Story introductions - yes or no?

[joy_of_cooking]

(edit: I was too slow tracking down my references so it's no longer clear that this was meant as a response to @pink_silk_glove saying that introductions were only for bad and lazy authors.)

I'll quote the opening paragraph of Aunt Mary's Nylons:

This took place in 1966. A time when the fashion called for women too wear girdles, garters, and shiny ultra sheer reinforced heel and toe nylons, spiked heel pumps/mules daily! A time when my fetish for nylons was young and in full bloom!

If you check out the author's other stories, you'll see that they all start with approximately those words, and they're all rated 4.49+ with hundreds of thousands of views and dozens of favorites.

One might argue that these numbers aren't the best measures of authorial skill or diligence, or that these stories succeeded despite rather than because of their introductions. These would both be reasonable arguments.

Nonetheless, if I had to pick imitating an author with those numbers and an author without them, I know which way I would go.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which is perfectly valid. But there's no reason you couldn't do it differently. "Of course, in those days I couldn't just use Google Maps to figure out where I was. I kept driving and hoped for the best."

That's bringing today into yesterday, though.

Writing your own period piece is easy if your memory is any good, and you put yourself back into the moment. There's no need to relate anything to today's "now", because the story's "now" is back then, and should be written that way.

And if readers don't know their history, that's their problem, not your's as the writer. It's no different to me writing stories with an Australian vibe - I don't explain myself in those either.

 

[Bamagan]

Has anyone else ever looked at a five-gallon bucket, and specifically the little drawing of a toddler tipping into it as a warning to consumers that it presents some kind of a hazard to small children? I can't help but wonder how many died before they started slapping it on every bucket they make. I suppose you could argue one such death would be tragedy enough to promote a change of policy, but it would also be easy to rationalize it away as a terrible but bizarre accident, at least until it keeps happening.
What's my point? Just that the warnings and prefaces we find necessary are often the ones we couldn't foresee. An introduction to tell us something we already know might be a little tedious, but maybe the author was surprised in the past by someone giving them grief for not explaining that 'gay' meant happy once upon a time. Or that 'rubbers' could refer to rainproof boots instead of condoms, leaving the uninformed reader wondering why the characters were wearing condoms outside and then leaving them next to the door. Those are rather absurd examples, obviously, but when I see an author feel the need to clarify such things I always just assume they've got a bucket o'baby from their audience at some point and it left them traumatized.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I usually don't put too many "warnings" on my stories.

That said, I wrote a dark comedy/horror piece for the Halloween contest one year and figured it would only be fair of me to warn off readers who might not enjoy certain aspects of the story.

So I threw this in at the beginning:

Authors Forward: Story contains violence, gore, non-consent and incest. Just what any good horror story needs, right?

Tried to inject a little humor in it while letting readers know in advance it was gonna get messy.

I don't put any warnings, if somebody is triggered by anything I write, well it's their own fault that they read it.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I will add to this that it is sometimes hard to get confident as a writer. You deal with certain kinks, certain issues, and worry sometimes about whether your readers will be into what you write and whether you might get shamed for it. Certain mental disorders can make the problem worse (bipolar is one of mine). My advice? Do whatever you need to do to get confident in your story, put it out if you’re comfortable with it and scrap it if you’re not. Plenty of entertainment on the web either way.

That's true. I'm not near popular anywhere I write and write actively, especially Wattpad. As far as success goes, here is the best, not saying much. Sometimes all the stats come off as a deterent not to write, but I keep pressing on, I'm bound to get it right eventually. Usually if I write something, it's going to be published somewhere, regardless of how bad it might be. I only have three things I scrapped and only because I just couldn't get them to go anywhere. One of those three was a story on here called Becca's Story- the only thing I've ever removed from here, similar to Pagan's Revenge, now that I think about it. That one is probably just as bad, but it was finished and here it is, to annoy, entertain, or confuse the masses.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

You should be able to tell the time period by just reading the story. The story should just convey it.. To state it as a disclaimer is basically copping out.

Well that just depends on how the story was written. Even then certain pop culture references, if there is any, or a nod to something might not reveal an exact year or era. If I said a character popped in a Red Hot Chile Pepper cd in their Crown Vic, what year would you think it is? Depending on what one knows to what's read; CD's have been around since 1978, RHCP has been active(to my knowledge) since 1979, and the Crown Victoria as a model and not a trim existed from 1979-2011.

A story may not convey it. Niether of my Amorous Goods stories elude to a decade in which they might take place. Several things can give away an idea, bellbottoms might give off 70s vibes, but they were also popular from late 90s until about mid00s sometimes called flares or flared jeans. If somebody for some reason said how they missed Pizza Huts Big Foot pizza, one can at least assume it takes place after 1997. If somebody whipped out their Nokia Sidekick, clearly that story takes place between 2003-2006. Sometimes a story isn't as obvious as a movie, where you can just spot the newest car on the road, or see an earlier logo of something popular, like a soda or bag of chips, that's constant.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

In desperate need of some soothing music, I popped in Beethoven's sixth, but to my deep frustration, the tape was the one that unwound, and indeed was so mangled in the process that the Pastoral sounded more like nails on chalkboard.

"Damn this eight track," I cursed, throwing it out the window of my 1981 Mustang.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Sometimes I write intros, sometimes I don't. If I do, it's probably to provide a bit of backstory, or set a scene. Even then, some or most of that can be intersparsed throughout the story in conversation. "Remember that time you got stuck in the gap of that fence, and every dude decided to fuck you instead of help?" When I say set a scene, I don't neccessarily mean info dump. "It was a dark and stormy night..."-Snoopy.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

An introduction to tell us something we already know might be a little tedious, but maybe the author was surprised in the past by someone giving them grief for not explaining that 'gay' meant happy once upon a time

In that case the author is just worried about negative feedback and low scores, which just means he's (in no small part) writing just for applause. He's writing to boost the ego and the disclaimer is just to keep it from bruising. You can do it of you want, but whenever I see that (and I'm not nearly the only one) it's just a put off. It may or may not stop me from reading on but it certainly starts things off on the wrong foot.

 

[AlinaX]

I like to start with an Intro where I tell the readers that if they leave negative comments, I will treat them like the ignorant assholes they obviously are.

 

[Djmac1031]

This is the intro to my story.

There's people in it. And things happen to them. Oh, and they do stuff, too.

There's lots of words, and people talking to each other, and when they're not talking they're either thinking, or doing the aforementioned stuff.

There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that order.

I hope you like it. If you do, please tell me in comments.

And of you don't like it, well, you're a silly dumb headed basement dwelling dweeb with no obvious grasp of literature and should keep your stupid obviously wrong opinions to yourself.

Enjoy.

 

[Bamagan]

There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that order.

Except for stories in the Anal category, where one typically starts at the end and works forward.