Short Story Beginnings - What I Learned From Reading Some of the Best
A successful story opening must lure the reader into crossing the story’s threshold: the very first sentence must entice readers to read the next sentence, and the next. Novelist and essayist Douglas Glover, in his collection Attack of the Copula Spiders, proffers a blueprint for constructing such an opening sentence, a technique that he refers to as a “but-construction . . . [which] occurs when one proposition is followed by another that is a contrast, contrary, antithesis or somehow runs counter to expectation” (32). This “but construction," Glover maintains, simultaneously asks a story question, provides a unique point-of-view, and immediately introduces conflict and tension, thereby alluring the reader into reading more.
I read over a dozen short stories this month and saw Glover’s “but-construction” at work in many of them: indeed, the hookiest openings certainly had an inherent contradiction or tension in the very first line, an unresolved juxtaposition of some sort that pulled me deeper into the story. But I also noticed another commonality among my favorites: the stories that resonated most deeply with me also had beginnings that overtly pointed to, or at least hinted at, their endings, providing some sort of literary wink or thematic tease toward the story’s ultimate conclusion. Given my discovery of this preference, I’d like to analyze the opening lines of two short stories – “Flying Lessons” by Kelly Link and “Reeling for the Empire” by Karen Russell – through the lens of Glover’s “but-construction” model, as well as consider how these stories’ openings tease their respective conclusions from their very first lines.
Kelly Link’s “Flying Lessons” tells the story of June, a petty thief who falls in love with a young man named Humphrey Bogart Stoneking, who June soon discovers is the half-mortal/half-god, bastard son of the Greek god, Zeus. Humphrey’s three immortal aunts have tried to protect Humphrey from the wrath of Zeus’s wife, Hera, for his entire life, but eventually, Hera manages to enact her vengeance on him. Let’s consider the opening line of Link’s “Flying Lessons”: “I. Going to hell. Instructions and advice. Listen, because I’m only going to do this once. You’ll have to get there by way of London” (71).
Link’s opening most certainly exemplifies Glover’s “but-construction;” there’s something deliciously ironic and unexpected about someone who needs directions into hell. And while we don’t yet know who is speaking (or to whom they are speaking), we readers taste the conflict right away: there’s a promise of a quest, the tension between the notion of hell and the metropolis of London, and the immediacy and urgency of “Listen, because I’m only going to do this once” (Link 71).
But Link’s opening also functions as an explicit page-one clue as to where we readers are eventually going. After a few paragraphs of specific directions (e.g., “Get on the Northern Line. Sit in the last car. Speak to no one” (Link 71)), Link’s story jumps back in time, introducing her characters and setting the stage for her postmodern reimagining of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. We then accompany our main character June through a series of events that feel more guided by Destiny than character agency: June meets the author of a book she’s just stolen (an author who turns out to be Humphrey’s aunt, the goddess of love) (75); she steals a perfume from a shopkeeper who almost seems like he wants June to take it (76-77); and her “chance” first meeting with Humphrey on a deserted beach feels more like an orchestrated meet-cute (77-81). In fact, Humphrey overtly acknowledges that his and June’s chemistry may just be the result of his aunt’s machinations: “If she didn’t mean for you to have [the perfume], you probably wouldn’t have even thought of taking it. Might as well keep it now. She probably set this whole thing up” (81).
Regardless, though, of who is pulling the strings, June and Humphrey do indeed fall in love before Hera murders Humphrey and takes him to the underworld. There remains hope, though: June desperately wants to save him. Thankfully, Humphrey’s aunts have instructions for getting there (“Fortunately Hell is a much cheaper trip, much nearer to hand than Australia. Are you ready? Good. So listen, because I’m only going to tell you this once” (Link 98)). Link has thus brought us full circle: June is now being given the same instructions that began the story.
As soon as I finished, I flipped back to the beginning to study this loop. Link’s first line felt particularly ingenious because of its explicit communion with the story’s final scene – a communion all the more thematically solvent given Destiny’s role in this mythological story.
Like the opening of Link’s “Flying Lessons,” Karen Russell’s first line to her riveting “Reeling for the Empire” is also an example of Glover’s “but-construction.” “Reeling for the Empire” tells the story of Kitsune and her fellow captives, a group of young Japanese women who have been sold by their families to a silk factory owner known as the Agent. The twist: before bringing them to his factory, the Agent gives each girl a magical elixir that transforms them into a human silk worm. Consider Russell’s opening line: “Several of us claim to have been the daughters of samurai, but of course there is no way for anyone to verify that now” (23). Russell’s initial line quite literally “turns on the word ‘but’”(Glover 32): the line presents an unresolved, eerie contradiction that readers want resolved or at least explained. We aren’t sure of who these “several of us” are, but there’s an undeniable incompatibility between “daughters of warriors” and women without verifiable pasts. Russell’s first line makes clear that something monumental has happened in the space between – a transition of some sort, one so fundamental that it has called the very identities of these unnamed women into question.
But there is another reason that Russell’s beginning (and the overall story) was such a standout for me: the opening cues us to the ending in a coy but undeniable way, especially after we finish the story and look back to where we started. After arriving at the silk factory, Kitsune and the other captives begin their transformation into monstrous human-silk worm hybrids: they spin silk for the Agent day and night, and eventually, forfeit their individual identities, hopes, and dreams of salvation. Only after one of her friends dies from an ill-conceived protest, does Kitsune begin to plot a different sort of rebellion. Unlike the other girls, we learn, Kitsune chose to accompany the Agent to the factory in order to help her family, and her regret has haunted her ever since. This obsessive regret, however, has actually begun to poison her thread, changing its color and texture. Kitsune uses this heartier silk to weave herself a cocoon, and soon convinces the other women to do so as well. The women-silkworms then lay in wait; when the Agent arrives, they descend, attack, and envelop him in a silk prison of his own.
This final scene of revenge breathes new meaning into Russell’s first line: yes, given their metamorphoses, there is no longer any way to verify these women’s identities. But their revolt has proven to be its own sort of verification: through their horrific transformations, these women have become warriors, survivors who have transcended beyond the particulars of their lineages and personal histories. They are indeed the daughters of samurai.
My analysis of short story openings via Glover’s “but-construction” helped me understand and articulate why certain short story openings were effectively hooking me. The study also illuminated some of my particular preferences as a reader. In both cases, I took what I learned and tried to incorporate these insights into the openings of my own works in progress.
WORKS CITED
Glover, Douglas. Attack of the Copula Spiders : And Other Essays on Writing. Biblioasis, 2012.
Link, Kelly. “Flying Lessons.” Stranger Things Happen. 1st ed., Small Beer Press, 2001.
Russell, Karen. “Reeling for the Empire.” Vampires in the Lemon Grove : Stories. 1st ed., Vintage, 2014.