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It’s easy to say, avoid the big bang opener, start gently and tilt your reader,
engage the reader with language and probability.
But how can I show it works?
What follows are the openings of the stories in my
collection “Ballistics”. A dozen First-Prize winners, two more $2,000 Bridport
Second-Prizes, many of the stories reprinted often, many reprinted in
anthologies.
I would argue that only Ballistics itself even comes close to a
big-bang opener.
The stories are posted here in the sequence they are
in the book, except for Ballistics and Postcards from BalloonLand.
Miguel Who
Cuts Down Trees.
When I was a little boy, I had a wooden truck. One day
the truck began to move by itself. It went around the yard and then it came
back to me. I went to sleep. When I woke it was just a wooden truck.
When I was
fourteen I was flying a kite. I saw an angel alongside my kite. She was very
beautiful. I found I could make the angel move by pulling the string of my
kite, but then I fell asleep and when I woke my kite was broken and trampled
with mud.
$600 First Prize
The Smell of
Almond Polish
Paddington, London, 1954
Bridie Collins steps down from the train, waits for
the crowd to wrap her up. She looks above her; pigeons scattering under the
great glass roof. Someone bumps her shoulder, rushes on. In the half-light she
shivers, picks up her cardboard case and walks towards the ticket collector.
On the
train, from Wales, Bridie had listened to the clattering songs in the track.
"Did she do right? Well, did she do right? What could she have done? What
should she have done? Was it right, was it right, was it right?"
$600 First Prize
Mother,
Questions
Mother, can I ask, with you and Dad, my father, how
did it happen, how was it? Were you frightened, excited, was he strong, was he
clumsy?
You told me once, before you died, you said, "We
walked out for almost a year and then, one day, on a bridge over the canal at
Alt-y-ryn, he asked if he could kiss me." You said you laughed, couldn't help it. He ran home.
So Mum, how did you get from there to being my mother?
How did that shy young man learn to make love? Was he your first, Mum? Nellie
said to me once, (she was drunk on gins), she said you had a beau everyone
wanted, but he was "a bit of a lad, a heart-breaker", wouldn't take no
for an answer.
First Prize,
Cadenza.
GREEN GLASS
When you say it, finally say it, when you tell her
you're leaving, when you finally realise that loving her isn't enough, not if
she can bring you so much pain, your anger is so great you crush the wine glass
you're holding. You watch as splinters embed in your hand, as a long, wicked
shard of dark green glass hooks into the flesh of your thumb, your Mount of
Venus, and you watch the blood from your palm, your arm, flow magically red to
the floor.
The blood is everywhere, the rug, the drapes, but she
laughs at your crucified hand, your slashed wrist. She says, "My, honey, so much drama for
such a pathetic little man. Rush yourself to the hospital, why don't you?"
First Prize, Buzzwords
L for LAURA:
L for LOVE
Ay for orses, remember that? A for orses, B for
mutton? C fer yerself, D fer payment? Not sure I could remember it all. I'm not
even sure if that's right, A-B-C-D.
A is really for Alice, B for Billy Smith she ran off
with. C is for Clown, me for not noticing. D is for Diane my second, after we
had to wait all those years until I was officially deserted.
You know what I remember? It wasn't jealousy. It
wasn't shock or shame or humiliation. As soon as Alice was gone I realised I'd
never really loved her, anyway. No, what
I remember was realising that the world was a lot shittier than it looks on
Christmas Cards (she went Christmas Eve) and all of a sudden nothing was just
simple any more, or innocent.
First,
Southport Short-Story Prize
An Old Man Watching Football After Sunday
Lunch
I’m an old man watching football after Sunday lunch.
Earlier we went to The Sun in the Wood. I had Cold Turkey, Mary had Roast Lamb,
her mother looked like mutton dressed up, with mint-sauce. There we were, lording
it, our Sunday-best, our table reserved as usual in the annexe, four bottles of
Chateau Neuf du Pape opened and breathing, waiting for us when we arrived. El
Perfecto!
My grandson plays soccer. (The manager is a clown).
It’s a crap day, wet, wind, and I have to remind myself I’m a volunteer, here
to watch my boy. When he pulls on that red shirt I realise he is the most
important thing to me.
First Prize,
Pencil, Bantry, Ireland
The Fucking Point-Two
My brother's habit is bloody annoying. He’s Friar Tuck
and I’m running as Maid Marion and we are only four miles into the London
Marathon and the swish-swish-swish-fucking-swish is driving me crazy.
