Beginnings

The Dramatic Lead

• You would usually be born from your own mother’s stomach, but not me. I was adopted. I was born from a teenager’s stomach. (Grade 4)

• Whenever I got into trouble, my mother always had a straight look at me. I would start to cry then, not out loud but in my heart.

• In 2004 my family canceled Christmas.

Starting with Dialogue

• “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.?

(Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White)

Leisurely Lead

Beginning at the Ending

• One day last spring, Louis, a butcher, turned into a fish. Silvery scales. Big lips. A tail. A salmon.

Introducing the Narrator

• “Call me Ishmael.”

(Moby Dick)

• “I live at 165 East 95th Street, New York City, and I’m going to stay here forever. My mother and father are moving. Out West.”

The Misleading Lead

• “The morning of June 27the was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.”

(The Lottery – Shirley Jackson)

Other Ways to Introduce

• Questions: “Did you know that the sucking power of an infant is five times stronger than that of an adult?”

• Intriguing Detail: “My parents met in Saigon in 1988, the Year of the Snake.”

• Sentence Fragments: “A 42 year-old man. A man of heart and soul.