In November 2007, ej runyon of Halifax posted "13 ways to start your novel" on the NaNoWriMo forums. Saheen of London added five more ideas in the comment thread.
The personal college essay is not a novel, or even fiction, but it is your story. So I repeat the opening ideas here for their worth as adaptable constructs for starting any story, including your personal college essay. I also add two more ideas for a total of 20.
These come with no warranties. Use at your own peril! And have fun.
1. Frame your story.
eg. In his dreams, the old baker does not notice the cracking sound in Raymond's chest. (here framed in the narrator's dream)
2. Say the most important thing on your mind.
eg. I know I'm dying.
3. Say the most important thing that sets up a scenario.
eg. First thing in the morning, they'll be coming for Suzette and Daniel. My babies.
4. Show your frame of mind.
eg. My voices are all on the inside, afraid to come out.
5. Jump into the middle.
eg. Today it will simply not happen again.
6. Tell something provocative.
eg. She sounded so damn good on the phone.
7. Narrate, establishing a dilemma, even a small dilemma.
eg. It took hours to find the exact shade of blue polo shirt he used to wear back when he was the assistant manager of the Globe Tire Shop in Torrance.
8. Open with a letter, e-mail, or blog post.
eg. My Dear Loved One, This is me, finally doing as the judge ordered and working the courage up to write.
9. Narrate an introduction from a memory.
eg. When we were both fifteen, Anna stood in the center of Pius X Girl's Senior High quad, smiled, winked, and started yelling. Out came every cuss word that she knew or could make up for the occasion.
10. Start with an emotional memory.
eg. What I remember most from that day was his nails. Thin bands of bone white, curt in length, like the words he had for my mother.
11. Open with conflict.
eg. The guy at the back table, the one rustling his newspaper every five seconds, Bobby'd take him out first.
12. Start with sights, smells, sensations.
eg. Crystal hadn't opened her eyes yet when she smelled the stench. Roses. She hated roses. She peeked out from under the sheet and saw the huge glass vase on the night stand; looking rosy, smelling like death.
13. Begin with a song that evokes memories.
eg. The first time Pauline ever heard Rod Stewart sing "The Killing of Georgie" she was in the Fox Hills mall parking lot, waiting in the back seat of Vita's white '69 Impala. It was southern California, November 1976. She was 19 and she thought to herself: this is the best song Bob Dylan's ever done.
14. Say "here I am."
eg. "Call me Ishmael." (MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville).
eg. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." (DAVID COPPERFIELD, by Charles Dickens)
15. Introduce the family.
eg. "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee)
16. Begin a journey.
eg. "An ordinary young man was on his way from his hometown of Hamburg to Davon-Platz in the canton of Graubunden. It was the height of summer, and he planned to stay for three weeks." (THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, by Thomas Mann)
17.Use shock to grab attention.
eg. "Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die." (FIGHT CLUB, by Chuck Palahniuk)
18. Make a broad statement.
eg. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." (A TALE OF TWO CITIES, by Charles Dickens)
eg. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy)
19. Borrow a quote (and attribute it).
eg. "Up to now I've done everything I've wanted to do the way I wanted to do myself." Hasil Adkins
20. Use irony or a tongue-in-cheek sketch
eg. "On top of everything, the cancer ward was number 13." (THE CANCER WARD by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
eg. "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." (HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, by J.K. Rowling)