“Fer
Christ’s sake, Colin, I TOLD you. Go as The Sheriff of Fucking Nottingham,
we’ll never catch Robin Hood and Little John now and that’s me and you down
fifty quid each.”
“Ah fuck
off, brother,” Colin says (he always says it like that, brother heavy on the
emphasis). Then he reminds me the London is his seventeenth marathon and Robin
and Little John have gone off far too fast.
First,
Lichfield Short-Story Prize.
OBELISK
The first time he had seen her she was the writer – he
didn’t know – of a story he’d already chosen as winner in a competition. He was
aware of her but not seeing her – was her hair pulled back? Was there grey in
it? Did she wear light-framed spectacles? He wasn’t seeing her because one of
the students in the class was a nightmare, a conference classic, a bitter
wannabe who couldn’t write, would never write – you need a soul to write – but could
talk forever about conspiracies and rip-offs, and all those editors – no doubt
including himself – who couldn’t understand.
He began
by trying to be nice, but this monster was eating class time, moved to sarcasm
– wasted, completely wasted – eventually had to call foul, suggest a meeting at
another time, the class needed to get in some work.
Later,
coffee, biscuits, the winner – her pseudonym was Obelisk – leaned in close, not
for intimacy but for group-sustaining politeness (but she just had to say this),
and he, not for intimacy either, but the feeling was intimate, dropped an ear
closer.
$600 First,
judged by Hilary Mantel, Connections Magazine
Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet & Watch.
Late February, 1991. Friday.
Friday afternoon, very cold, and Thomas Smith, sales
manager, leaves his London offices for home. Tom has left a little early. Once
a week he allows himself the chance to beat the crush of commuters travelling
from Waterloo to the South Coast. He knows that the 15:30 train to Weymouth will
be at worst three-quarters full, and that the one after that won't have an
empty seat. Tom hates to board anything later. He knows that any train after
15:45 will be little better than a cattle-truck.
As Tom
walks across Waterloo Bridge he rehearses a new joke, one he heard today at
lunch. The wind off the Thames is vicious but Tom's eyes shine and he walks on.
In December he had his first million-pound month and tomorrow his sales force
are coming to a party to celebrate. That's why Tom wants to remember the joke.
He chants the punch-line almost like a mantra. Tom is 33.
$600 First,
Peninsular Magazine
The Last
Love Letter of Berwyn Price
actually opens with an almanac
entry
(about as far from a big-bang start as it’s possible to get.)
Price, Berwyn Philip. b. 11:2:21, d 12:2:97.
Wing and full-back, (occasionally scrum-half). Played,
Aberavon (267), Barbarians (3), Wales (42). "BP", Known for his
blistering pace, scored 27 tries for Wales, most notably the two tries in
injury time in "BPs Triumph" the 1947 21-20 win over England at
Twickenham. Also representative honours, Wales 100/220 yards. Empire Games Gold
Medal, 1948 (100yds) Son of Philip Price, Swansea & Aberavon, one Welsh
cap.
Mrs Bethan Price, if you're reading this, then it
looks like I must have managed it, after all. I went and over-did it and popped
my clogs, just like you and Doctor Llewellyn said I would. So bugger me, I'm
dead, well what do you know? I'm sorry love, but if that's what happened, then
it happened. I'll bet I died happy, though. Was it at the Arms Park? I bet all
I could see when the moment finally came was red and white and green. I bet I
could smell the lads and the mud, see the flags and hear Bread of Heaven!
Berwyn was
$2,000 second place (4,500 entries)
in The UK's
Bridport Prize
The Bastard
William Williams
I am the bastard William Williams, late of The
Universal Pit, Senghennydd, then the pit at Abertridwr, and latterly the
cellars of The Commercial Hotel, as pot man. Now that the dust have slowed me I
am easy to find. I am still lived next door to the English Congregational
Church, Commercial Road, Senghennydd. I venture from my place only for the
English Cong, and in summer, if I am lucky, a visit from a relation.
Until
the coaldust on my chest confined me to my front room I have been known as a
hearty man. My years is matched exact to the century and for the most part it
have been a good life, wholesome. I think though, with what have passed, I
shall not like to be here when the clock strike two thousand.
"William"
was also placed second ($2,000) in The Bridport Prize
The Quarry
“William Tell” (eventually named “The Quarry”) won
Momaya under a pseudonym. This one (best be fair and honest) was rejected by
Writers Forum as having too slow a start. However, I disagreed, and so,
obviously, did the judges at Momaya.
