener leads us through the piece.

I love what Isadora did with the rewrite of this piece, and while I can no longer locate the original, I want to point out the excellence that she has brought to the rewrite, a rewrite that starts off right from the opener. It’s much more clear here just what the intent of the piece is to be. And readers need to know that, no matter the length of the piece--they want to know what they are in for, and you must give them that, as well as a sense of your personality, as quickly as you can.

From Leap of Faith, we get a great, powerful piece on a lifelong battle with weight. And while combat language is utilized brilliantly throughout the piece, it is lacking in the opener. So tuck at least one warlike word into your opening graph, and we’ll have an even greater time with this read.

Welcome to Vedis, who appears now in our group, and seems to come to us from far away. Good job, Vedis. I found this piece very compelling, and would find it to be even more so, if you edited out that first line and let me come to know what the piece is about – the presence of the living god – on my own, by holding that line for later. Simply begin with “I owned a bicycle once,” and we’ll be swept away on your journey.

Good job, all.

Write on.

Hi, all.

It seems only the journal aspect of this group is working right now, so I will not use the broadcasts until I'm sure you all get them.

Here are the contest results...finally.

First, here's how I did this. I used an online website that selects random numbers, assigned a number to each of the names of the writers who were participating as of the contest deadline, and came up with:

Lolani

bodhirose

Isadora

Faintly

Sheila

Leapoffaith

Lynne

Sukey

Tracey

debbie

Congratulations.

Please send a mailing address to me at my Beliefnet mailbox and I'll send them out!

And write on.

Best,

Marion

Hi, all.

It seems my broadcasts to the group are not going through.

I have been trying to update you on why we had a slight interruption.

Hope this goes through.

Beliefnet was sold, and I lost my primary contact.

But all is well, and we are still running, so let's write on.

Best,

Marion

Look at the bounty of what we have going on here. It’s wonderful. I congratulate all of you for finding your voices, and putting your work out here for us to read.

I also congratulate you for writing to space. It’s hard, isn’t it?

Telling one story at a time is among the most difficult aspects of writing memoir. When you go into that marvelous subconscious of yours, and ask it for a piece, out comes the idea, “my grandparent,” or “school,” or “raising children,” and with that topic also spills out all the memories, details, facts, and random attachments on those huge topics. And so we begin to prune.

But how to prune down even more? At this stage of writing it’s an essential goal. So let me take you through the pieces we have and show you some editing trims that would make the pieces even more tight, and allow them to work even better for the reader.

Faintly and Lynne got me started thinking about this after they both sent us marvelous rewrites from which to learn. Look at what Faintly did with her rewrite of her piece Shiny Shoes, and then look at the original. What do you see? I see a writer hard at work making a piece better with every change. Great work. What do you notice in the changes? I see the whole piece as much tighter, leaving the reader with nowhere to go but to pay attention to every detail. 

Lynne has graciously supplied us with four pieces, and each one marvelously keeps to the topic at hand. And it is her first piece that put in my mind the topic of trims, since it is such a good edit of her previously published version on the same topic. Look at the cuts she made, and start to think to yourself how your own work might benefit from such severe pruning. The edit actually loses nothing, does it? And for the reader the difference is a joy: We get the message, and we understand the piece even better at this new length, yes?

So let’s look at her other three pieces to see if we can bring the same ethic to these, even those all of these are on the word count.

In Lynne’s piece, “Butterfly Messages,” I would suggest killing the first two paragraphs and beginning it with “I moved to a new town.” Have a look, and notice that all the pertinent information contained in those two paragraphs is actually continued in the remainder of the piece. But with the “I moved to a new town” beginning, the piece is not foreshadowed, leaving the reader a fuller, more adventurous experience, and letting the reader bond with George before the writer takes him away.

In Lynne’s opossum piece, a simple edit three-quarters of the way down requires removing the quote, “Oh Geez, I almost blew up the house,” and improves the scene dramatically. We get it without the quote, and the piece actually gains in drama rather than losing anything.

In her piece, “Ask Permission,” Lynne gives us another thoroughly compelling, really tight story, the only edit to which I would suggest is to kill the first line. Don’t tell me what the story is about, I’d urge: let me come to that conclusion on my own when I reach the end and I, as the reader, will feel a deeper satisfaction.

All of her pieces are really well done. Congratulations, Lynne. Great writing.

Tracy’s moving piece is very well presented. The writing is tight, and the story is compelling, so much so that I would suggest that about 13 lines down, we do not need the line, “It was time, after 25 years not to apologize.” I think that this is the very essence of the piece, and that it is stitched into the fabric of the excellent writing, and does not need to be stated plainly to the reader. We get it. And we love coming up with it on our own, don’t we? Great job. I think this is a very topical, well-written piece. And quite moving.

Bodhirose has submitted two fine pieces. The first is a compelling story that has  action, drama, terror and a strong sense of faith. We follow along with our hearts pumping. What a good scene she provides. The edits here need to come in the last four graphs, where she takes on a new topic—the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTS)—and while that is interesting, it veers so severely away from the dramatic scene that it undermines the impact the PTS has had on her life.  How to resolve this? Three graphs from the bottom, she begins the idea of the sense of calm that overtook her, and probably she needs to stay with that and write a piece about PTS another time. We want to hear about the PTS, but bringing it in so close to the end of the piece asks more questions than it answers, and while we want to hear more about it, I’d suggest in this piece she stay with the calm and see where that goes.

