The beginning of a story

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

How does one write the start of a story? I’m saying this because when I was writing the Prince’s Journey and shared it on shown your work. Some of the people here say that it doesn’t work well as a start (to clarify, it’s the start of a surrealist fantasy story of young boy trapped on a strange world). Not helped by the fact that it is a first draft. If you have any suggestions, I’m willing to listen. That’s all I have to say.

 

[Helix]

Everyone has their own take on this, but one approach is to not worry about the opening -- just write any old tosh to get things started -- until you have finished the story and know what it's about.

Then go back and worry about the opening.

 

[Maryn]

Go to a physical bookstore and find the shelves where your novel would be shelved if it were completed and trade published. Read twenty first pages. Then thirty more. Buy the two whose openings appeal to you the most. Study the openings until you understand why.

 

[Unimportant]

I agree with @Helix: it's unlikely an author will nail a perfect beginning until after they've nailed the perfect middle and the perfect end.

In addition, there are aspects of the craft of fiction writing that the author can help present any scene (opening or not) in a way that makes it more appealing to the reader. Knowing how and when to use 'showing' versus 'telling', action versus description, dialogue versus internal monologue, grammatically perfect English versus deliberate sentence fragments or run-ons, are all useful to apply when writing (and editing).

If a new writer doesn't feel they have these skills under their belt, there are heaps of how-to-write (and how-to-edit) books on the craft available for purchase or library loan. Nobody's born knowing how to write fiction, any more than they're born knowing how to write a scientific journal article or a newspaper story -- and even if they know how to do one of those, the skills don't wholly transfer to those other media.

Alternatively, some folks find it useful to spend a few hundred hours reading James Macdonald's threads on how to write a novel:
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim part one
and
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim part two

 

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

I agree with @Helix: it's unlikely an author will nail a perfect beginning until after they've nailed the perfect middle and the perfect end.

In addition, there are aspects of the craft of fiction writing that the author can help present any scene (opening or not) in a way that makes it more appealing to the reader. Knowing how and when to use 'showing' versus 'telling', action versus description, dialogue versus internal monologue, grammatically perfect English versus deliberate sentence fragments or run-ons, are all useful to apply when writing (and editing).

If a new writer doesn't feel they have these skills under their belt, there are heaps of how-to-write (and how-to-edit) books on the craft available for purchase or library loan. Nobody's born knowing how to write fiction, any more than they're born knowing how to write a scientific journal article or a newspaper story -- and even if they know how to do one of those, the skills don't wholly transfer to those other media.

Alternatively, some folks find it useful to spend a few hundred hours reading James Macdonald's threads on how to write a novel:
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim part one
and
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim part two

Sounds good. I’ll spend some time with writing something. Thank you

 

[Woollybear]

First, I apologize humbly if I was too harsh on your excerpt. I don't recall if it was one of the ones I gave feedback on. It's true that an unpolished excerpt runs the risk of getting lots of critique... A polished excerpt has other risks attached. We're all doing our best.

I like Maryn's answer ... and did basically that, for my current historical fiction project. Then I wrote opening pages in the style of four of my favorite books, out of perhaps a hundred looked at. THEN I put the first two hundred words of those four openings up to see what other people, here, thought. That post is here and you can see there are four different 'page one' excerpts in the first post, and critters ranked them for me.

I remain so, so appreciative of everyone's feedback on that thread.

One of the things I learned was that different openings were liked by different people. Big surprise, I guess? Maybe not? In the end I chose to take two of them which did marginally better overall, and I'm now developing into two different versions of the same basic story.

It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but this whole writing thing is so hard already I figured I might learn something new by taking a different approach.

So, in your shoes, I'll second Maryn's advice. Read lots of 'page one' openings at the library or wherever and try to figure out what is working for you in that opening. Also, remember that although this is a big forum, it does not represent readers across the board and across the world. Your opening might be great as it stands! All we can do is try to help each other and have a good time.

 

[Sage]

If you are worrying about the beginning scene, that’s totally understandable. Many authors worry so much about beginning their novels that they never begin. Some work and rework the opening without ever getting past the first chapter. We totally get it.

