So I’m writing this other thread and I notice that I started it with “So” and start thinking of how often I do that. And I think about why, and then immediately start to think about sentences beginning with “And”. but that’s another thread…
I came up with some justifications. Starting a narrative with “So” suggests to me a more intimate connection between writer and reader – more like describing your experience to a buddy rather than to an anonymous audience. I aso think of it as a word of punctuation, like a warning of “non-sequitor ahead”. I think it’s also a way of suggesting a relative lack of importance or urgency of what is to follow, “So [here’s another little ditty]…”
Anyway, I probably use “So” more than I should. possibly more than I overuse the word “Anyway”.
Seamus Heaney had some thoughts on the matter, too. In his translation of Beowulf, he rendered the first word “Hwæt” as “so”:
In his introduction, he remarked, “But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak […] “so” operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention.”
I agree with the OP and with Heaney. I don’t remember ever starting a story that way, but I’m fine with it. I think it might even work better onstage than in print.
I remember noticing in my misspent youth that characters in Heinlein novels often responded to a dubious statement with a single critical “So?”
Fine for a unique creation, but when the jarring syllable fell from the lips of very different characters in several different books, I lost a jot of my willing suspension of disbelief.
So. Just saying you might not want to put it in the mouth of more than one character at a time.
I have been meaning to Pit this usage since about 1994 when I started using Usenet and the Web. I find the use of “So” in that way extremely jarring and invasive and I need it to be stopped world-wide immediately. My initial reaction is “WE WEREN’T HAVING A CONVERSATION!” when I someone begins a conversation with “So”. Imagine if strangers just walked up to you one day and started every conversation with “So”. That implies there is some lengthy history to the conversation which there isn’t. Don’t use it.
I start some of my blog entries with “so” but then, if you’re reading it, aren’t you involved in a lengthy pseudo-conversation? One sided, true, but you’re engaged with what came before, aren’t you? Many posts are the same, particularly if the poster is writing about something that has connections to other threads.
I see nothing wrong with it - in general theory, at least. It depends upon the effect you’re attempting to get across - like you said it’s very intimate, and implies and engenders a certain amount of familiarity between the writer and the reader, that’s fully appropriate for a forum like this, personal correspondance, or certain works of fiction.
Newspaper reportage, business correspandance, or academic essays, of course, would not be environments where you should be using such familiar terms, but in the case presumed in the OP, it’s just fine.
