Aaron Holmes
When it comes to opening descriptive lines, some fall flat while others transport us to a place, giving readers a powerful sense of location and mood. Take, for example, the following excellent descriptive openings from literature.
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.
Jack London, White Fang
It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale.
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
Through a few well-chosen details, each gives a clear and powerful sense of setting, of the essential feel and features of a place. And because of this, they all make great opening lines for descriptive compositions.
A strong opening line can be the difference between a descriptive composition that soars and one that never gets off the ground, and writing one is not as difficult as it might seem. The secret is to use carefully chosen details that punch above their weight, what I call load-bearing details.
What are load-bearing details?
Load-bearing details are the facts about your setting that communicate its essential characteristics, like the type of setting (kitchen, park, etc.), the time of day, or the feeling of the place.
These details do the heavy work of the piece because they govern the interpretation of most other details that follow. They serve as the foundation upon which the rest of the descriptive composition builds, and because of this, they must come first.
In Jack London’s line, “Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway,” each word carries a lot of weight.
Take, for example, the first four words of the line. “Spruce forest” gives a clear picture of a northern wood, and the adjective “dark” conveys the thickness and wildness of the place while also conveying a sense of menace or danger, especially when combined with the forest’s personified frowning. Those four words do a great deal of work!
Prioritize mood, geography, and weather
Most load-bearing details fall into one of three categories: mood, geography, and weather. By addressing these categories in your first line, you are all but guaranteed to create an effective opening.
Tone/mood: The feeling of the place.
In the hospital waiting room, rows of hard plastic chairs languished under buzzing fluorescent lights.
Geography/physical features: The most prominent physical elements of the place (this may be an outside location or an inside location).
The neighborhood consisted of modest but cheerfully painted houses snuggled up to tree-lined streets.
Weather and light: The physical atmosphere and lighting.
The night air was warm and sticky, and colored light spilled from the stalls lining the street, carrying with it the powerful aromas of a dozen different cuisines.
Keeping it concise
You may worry that trying to fit details relating to mood, physical features, weather, and light all into a single opening sentence would lead to some very wordy and overly-long constructions. Take the following as an example.
Tall buildings loomed into a cold, gray, and cloudy sky as frigid rain pelted the concrete streets, and pedestrians ran for shelter from the ferocity of the storm.
The key is to be judicious in your choice of details. Rather than listing every detail separately, look for efficient details, single elements that communicate multiple things at once. Using efficient details, we can transform the previous opening line into something much more concise.
Frigid rain lashed the city streets, scattering pedestrians like leaves.
Here, “frigid rain lashed” communicates mood, weather, and light while “city streets” describes the physical setting. The “scattering pedestrians” underscore the previous elements but also imply the scene is set during the day when more people are out.
Of all the tools available for building a concise but information-rich opening line, one stands out as uniquely powerful: the name of the setting itself.
The most powerful load-bearing detail of all: the name of the setting
If I say the word “beach,” what immediately comes to mind? Probably someplace sunny and warm, maybe even tropical. Do you imagine calm waters, beautiful sand, and clear skies? I do.
Now, imagine a hike in the forest; what comes to mind now? Is it tall trees and sunlight filtering through a green canopy? Is the weather mild or even crisp with the fresh smell of nature all around?
Simply stating the setting in the opening line (a beach, a hospital waiting room, a cabin) allows the reader to bring up a whole palette of relevant images and sensations in their imagination which they can use to paint in the details of the scene.
As a writer, you can’t possibly cover every single detail of a place, object, or event. You can only serve as a guide, sketching the outlines, and the reader uses the artistry of her imagination to design the rest.
By stating the setting, you bring to bear all the powerful images and associations stored in the mind of the reader. It is an effective and practical strategy which builds a truly strong sense of place.
However, relying on the reader’s assumptions about a place comes with some risks.
Anticipate and correct assumptions that clash with your vision
Naming the setting causes vivid details to pop into the reader’s mind. But what about when your idea of a place differs from the reader’s assumptions? What if, instead of being tropical and sunny, your beach is cold and stormy? What if your hike isn’t verdant and crisp, but mountainous and icy?
If you name the setting but don’t get ahead of the reader’s assumptions, you risk throwing their imaginary world into constant chaos and revision as each new detail of your description clashes with their assumptions.
Take, for example, the following opening paragraph.
The hikers took deep breaths of the forest air as they filed up the path. Above them, the sky was absolutely clear from horizon to horizon. Stars glittered like shimmering ice. A biting, steady wind hissed through the pines, whipping against their jackets, pants, and hoods as they trudged along the ridgeline in the darkness.
Did you experience a somewhat disorienting reframing of the scene between the second and third lines? Up to that point, most readers likely were imagining a daytime hike in beautiful weather. Yet beginning in the third line, we find out that the hike is, in fact, happening at night, that the weather is windy and cold, and that the hikers are traversing a mountainous ridgeline. Each progressive sentence adds more unexpected details, causing readers to have to radically change their mental image each time. The end result is a somewhat frustrating and unnecessarily confusing paragraph.
What if the author had anticipated and addressed the reader’s assumptions about the setting by including key details about the time of day (night), weather (cold and windy), and geography (mountainous ridges) in the very first line instead of leaving them until later in the paragraph?
By frontloading these unexpected details about the scene, we can get a much stronger opening paragraph.
The hikers filed up the icy ridgeline under a clear night sky pierced with stars that glittered like shimmering ice. A biting, steady wind hissed through the mountain pines, whipping against their jackets, pants, and hoods. Through their mufflers, they took deep breaths of the forest air, filling their lungs each time with fresh pinpricks of cold.
A litmus test for success
If you aren’t fully sure whether your opening line works, simply ask yourself: If someone read only this sentence, would they be imagining roughly the right kind of place?
If you aren’t fully sure, run through a quick checklist:
- Did you state the setting and communicate the essentials of mood, geography, and weather?
- Did you correct any assumptions that clash with your vision?
If you still aren’t sure, ask a friend, teacher or parent to read the line. Did what they imagined match what you intended?
It may take a draft or two before your opening line does everything it needs to, and that’s fine. The important thing is knowing what you’re aiming for. Now try it for yourself.
9093 English 