How do we begin a tale? Let’s say we start with ‘Once upon a time,’ and go on to – what then?
Usually in the most simple form of tale (such as I write, being a naif myself) we go on to the ‘status quo ante’ or how things are before things start happening, or in other words, what was it like before the story got under way?
In the notions of Frank Daniel, this ideally will occupy the opening sequence to a screenplay and movie. ‘Here is our hero, here is his world,’ comes before, ‘One day it all changed.’
Our focus in this post is on those two little words: one day.
The easiest way to look at the matter is by way of verb tense. What goes after ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘one day’ will be in the past imperfect tense, because it was going on for a long time, seemingly forever, until ‘one day’ everything changed. What comes after ‘one day’ is in the simple past tense.
An example:
Once upon a time there was a princess who was the loveliest princess in the land. Every morning she would go play with her golden ball.
One day the ball rolled out of the castle grounds into the marsh at the edge of the wood.
Now when I read this sort of opening, I experience a kind of a little jolt or bump when it comes to those two words, one day. They mark a leap out of one sort of telling mode into another. And it strikes me as too rough, or too obvious, somehow, but then … how do I get around it?
How do I drop ‘one day’ from the text?
Here is one way, the way I remember Hansel and Gretel begins in the Brothers Grimm:
Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter and his wife and two children, and the names of the children were Hansel, or little Hans, and Gretel. They were very poor, and never had enough to eat, and things got no better for them as time went on.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ said the Mother to the Father. ‘You must get rid of the children, or we will all starve.’
‘That’s very true,’ said the Father, ‘but every time I look at the little darlings my heart won’t let me be cruel to them.’
‘All well and good,’ said the Mother. ‘And yet you’ll have to do it.’
What the couple didn’t know was that Gretel lay awake in the straw alongside her brother, and she heard every word. And when she heard those cruel words, the blood in her ran cold, and she shivered.
‘Sister, why do you shiver so?’ asked Hansel, waking.
‘Oh, brother,’ she answered with a whisper, ‘I’ve just heard the most horrible things!’
Here the jump into dialogue gets us past the one day without having to say it. (On the other hand, we could also frame the conversation between Mother and Father as an argument of long standing, and part of the status quo ante and follow it with a ‘one day, the Father could bear his wife’s nagging no longer, and took the children out into the woods with him.’)
So there are ways to slip past the one day.
But do we really want to?
Though one day jolts us when we read it, it serves its purpose well simply because it is so obvious. ‘Hey readers! That was prologue, now the real story is about to begin!’ Doesn’t it help us readers to see those two little words, the way it helps us to see a street sign or a label on a package?
I don’t know the answer, and find myself torn. But it’s good to think about this sort of thing, and make up your own mind.
(Composed on keyboard 26 March 2009)
