Once Upon A Time by Allison Symes

Image Credits:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images.

Once upon a time is the classic beginning for fairytales. Those fuelled my love of reading. It is a great shorthand way of showing you  this story is a fantastical one.

From the classic fairytales, I discovered C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and then Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, plus much more besides.

This classic fairytale opening line should inspire us with our story beginnings. Once upon a time sets a genre, the fact the time isn’t the present day, and leads you into what follows. Our opening lines need to show something of a genre, the setting, and a sense of what is to follow. 

With a crime story, I am expecting in those opening lines to either know what the crime is because the author opens with it, or I meet the victim, or I meet who will investigate the crime which is about to happen. No question of what the genre is here either. It is shown through those characters.

I love stories which open with dialogue for the great reason it does feel like I’m eavesdropping on an interesting conversation. At least I can do it legitimately here! 

I like a sense of when the story is set so again time comes into a good opening line. This can be done via dialogue. The manner of speech will reflect the era in which the tale is set. Character names can give a good indication of time too (though be aware some names come back into fashion again every so often).

Once upon a time is a direct invitation for us to suspend our disbelief as we read what follows for fairytales. But our stories should do this without necessarily using those words. If your opening lines were something you were reading by someone else, would these grip you? Does the dialogue intrigue you? Is the setting of interest?

I’ve found a useful question to ask myself is what is in this for the reader? It makes me think twice about whether my character is coming across clearly enough. Can readers understand my character and see what drives them? If a reader can get inside a character’s head, they are far more likely to want to follow that character’s story through. Certainly this is the case for me.

Once upon a time also heralds the classic Rule of Three coming into the fairytale to follow. As a child, I knew on the third time of something happening in the story, something else would change which would lead to the classic happy ever after ending (in most cases. There are exceptions such as The Little Mermaid). 

We use that Rule of Three in our own stories. It is also a reflection of the classic three act structure for plays. We know there must be a beginning, a middle, an end. Once upon a time gives us our starting point. What will our characters do to take things from there?