This opening was a boy describing how to build a
home-made crossbow. It's "factual" but contains metaphors, character
and a lot of foreshadowing of the story.
This is how you make your crossbow. A piece of
three-by-two pine you got from a building site, cut it up. Make a crucifix, two
nails at the centre, other-wise the cross-piece moves. You’re gonna have to buy
the thick rubber, but no problem. Get over the wall at the back of Feraro’s
Chip Shop, steal a few pop-bottles, take them back in the morning for the
deposits. Smile.
Nail the rubber along the cross-piece. Don’t put the
nail through the rubber. If you do it splits. Use a couple of nails each end,
bang them in either side of the rubber, so far, then smash them over the rubber
till it squishes down. You have to do two nails at least, otherwise it can come
out. That’s what happened to Colin Hicks and that’s why he’s got a glass eye.
Result?
Another First Prize.
Next in the sequence is “Postcards From Balloonland”
but I will move that one to the end, along with the story “Ballistics” with an
explanation, then.
Tomatoes,
Flamingos, Lemmings,
& Other
Interesting Facts.
I always think, you know, it’s like being on stage.
You have to look your best. You come in from the wings and there’s your
audience and straight away, you’re in the spotlight, you can’t hide, and every
night you have to perform, no matter what. You’ve been short-changed on the
maintenance again and the kids need new shoes, maybe it’s time of the month and
you’re feeling lousy, but you have to do it, you do, look good for the punters.
It’s yer job.
I nearly
went stripping once, but at the last minute, I bottled out. I thought that
being behind a bar would be easier. I’ve been here for two years, one month, a
week and a half; five quid an hour, tips and a conveyor belt of blokes. I think
I should’ve gone stripping.
"Tomatoes"
was Editor's Choice in The Fish Prize, a
competition I went on to judge, many years later. It has been reprinted many
times all over the world and an extended version was broadcast on BBC Radio
Four.
The following story, also known as "Ernie the
Egg" appeared in three versions, a 2K, a 3K and 3.3K, earning its keep.
The longest version was inches away from being my biggest, most-important
publication at the time, in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly Magazine (US).
It was chosen to be the inaugural story for Atlantic Monthly Unbound, earned a
further $250 and offers from US publishers.
Does it start with a big bang?
Meredith
Toop Evans and His Butty, Ernest Jones
In the villages all down this valley, from Senghennydd
down to Caerphilly, they call me Ernie the Egg.
I do not mind this, but for the record, I am Ernest
Jones, poultry farmer, son of Robert Jones, Deacon, and they are my hens that
run amok on the hill above the town. You may eat whosoever's pigs you wish, but
it is my eggs that you shall have on your plate if you sup anywhere in the
valley from Park Hamlet right through Abertridwr. My eggs is on the plates for
most the best part of Caerphilly, too, though I know of some Cardiff eggs
there.
Yes, I am rich, and the boys in the villages, and the
old men, make jokes about me. Yes, Ernie the Egg I am, and with a few bob, and
sought after by the Revenue, too, but I am wealthy by fortunate accidents and
hard work, and with the help of God, and because of a great and ordinary man,
Meredith Toop Evans, collier, and because I am shot in the neck in the Great
War and because I am a failed scholar.
The hens have been my livelihood but this have not
always been so. Once I was to be a teacher, then a collier, then dead
underground, then dead from a bullet in the Great War. That I am not any of
these things is an odd thing for me, peculiar altogether, but facts is facts,
which is why I will relate my story.
The closing story in my collection Ballistics begins:
Happy as Larry
Larry wakes at 03:50, takes a piss, and with his shoes
in his hands, goes out through the glassed front door leaving the stale
jam-and-cream sponge, and the remains of Mary’s tea, stone cold. She had
insisted, insisted on staying up to talk. Larry had taken to coercive or
death-inducing mental incantations to make himself alone:
It’s-time-to-go-to-bed-you-cow.
It’s-time-to-go-to-bed.
It’s-time-to-go-to-bed-you-cow,
so knock it on the head.”
But Larry is away now, Larry is en route Larry is dans le
car, tout le suite and he wants to get away vitely. He is leaving the Kremlin.
It isn’t even light yet, only the flabby yellow of two
streetlamps but the sodium glow’s enough for padding Larry Peters to tread
gently to the car, get in, lock the door, start up, reverse, and slink away.
But as soon as he exits the cul-de-sac, once he is uncatchable, unshoutafterable,
he puts his foot down. He flies.
In minutes, a country road, silver, dark birds lifting
from hedgerows. Then another, better road, then the A303, and under a light,
her, thumbing.
