Section 9
Recognising great beginnings
On page 74 of the workbook we asked you to explain which of the five types of opening you
think each of the examples of great beginnings fit into, and how they fulfil the three criteria of
a good short story opening.
Here are the five types of opening:
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The scene setter
The conflict-establisher
The puzzler
The third person narrator starts a chat
The first person begins to speak
Here’s our analysis of this task:
Shirley Jackson, ‘The Lottery’
This is an example of a ‘scene setter’ opening. It introduces the place and time and
establishes the pastoral, pleasant tone, which sets the reader up for the horrible
shock at the end of this famous story.
John Updike, ‘A & P’
This story opens with the first-person narrator describing an incident in his work,
which introduces the main character (though nameless at this point) and establishes
the colloquial tone, along with a suggestion of place and time (twentieth century
North America).
D.H. Lawrence, ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’
This opening introduces the main character and establishes the descriptive tone of
the narrative. It focuses entirely on the mother’s personality and the quickly brings up
the conflict within herself and between herself and her children.
Ray Bradbury, ‘A Sound of Thunder’
Beginning in medias res, this opening is a combination of a scene-setter and a
puzzler, since we know that (so far) time travel, let alone time-travelling safaris, is
impossible. It sets the scene and names the main character, and establishes what
© 2015 Macmillan Education Australia
HSC Discovery Creative Task Workbook, Anna McHugh.
978 1 4586 5089 4
3
may become the challenge or conflict – allowing the main character to execute his
intention.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ‘Harrison Bergeron’
This is a classic scene-setter, establishing the wider social scene and time of the
narrative, and showing what may become the problem – maintaining this puzzling
equality between everyone. The straight-forwardness with which the third person
narrator lists the features of the society makes the tone clear, but also establishes the
puzzle of how the situation described is possible. Although we haven’t met the main
character, the story’s title suggests that someone called Harrison Bergeron will
become interested in this unusual equality – this will be the conflict.
Guy de Maupassant, ‘The Necklace’
The third-person narrator begins a discussion with the reader by assuming that the
female protagonist is a type of character familiar to them. Based on our assumed
familiarity, we can predict what conflict she may face, and this is confirmed by the
mid-paragraph description of her unhappiness. The universal statements which the
author makes establish the tone and help us to understand that we should read this
partly as a didactic piece. The vocabulary of marriage portions and clerks makes clear
that the piece is set in at least the nineteenth century.
Amy Bloom, ‘Silver Water’
In this story’s opening the third-person narrator introduces the main character,
describes her abilities and personality, and ends with a subtle intimation of the
conflict, which will involve the dog, and the girl’s waning enthusiasm.
J.D. Salinger, ‘For Esmé, with love and squalor’
This conflict-establisher by the first-person narrator not only sets the time and place
(early-mid twentieth century, probably North America), but establishes the comic,
confiding tone of the narrative and the perspective of the hen-pecked son-in-law he’s
likely to take.
Catherine Storr, ‘Crossing Over’
The opening words reveal that the narrator is a first person intradiegetic narrator, and
the beautiful description of the sister’s voice and its effect on the parking lot suggests
that the narrative may be about an ultimately unequal sibling relationship. The main
character is introduced together with the antagonist, and the conflict is hinted at. A
broad introduction to time and place is given, and the conversational tone
established.
© 2015 Macmillan Education Australia
HSC Discovery Creative Task Workbook, Anna McHugh.
978 1 4586 5089 4
Angela Carter, ‘The Werewolf’
This brief scene setter is a compact example of how the human and physical
landscape can be introduced together, demonstrating the didactic or metaphorical
treatment of the action. The impersonal tone and period syntax suggests that the
story may be of the fairy-tale or mythic kind, but it obscures the identity of the
narrator – is it first or third person? Who is the main character, and what about the
inhabitants’ cold hearts will be problematic? Although this opening manages to do
many things, it is principally a puzzler.
Using opening sentences
We then asked you to take some first lines and consider how you’d use each to write a
narrative about discovery. This task will largely depend on what narrative you have already
developed. Four students who provided the ‘worked examples’ through the book attempted
the task for us:
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‘Imagine!’ she said. ‘I’d never have thought it would turn out like that.’
The student who wrote the narrative ‘Laying out Dr Barry’, described in the worked example
for Chapter 9, wrote this response:
The narrator of my story is a woman, so I would use a frame narrative around the main
story (the testimony of my narrator), where an academic researching the life of James Barry
comes across the testimony, and her reaction (‘Imagine!’ she said. ‘I’d never have thought it
would turn out like that’) would be the first line. I would write a short paragraph describing
the situation of the researcher in a library about to start copying out the testimony. Then I’d
go ahead and write the narrative I’d planned.
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From this day on, I’m going to be different – we’re all going to be different - because of
what I have found out.
The student who developed the narrative ‘Seven Sisters’, described in the worked example
for Chapter 6, responded:
I had planned to tell my story in the third person, but I could change it to a first-person
narrator (the protagonist, Emmy, who discovers the amazing constellations which she can
see clearly because she’s living in the outback) and just continue it as I planned.

We had no choice but to do it, regardless of what it made us feel.
The writing pair who developed the narrative called ‘Clannad’, described in the worked
example for Chapter 5, wrote this response:
© 2015 Macmillan Education Australia
HSC Discovery Creative Task Workbook, Anna McHugh.
978 1 4586 5089 4
5
Our narrative took the form of a ship’s log. We could easily use this as the first line of the
extract from the ship’s log. The captain would be justifying why the group of teenagers had
to flee from Sydney after the disaster.

Discoveries aren’t always welcomed; they bring new knowledge, and that always
brings conflict.
The student who developed the narrative ‘Reflector’ described in the worked example for
Chapter 11, responded:
This feels like quite a different tone to my narrative; it’s more like something a teacher would
say or a textbook. The only character in my narrative who is like that is the tour guide for the
school group in the observatory. He could be explaining something about the history of
astronomy, like where Galileo was burned as a heretic because of his scientific research.
Fixing an opening
The next task in the workbook was to fix this opening paragraph so that it reflects the brevity,
interest, and truthfulness necessary for a great opening. The story was to be a reflective
piece about a girl who discovers that her father was a war criminal.
Here is our attempt.
Original paragraph:
My dad was a big man with big feet and big hands and I always trusted those hands, but
now I can’t look at them without thinking about what they might have done in the far past
before I was born here in Australia. We live in an ordinary house on an ordinary street with
an ordinary garden and some of those weird plants that look kind of ugly but won’t die
unless you’re really unkind to them, which my mum is when she’s angry and won’t water the
lawn though that doesn’t often happen.
Fixed paragraph:
My dad was a big man with a tradesman’s tough, oversized hands. He was a
carpenter. I always liked the whole Jesus and Joseph story because I imagined the
two men as carpenters, smelling of wood shavings and care, with big, nicked-at
hands which held hammers and chisels. Now I can’t think about my dad’s hands
without wondering what they did before I was born, before this sun-warmed
ordinary life in Australia.
© 2015 Macmillan Education Australia
HSC Discovery Creative Task Workbook, Anna McHugh.
978 1 4586 5089 4