In her second piece, Bodhirose takes on a great scene of coming in contact with the Dalai Lama. What a grace this is, and how we want to be there with her. And to that end, I would suggest not taking us quite so much on a tour of DC, and instead condensing  paragraphs 3 and 4, so that we stay with the topic of the Dalai Lama and really appreciate that. I love travel writing, as well as political history, but in this case, both detract from the real journey of this piece. See the difference?

Isadora provides us with a fine meditation on nature, and in it we get to know the writer. This is good device, and one that does not require the biographical data (however interesting) in the second paragraph. The whole graph can actually go. Read the piece without it, and you’ll see why letting the whole piece flow from the challenge posed in the first graph—to choose what kind of day she’s going to have—does not depend on her history. Take it out, and the piece flows beautifully.   

Just as I was about to send this post, in came another piece by Tracey, in which she questions the idea of memoir versus diary, and it’s a wonderful thing to ask. You’re right, Tracey: there is a huge difference, and I urge everyone to read this to set in motion these questions for yourself. In terms of editing, I think the last few lines only restate the fact that you are conflicted, points you make really well further up. So edit those down—or out—and it will allow that “Be Brave” message to percolate up a bit in the piece, as well as in importance.

Great job, everyone. I love reading your stuff.

Write on.

So why should we write what we know? I mean, who cares, right?

Wrong. Look at the nine examples we have here of astonishing honesty, strength of character, universal feeling, and heightened emotion. Why write? Because when we write about our lives, others learn something about living their own with quiet honor, more determination, more empathy and compassion: in short, we learn to live together better.

Look at Megan’s piece. It utilizes the topic of solitaire to bring out the oh-so-human emotion of wanting to be somebody’s chosen favorite relative. Who of us has not felt this way? And when you read this piece, did you remember how that felt? Isn’t it amazing that she was able to recreate those feelings using only words? Don’t tell me words aren’t powerful: I’m seeing that power right here on the page. Look at the bond she builds for us between herself and her Great Aunt Winnie. She does so one small detail at a time. Very carefully constructing this bond right before our eyes, we are able to see how it is this link between these women has lasted this lifetime. 

Debbie’s entry is riveting. Look at her human spirit speaking directly to us, telling us that it is ready to come out. Aren’t we fortunate to witness this? Can you think of any other place you’d rather be than right here, reading that? The only place I can think of that might surpass this is reading her next post, where we see what it is she chooses to use as her example of her awakening.

Bodhirose’s lovelorn peacock made me spit my tea right onto my computer screen, laughing as I was at the perfectly crafted images of this large male bird stalking his Zen-like prey. The combination of forces of nature—bird and woman—are thrillingly delightful. And look--again, it’s only words that are doing this. Who needs photos, or video? Who needs a sketch? I see it as clearly as if it was happening in my driveway.  What do we see at work here? We see the delight in life itself, don’t we?

And then there is Lynne, whose heart-wrenchingly honest piece about confronting her panic leaves us somewhat breathless at her courage both in the writing and, of course, in the living of this experience. Who of us has not been panicked? Imagine, however, being panicked at this level, and then choosing to write about it for strangers. This, too, is the human spirit at work, and takes on faith in a non-traditional way, making the piece decidedly about faith, though not about faith as we have come to think of it.

Lolani gives us two pieces to read, and I would recommend combining them, and reading them together, as they seemingly were meant to be read. How many of us have regretted later not doing what our hearts and minds told us to do? Did you read the piece and shake your head a little, thinking about those dilemmas in life? Of course you did. Lolani: Go back and read them together and it will be clear to you which items we do not need in the piece, and which heighten and add to that theme I’ve just mentioned. I think the whole story will be greatly improved.

Isadora’s piece takes us deep into the territory of loving memories, so deep, in fact, that she successfully communicates her message to us without having to hit us over the head with it. Those simpler things, remembered as they are, do, as she tells us, “soften the hard times.” See how expertly she stitches that good ethic into the quilting of her tale, and then how she covers us in it.

Faintly’s piece will nearly do you in when you read it. Brilliantly executed, this life story, as told on the toe of a shoe, is the kind of piece from which I could teach an entire course. But since I’ve chosen in this critique to speak only of why we write, I’ll stick to that, and applaud her for choosing something as pedestrian as shoes in which to tell the tale of the loss of someone she loved. This does something to the brain that no other kind of pairing can do: she took a complex human emotion and told it with a something as everyday as our shoes, and look how well it works. This is why we write: to heighten and add to the human experience.

Melinda’s fine piece about the need for speed speaks of inheritance, though not at all in the traditional way. And she uses a great device here that you should note, ending the piece as she does with a question. Questions work well, though perhaps better in the middle or higher up in the piece, and then prompting a little more soul-searching on the part of the writer. But never shy away from asking a direct question in your copy. A fine device, it is deeply provocative, and speaks nicely to the reader.   

Wow. Really. Wow, and wow again. I never imagined that reading the work online, written by people I do not know, could do transport me from one strong human emotion to the next. Granted, I read magazines all the time, and am deeply moved by some of the pieces, but here, we are not professionals, and you have not been edited, and I feel I am learning more from you than I can ever teach you in return. Look to each other’s work. There exists here a wealth of education.

Again, do keep your pieces to under 650 words. National Public radio essays are 615; The New York Times Magazine last page (take a look today) is not much longer. Standard publication length for this genre is rarely, if ever, more than that, and never really needs to be. What can you cut from yours? See the previous critiques, and learn more about how to tell your tale in the best way possible.

Also, please go to one another’s pieces and leave comments. It is the sure-fire-very-best-way to learn more about writing, and to give another write the feedback he or she needs to write on.

So write on.