Put Your Story Beginning to the Test

The Adventures of Beekle: the Unimaginary Friend

by Dan Santat, Little, Brown and Company, 2019.

He was born on an island far away where imaginary friends were created. Here, they lived and played, each eagerly waiting to be imagined by a real child. Every night he stood under the stars, hoping for his turn to be picked by a child and given a special name.

In the picture book, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santant, he uses ‘he’ and ‘imaginary friend’ to reveal the main character.

He then tells the reader the character’s wants is to be picked by a child and for that child to give it a special name. We know that the setting is an imaginary island. We can mark the time as the present as nothing identifies it as being in the past or the future. Readers want to know if this imaginary friend gets picked, hooking the reader to continue reading the book. With the low word counts in picture books, it’s important to utilize your words wisely. Dan gave us all this information in 50 words.

In Nate the Great, a chapter book series by Marjorie Weinman, she instantly introduces Nate. We know that he is hoping for a great case. From the word ‘telephone’, we know this is set in the present or recent past, as most people have dropped the ‘tele’ when referring to their phones. Although the setting isn’t mentioned, a landline telephone implies that it is inside a home. The reader is hooked by their curiosity of who is on the call and what sort of case Nate will solve. You can tell by Nate’s pancake obsession that this book has a humorous tone. 

A Series of Unfortunate Events

by Lemony Snicket and Brett Helquist, Egmont Books, 2002.

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery and despair.

A series of Unfortunate Events is a lower middle-grade novel. The story’s tone is revealed to the reader first as the narrator warns the reader that this story is not a happy one. Lemony then introduces the Baudelaire siblings. This excerpt does not directly state their wants, but the reader can make a few guesses.

Young adult writers have to focus on making the whole first chapter strong.  In these first few lines of Cinder, Marissa reveals, by the screw in her ankle, that Cinder is a robot and sets the story in the future. This is a great example of showing the main character in action. The tone in this beginning feels serious, and as a reader, you expect that serious tone to continue throughout the rest of the story.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, literary milestones should never get in the way of telling a great story. Words can be changed and an editor can help with some of this, but it is good to have a general sense of what works for your age range and what just doesn’t belong.

Did any of the grades surprise you? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter. If you enjoyed this blog, check out our post on voice titled Active vs. Passive Voice: What’s the Difference?