Writing prompt #117: YOUR OPENING (REDUX)

Hi Everyone,

You’ve heard time and again how crucial the opening to your work is, how it’s a seduction, an invitation to your world, how it offers tantalizing promises to the reader, the DNA of what’s to come—thematically as well as linguistically

So instead of repeating what you already know, please (re)read the deceptively simple opening paragraph of Mexican novelistJuan Rulfo’s PEDRO PÁRAMO:

I came to Comala because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Páramo. That’s what my mother told me. And I promised her I’d come see him as soon as she died. I squeezed her hand as a sign I would. After all, she was near death, and I was of a mind to promise her anything. “Don’t fail to visit him—she urged—. Some call him one thing, some another. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.“ That’s why I couldn’t refuse her, and after agreeing so many times I just kept at it until I had to struggle to free my hands from hers, which were now without life.

(New translation by Douglas J. Weatherford)

YOUR PROMPT: Rewrite your opening until it sings. Until it seduces. Until it’s irresistible.

Enjoy!

Abrazos,

Cristina