What’s the worst opening you can possibly imagine?
What would happen if you wrote it down?
For our second issue, Page One, Isa and I are making ourselves write terrible beginnings to novels that may or may not be – and perhaps should never be. Writers often spend many a laborious hour crafting the perfect beginning, a task made even more challenging by the sight of a blank page (or blinking cursor).
Not today. Today, we’re saying “Screw that” and driving gleefully down to the bottom of the slush pile, Thelma and Louise style.
We’ve all written beginnings that have made us cringe, so we invite you to join in! All you have to do is write the first paragraph of a terrible beginning. The great thing about this challenge is that the worse it is, the better you come off.
What about an opening in which the narrator describes in excruciating detail what he sees in a pitch dark room? Or stream of consciousness that takes an unexpected turn? What if it opens with a song lyric that has nothing to do with the story? Or a really dull dream? What if the prose is so purple it’s Barney, or so experimental no one has any idea what you’re actually saying?
Send us something you’ve already written or scribble out something new! For inspiration and examples, look to the winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where bad beginnings go to achieve their glory. There are some real gems, the same way that the liquified remains of sea animals become gems, eventually.
Email us at thegalvanizersmag@gmail.com or use the form below. We’ll round them up and feature them in the next issue! Please submit by July 31, 2014 and remember – have fun with it!
