A Great Opening and A Memorable Ending



A Great Opening


Well begun is half done.
This age old adage is as relevant today as it was centuries ago.
A good story invariably has a good opening.
And what purpose does it serve?
Firstly, it arrests your attention. The first few lines excite your interest and draw you into the narrative.
You get glued and feel like reading more.

In this context, let’s examine Too Dear, a short story adapted by Leo Tolstoy, that master storyteller of all times.

The title itself is so endearing and arouses the reader’s curiosity instantly.

In fact, it’s a good idea to decide on the title first as that contains the gist of your story and creates the initial impression. However, in your exuberance to devise a catchy title, don’t leave it disconnected from the main story-line. At times, you may come to the right title only after finishing the complete story and on other occasions, you may actually experiment with a number of titles before finalizing the one that clicks with you the most.

This is how Tolstoy launches his story:

‘Near the borders of France and Italy, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, lies a tiny little kingdom called Monaco.’

The opening has an old world charm about it. It has a kind of innocence and simplicity that serves as an essential background when it comes to resolving the central dilemma, that is, how to execute a murderer since the kingdom ‘neither had a guillotine for cutting heads, nor an executioner.’

It also serves to distance the reader from the narrative which revolves around finding a suitable method to realize the punishment and throws deep insights on the entire gamut of crime and punishment. But it is the objective tone set by the opening that runs through the entire story.

Equally disarming is the now famous opening of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’

If you read the opening again after going through the novel, you would realize that this single line contains the essence of the story so readily.

And that’s what a great opening aims to achieve.
It sets the tone and gives you a hint of what to expect.
A good beginning moves steadily towards the focal point of the story and thereafter, to its conclusion.
However, the point to be kept in mind is that an opening should not reveal too much, otherwise the reader’s interest in the story may wane away too soon.

A Memorable Ending





This is the last segment of the beginning, middle and end structure that we studied in detail in our previous blog at:

http://discoverthewriterinyou.blogspot.in/2016/12/how-do-you-design-and-structure-your.html

What needs to be remembered here is that while a good opening flows effortlessly towards an equally good finale, the ending per se may be gradual in nature or a surprise one.

The ending in Too Dear that we just scanned above, is a gradual one in that the story prepares the reader for such an ending through a carefully crafted middle where in absence of a solution as to how to punish the murderer without incurring heavy expenses, he is set free, that too with an annual pension.

The last few lines serve to illuminate the reader’s mind on a crucial subject:

‘It is a good thing that he did not commit his crime in a country where they do not grudge expense to cut a man’s head or to keeping him in prison for life.’ 

The murderer eventually undergoes a transformation and starts leading a normal life, something that would not have happened had he been sentenced to death by hanging or life imprisonment.

On the other hand, you have endings that take you by surprise. They shock you and challenge you to accept a new reality, channelizing your energies in a completely different direction.

The surprise ending of Anton Chekhov’s Vanka breaks your heart when a nine year old boy, leading a miserable life with his master who is a shoemaker, writes a letter to his grandfather about his miseries and request him to take him away. Not sure of the address, he just mentions ‘To Grandfather in the village’ and drops it into the letter box.

The last few lines of the story haunt you for a long time:

‘An hour later, lulled by rosy hopes, he was fast asleep. . . . He dreamed of a stove. On the stove-ledge sat his grandfather, his bare feet dangling, reading the letter to the cooks. . . . Eel was walking backwards and forwards in front of the stove, wagging his tail. . .’

Another point to note here is the fact that while the ending of Too Dear is closed in nature, Vanka has an open ending wherein the reader is called in to guess the fate that awaits the poor boy for the rest of his life. Or is it that by some stroke of luck, the letter still gets delivered to the grandfather? No one actually knows.

As in life so in fiction, a great opening arrests the reader’s attention and moves towards an engaging middle and thereafter leads to an illuminating ending that serves to deliver a gratifying and holistic reading experience which remains with the reader like memories of an unforgettable dream.

I invite you now to read my short story The Taste of Onions as a further example of the subject under discussion at

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AkyWCC4feLf9hilOH7ITFuWtLY6d

It's an engaging tale about a devoted housewife who goes out of her way to promote her husband's career but a shocking revelation awaits her round the corner. 

This story has a surprise ending and aims to weave the reader into the story’s fabric.








Comments

  1. Manish Sharma16 January 2017 at 20:56

    Thanks for reading my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GAGAN CHOUDHARY17 January 2017 at 08:45

    It was amazing. Thanks for this wonderful post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Manish Sharma17 January 2017 at 23:35

    Thanks Gagan!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sanjay Mani Pradhan20 January 2017 at 11:08

    Splendid my brother. Looking forward for more posts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Manish Sharma9 October 2017 at 21:04

      Thanks Sanjay. I went on to write some interesting short stories in the aftermath of this article which you may like to check.

      Delete
  5. rthwer5 February 2020 at 17:13

    I exactly got what you mean, thanks for posting. And, I am too much happy to find this website on the world of Google. Ikea Cardiff opening times

    ReplyDelete

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