Openings in Stories

I recently attended a writing workshop led by Tom Jenks, editor and co-founder of Narrative Magazine. He offered some guidelines for writers including the following: “The beginning of a story must posit the initial events from which everything must follow.” Jenks relies heavily on the notions of fiction found in Aristotle’s Poetics. You can go to the website www.narrativemagazine.info and get Jenks’ advise to writers. In the rewriting of a current story I am working on, I am writing and rewriting that initial event to contain the tactile, the emotions, the metaphorical underpinnings of the story. In a nutshell, it isn’t easy.