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Either is fine. But they have slightly different... connotations. "In the beginning" makes most people in the western world think/associate that ancient book called the (Christian) Bible. Which ...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T01:31:41Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2530 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Jürgen A. Erhard
·
2019-12-08T01:31:41Z (about 5 years ago)
Either is fine. But they have slightly different... connotations.
"In the beginning" makes most people in the western world think/associate that ancient book called the (Christian) Bible. Which starts out with "In the beginning" ;-)
So, it gets a more epic feel right off the bat than if I started with "At the beginning". "At the beginning" is more modern-sounding (to my ears, anyway).
And "At the beginning" makes me automatically think of a state more than a process ("In" is more neutral that way). So, "At the beginning of our tale, Marco is standing in his workshop" is something I would expect.
Hmm, come to think of it some more, this sounds like a synopsis more than an actual book. Or maybe it's not a question about writing fiction but about writing non-fiction? Or writing non-fiction about fiction? ;-) If so, then my answer is probably way off.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2011-04-17T11:09:19Z (over 13 years ago)
Original score: 1