> [!meta]- Document Info > **Author**: [[Brandon Taylor]] > **Full Title**: Story Basics # 1, Openings > **Category**: #articles > > **Summary**: The author discusses the importance of a strong opening in storytelling, emphasizing that readers need context and clarity from the start. Many writers struggle with plot and may not understand basic narrative techniques, which can lead to confusing beginnings. To improve, writers should ask fundamental questions about their story's core elements before writing. > > **Source**: [Original URL](https://blgtylr.substack.com/p/story-basics-1-openings) ## 📄 Full Document → [[Full Document Contents/Story Basics # 1, Openings]] ## 🔦 Highlights & Commentary - Many people interested in creative writing know plot only as a thing that they are afraid of, a thing to be defeated and overcome with vibes. I don’t know how to break it to you. But we are in the era of the post-literate writer. It’s beyond the whole “visual prose” thing. Like, they need to be instructed in basics. Like, the fundamental building blocks of reading and writing fiction. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp0d28png0fpth9v4w4y4zp6)) - people can be quite hostile to analyzing technique. They fear technique will get in the way of their vibe. It will take what is magic about their writing away. They fear learning technique will devolve into a series of “rules.” It will become “dogma” and it will strip writers of their precious little souls. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp0d3gsmsgh7asw56hx56ndh)) - Interpretation is merely a statement of subjective experience after having moved through the story, a statement about how it made us feel, not a concrete analysis of how those feelings were evoked or their structural role within the story itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp0d73dektkzj9x9eqzv89ke)) - I see a lot of fiction that is simply not telling a story and which fails even on the first page to move the way good fiction is supposed to move. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp0d9j4gb1076s3zgptjpkzm)) - It has been a very permissive, very vibey half-decade, but I do think that some order is…in order. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2ne1h9cbfegy12rjs398dj)) - Resist the desire to treat the opening of your story like the first five minutes of a procedural. Start with context. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2nr71c18skqyvyxj6m6p3j)) - In media res means in “the middle of things.” Sometimes, people take this to mean “in the middle of the action” with “action” interpreted literally. That is wrongheaded, in my opinion. Good advice deployed badly turns into a crime. It might be more productive to think of “in media res” as meaning, beginning in the thick of the situation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2p1dcsz5x6ckq0yr2cdqcp)) - a little sharpening of her attention that brings us out of the general into the specific and particular. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2p4z1f8kvv7bh45afh6vyn)) - A good opening answers the questions: who the fuck are these people and what are they going through and where are they going through it? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2ptz4zd4t0qwb3t9adx5y5)) - A good opening concretizes as it descends: we move from stating what the character is going through to depicting what the character is going through. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2pv6zh5m3wby78y8wqtsf1)) - A good opening stays on task. It proceeds in the direction of elaborating the dramatic situation at hand. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2pw28mg3x2vq9sw51n3m48)) - A good opening *reveals* more than it conceals. The objective of an opening is to disclose, not to cover up or withhold. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2pwkvyv9p965jy0k4tdg7s)) - Your story should grow deeper and stranger through *disclosure* rather than withholding. Secrecy is cheap. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jp2px32q08fcqz4rx1bh50zv))