The title story of Ballistics is one of the few which might
be argued to have a big-bang opening. Certainly there is instant drama referred
to:
Ballistics
A set of car keys, fat as a grenade, is arching
towards your eyeball. The tip of one key, v-shaped will precisely pierce the
dark core of your eye. You're not yet two years old but this won't protect you.
You are not old enough to understand that these keys, thrown in anger, began
their journey a year before you were born, that maybe, a psychiatrist will say,
they began even further back when a mother left a father, or further back than
this, when a mining foreman, bitter, too bad for drink, strapped his wayward
son.
You don't yet know the word key, but you know car and
you know picnic. This is where you
are now, out in the soft English countryside, and the sun shines, and down
there is a clear river and over there moo-cows, and you have a mummy and a
daddy. One day you will marry a much older man, a man with a criminal record
for violence, who shaves his head brutishly short, who has his country's emblem
tattooed on his chest, but nothing, nothing of this exists yet, not even this
next moment, the long seconds when you look into the air, to the brightness.
It's blue, and the black bird fills your view and then something happens.
However, the accident is referred to almost in passing
and we move away quickly into the essence of the story. That is family,
heredity, destiny and the way life and other lives shape us against our will.
Remove the single fact of that first sentence and it’s another slow, titling
start.
I moved Ballistics and Balloonland to the end of this
discussion. Ballistics could be argued to be “big-bang” but Postcards suffered
in early drafts for being too
subtle.
It opened with three “innocuous” postcards from family
members crossing the Atlantic. That was how I wanted it but in the hurly-burly
of the market they could be read as trivial and pointless. The story bombed a
few times before I added the two lines just after the title.
Maybe not too-subtle but it was easy to read three
"so-what?" postcards and dismiss the story. I needed something to
tell the editor or judge that the story was a serious piece and not some
beginner's ramble about a holiday.
I added
There are things we should say, things we should not.
And there are things we want to say but have never learned how.
The purpose of those two lines was to “salt” the
start, to tell the editor or judge, “Yes, there’s something here, this is
important.” After that the story sold and earned me about $1,500 then a further $900. It’s been
reprinted many times
PS It's available in a collection of my early stories (some 20 years old now!) as an eBook at Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Postcards-BalloonLand-Stories-Keegan-ebook/dp/B008KS3LGY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369636724&sr=8-2&keywords=alex+keegan
Postcards
from BalloonLand
There are things we should say, things we should not.
And there are things we want to say but have never learned how.
Dear Dawn.
We’re in DisneyLand! Dad promised us that if it was
the last thing he ever did we were going to go to America and go to Florida and
go to Orlando and go to Disney and stop in the Contemporary Resort. It’s very
hot. The grass is funny. There are hundreds of dead good things in the shops.
Love
Rachel.
Hi Robert!
The Frog
wants to go to the Magic Kingdom tomorrow and do all the girlie rides. Dad says
we have to wait until Friday to go to EPCOT. The Contemporary Resort Hotel is
brilliant! There’s a monorail goes right through the building! It took nine
hours to get here. We saw Concorde! Dad had a headache when we landed. Mam said
it was because of the flight. Gotta go. Bet you wish you were here!
Love
Ben.
Dear Millie,
I hope
you and Dad are well. The flight was far better than I expected. There was so
much for me to do that I forgot to be frightened! Peter was very tired, Rachel
led him round everywhere by the hand. They bought me perfume. I told Peter off
for spending but he just laughed and said, ‘What’s money?’ The kids played
Scrabble most of the flight. Peter fell asleep in my lap.
Your
loving daughter, Margaret.
He was Peter. Soft red curly hair, blue, bright eyes,
thirty-three; married to Margaret, father to Benjamin, to Rachel and to
three-year old Tobias. He read their postcards again. Rachel’s card was a
picture of Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger in front of a blue-grey castle. The
holiday was costing a fortune but he knew he had never spent money more wisely.
Before they left, he told Margaret that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip
and not to worry about the expense. It was all taken care of, he said. The look
on the kids’ faces when he told them was sheer joy.
======================================
Pick up BASS (Best American Short Stories) or The
OHenry Prize Collection, or the latest "Pushcart" and actually READ
the openings.
What percentage are "big-bang"? I doubt if 1
in 20 is a BBO.
Why then, are there clowns out there in print and on
the internet ADVOCATING starting with a bang?
I know that 99.9% of stories arriving on my desk and
starting with a bang will be poor quality, almost certainly by beginners.
Alex
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