17 ways to start a story

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At the Capricon science fiction convention earlier this month, I led a writing workshop.

“It’s A Start: A Workshop On Your First Paragraph — A good opening paragraph for a story or novel will carry the work to success. In this workshop, we will consider seventeen different ways to start a work of fiction, explore how each one will affect the reader, and evaluate the promise it sets for the story.”

Opening paragraphs are hard to write because so much rides on them. They should evoke the tone, voice, setting, genre, characters, stakes, conflict, trajectory, intrigue, point of view, grab attention, make readers feel they’re in skillful hands, and be interesting for the reader — or some of this, at least. Different kinds of opening paragraphs let you focus on the elements that matter to the story you want to tell.

Seventeen is a somewhat arbitrary number, but these openings offer a clue to the breadth of possibilities available. You could start with something unexpected, an image, action, simplicity, questions, curiosity, quotes, a frame, dialogue, emotion, captivation, philosophy, change, the protagonist, setting, a prologue, or flash-forward.

You can download a PDF here that explains each one and offers a couple of examples. Happy writing!

Two reasons not to hate the Super Bowl

/ Sue Burke / 2 Comments

This Sunday evening, February 8, two football teams will be playing in Super Bowl LX. I’m not going to argue that you should care or even like NFL football, but I want to suggest two reasons to respect the sport.

1. Play. If you watch the game, you will see the players giving 100 percent to something that they love to do. It’s called playing the game for a reason. How often do we get to watch people working hard and doing their best with exhilaration?

This is true of all sports, of course, and performing arts, and a lot of other professions. Teaching a classroom requires just as much skill and concentrated devotion, and it deserves just as much hype. It’s rarely televised, though. So, rather than cheering as a teacher proficiently fields a surprise question and turns it into a revelation for the class, you can watch a quarterback dodge a sack and complete a long pass. Enjoy the metaphor — and imagine if teachers, staff, and students could come to school every day with the same celebration as taking the field at the Super Bowl.

2. Controlled violence. Football is a brutal, violent sport by design, but it is controlled violence. Players and non-player personnel must obey eight dense pages of regulations regarding their conduct in the NFL Rulebook, which forbids moves that could injure another player, unnecessary roughness, late hits, kicking, tripping, unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting, and violent gestures. The offender’s team can be punished with penalties like the loss of yardage, and the individual can be thrown out of the game.

Players must and can control themselves on the football field. No excuses. This lesson doesn’t always make it off the field and into the minds of fans, but it should. Violence is a deliberate choice. Football shows us how to choose wisely even in moments of extreme emotion.

Treasure, alien life, and ghosts

/ Sue Burke / 2 Comments

I know of two supposed sunken treasures of gold in Wisconsin, one in Lake Michigan and one in Lake Mendota, both dating back to the Civil War. I’ve researched the one in Lake Michigan and even have the treasure map which locates the gold near Poverty Island Shoal at the tip of Door Peninsula, but I haven’t decided to go hunt for it. I don’t think these treasures exist.

What interests me is why these stories stay alive. Lies are common as leaves in a forest, so why keep certain ones?

First, there’s a simple wish for sudden wealth, the motive force behind lotteries.

Second, legends often say that treasures, buried or sunken, are guarded by leprechauns, mermaids, or at least a curse — by beings alien and magic to our existence. It’s a wish for a livelier universe. In the same way, some of us hope for life on Mars or Andromeda, which would also be a real treasure.

Third, it’s a wish to preserve and honor the past by keeping stories alive. Ghosts work the same way. I met a woman whose neighbors told her the troubled presence she noticed on the stairway of the house she’d just bought was of a teenager who had committed suicide some 50 years earlier because he was gay. She hung a gay pride poster in the stairway to soothe him, and it seemed to work.

Most importantly, treasure is real. Sometimes — at Troy and in the Caribbean — gold is found, and then our wishes are confirmed. I can see Mars at night, and I might be watching Martians. If there are ghosts, I have visited haunted houses. When I lived in Milwaukee, someone else in that city named Susan Burke (not me) won the Supercash lottery. Riches await, if we keep searching.

X marks the spot.

Go Ahead — Write This Story: Keeping it short

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Once again, you curse the gods of literature: Your “short story” turned out to be the first chapter of a novel, and you really wanted a short story. How do you keep things short? Try to limit the number of important characters to two or three. Use one point of view. Keep the conflict simple, the way that postage stamp artwork is memorable but simple. Compress the time frame. Aim for a single effect. Include only the most essential information. If you need a short story idea, here are a few.

• This is a fantasy story in which a gem broker becomes obsessed over a new kind of stone that appears at a roadside market.

• This is young adult story in which a panic-stricken alien learns self-defense from a dog.

• This is a competence p0rn story about an incorrigible lunar pioneer who endangers the settlement by sloppy habits that introduce lunar dust, which has damaging and dangerous sharp edges, into living and working quarters.

Works eligible for awards

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Here are some things published in 2025 that you may wish to consider nominating for an award — just a reminder. Some are my own works, some are my translations.

Science fiction and fantasy short stories by me

“To Defeat Water” Short story, 1175 words. If you curse Poseidon, he might curse you, too, time and time again. And life after life, you can fight back. Read it here: The Lorelei Signal, July 2025.

“Journey to Apollodorus” Novelette, 8760 words. In my novel Dual Memory, an AI named Par Augustus discovers a story about robots in the Apollodorus Crater on Mercury. This is the story. It focuses on the humans who struggle to create and maintain a scientific team when a lander sent to Mercury behaves unexpectedly. Success can be as stressful as failure. Oxygen Leaks Magazine, March 2025 (no longer in publication, contact me for a copy).

Novella translation

ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado. Translation of a novella, 20,200 words. Would you sacrifice your humanity to save the world? Nominated for Spain’s Ignotus Award, this strange coming-of-age story addresses life after an environmental disaster, collective madness, and sacrifices made for the greater good. Buy it here: Apex Books, January 2025.

Science fiction short story translations

“Trees at Night” by Ramiro Sanchiz. Translation of a short story, 6050 words. A librarian at a hospital-like sanatorium befriends a young patient named Federico for reasons that eventually become clear. Read it here: Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, November 2025.

“Proxima One” by Caryanna Reuven. Translation of a short story, 4020 words. A machine intelligence called Proxima One sends probes into the galaxy on long journeys filled with waiting and yearning in a search for intelligent life. The probes cope with unexpected wonders, loss, and profound changes — but there is always possibility and hope. Read it here: Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, May 2025.

“Bodyhoppers” by Rocío Vega. Translation of a short story, 5290 words. Minds can hop from body to body, but there’s always a problem because the system is designed to create them. One day, you can’t return to your own body because it’s occupied by someone with more money. Now you have no home, and you’re still madly in love. Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, February 2025.

Poetry translation

Liquid Sand / Arena Líquida by Jorge Valdés Díaz-Vélez. Book of poetry translated by Christian Law Palacín and myself. This is the first major bilingual collection of poems by Jorge Valdés Díaz-Vélez, one of Mexico’s most respected contemporary poets. It gathers 42 of his works selected from six previous collections that span more than two decades of writing. Shearsman Books, November 2025.