Monday, September 28, 2015

Fantastic Beginnings: A Contest Idea

The other day I was contemplating the beginnings of stories. My stories in particular. Have you often found yourself chewing fingernails over your book's first sentence? It's so hard sometimes to come up with original, creative, one-of-a-kind beginnings when you're working on a story. You always want your story to pull a reader into it within the first couple sentences, and keep them enthralled throughout the rest of the book.
Popular beginnings like the classic:
"Once upon a time..."
"A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
Just don't work for stories all the time. And besides, they've been used so much, or for such popular things that everyone would recognize them, that you hate to use them for your own precious book.
However, the great story writers of past ages and even the present age have managed to pull of awesome starts. A sentence, or even part of a sentence, that makes you want to read the rest of their book.
After reading some of them, I decided that a fun game could be made out of their work. I would give you either the first whole sentence, or part of a sentence, of the beginnings of books you should have read. They're all pretty famous, and I purposely added some that everyone would know. To warn you, and give you a hint, one of the options will be the beginning of one of my books. :) I'm not ranking myself with Charles Dickens or C. S. Lewis by any means, but I thought it would probably be an easy one for those of you who have followed my story blog. ;)
So here are the basic rules for you if you're up to this game:

1: Read all story beginnings. (They would be numbered for your convenience)
2: Decide which book you think they came from. (Give a title next to the number of the story's beginning in your comment)
3. Publish your comment. (I would not publish any of the comments until the contest "time" was over.)
4: Each correct answer will be worth 10 "points".
5: Please don't look the answers up until AFTER you publish your comment. It wouldn't be fair, or fun, if all of you get 100% on this. Be honest.

Once about a week or so has gone by, I'll post the answers and how many y'all got right in the order of who commented their answers first.
Sound fun?
Let me know so I can start this game next time I post! :)
God bless you all, and sorry about the length between posts...it'll get better I hope. ;)


9 comments:

  1. That sounds like a lot of fun!! I'd love to do it! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This sounds like a very fun idea Rebekah! I would definitely participate...though I might not do so well. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like fun. :) And I can think of a few starters as well. :) It'll be fun to see what you come up with.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rebekah, don't forget the rule about not googling any of the lines.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm not sure how well I'd do, but it would be such fun!!!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm with Faith, I might totally fail, but it will be fun!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you all so much for your comments! I'll definitely be doing this game!! Hope you all have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yes this looks like it would be really fun to participate in! :)

    ReplyDelete

I LOVE COMMENTS. But be warned, if your comment is impolite, contains swear words, or is disrespectful of God, I will kill it. Just kidding. ;)
(Seriously though...it WILL DIE.)

Blog Tour for Project Canvas!! *cue intense celebration*

GUYS, I couldn't be more excited to share about this incredible book that is going to be available for you to get your hands on in just ...