The good news is that your beginning doesn’t have to be perfect at the time you write it. It might not even be where you want the story to begin by the time you’re done with it. Or you may grow as a writer so much that, even though it’s the right place to start, you’ll know how to revise it to be better later.

There’s two ways to learn to tell a story. One is by reading. The other is by sitting down and writing. (Okay, there are more, like critiquing others and receiving critique yourself, but those are the two to start with).

When you find a book you want to read, look at the opening. What about this opening calls to you? Think about why this author chose to open in this way. Does it introduce the characters well? Does it introduce the setting? Is the way the words/sentences/paragraphs fit together compelling? How is the dialogue? And so forth.

Then when you finish the book (hopefully it was just as good as the opening!) go back to the opening. How did it do in setting up the book? Are choices the author made at the beginning really logical based on the rest? Is there anything you wish they did differently or another place you wish they’d started at?

Thinking about these things for multiple books will help you suss out how best to craft an opening to your own work. But remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect when you start writing. You can always always always revise it later.

 

[Lime-Yay]

How does one write the start of a story? I’m saying this because when I was writing the Prince’s Journey and shared it on shown your work. Some of the people here say that it doesn’t work well as a start (to clarify, it’s the start of a surrealist fantasy story of young boy trapped on a strange world). Not helped by the fact that it is a first draft. If you have any suggestions, I’m willing to listen. That’s all I have to say.

Look up “First Line Frenzy” on YouTube.

I like searching for the right moment to start a book. There are all these things you know you want to happen in the beginning, but it takes some time to figure out the right moment— not the right scene, the exact right moment in time. Sometimes you have to write it out a bit to figure it out. And then, once you have the moment, you have to execute.

Imho, the best start will include:
- action (that moves the story forward)
- character
- intrigue
- indication of genre.

It’s a chance to give people a flavor of your story and your writing style. It’s fun. Maybe your opening line should lean into the surrealist bent.

Good luck!

 

[DeleyanLee]

The start of the first draft is whatever gets you writing and into the story. Period.

IMO, the first draft is NOT to be shown to anyone else (especially when you first start writing) because it's pretty much just glorified notes--the author trying to find the story. Quite often, I'll throw out the first scene, if not the first 10K of the first draft because it takes me that long to figure out what the story really is and where it needs to start.

Once you know what the story really is, who the characters actually are and what they need to be doing, what the world actually needs to be, you can't actually start writing it. That's the work the first draft does for the writer. Generally other people, even your bestest beta(s), aren't able to follow your thought/note processing, so you're just opening yourself up to confusion and doubt if you start showing it.

Now, as you become more aware of your story-creation process, your first drafts will be more like an actual novel, but that takes practice. Give yourself the time.

I like to point out that writing is one of the few arts where the artist start with NOTHING to really work with but their own creativity. A painter has canvases and various types of paints. Sculptures have marble or wood or whatever they're going to carve. Needlecrafters have cloth and threads.

But we writers--we have to create ours from the ether, from within ourselves (which is why many consider the totem animal for writers is the Spider--we both take something from within us and attempt to create something beautiful). We have to create a first draft, to get some kind of words down first to find the story within the mess. There's a quote I like:

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
― Shannon Hale

So take or leave the comments you received, as you wish. Good luck.

 

[alexp336]

I think it's easy to look at the snappy, engaging first few lines of published books and think "wow, inspiration struck them from the very first words!" Whereas, as a lot of wise people have already said, you just don't know when that introduction was written. Maybe someone had a splash of genius that stuck; maybe (and probably more likely, ha) they had a rambling start and then came back much, much later to rework the beginning of their story, with the benefit of the hindsight from writing a lot more of it by that point.

I agree that reading other books in your genre is really useful, to see a) what works and b) what potential readers might find most effective. But I also think it's easy to get bogged down in "I must make this perfect from the get-go" thinking, whereas what you really want is to just start writing.

There's nothing so liberating as a first draft. Sometimes the best thing to do is embrace that, and allow ourselves the freedom to experiment, waffle, and create lots of lovely darlings to kill later on

Good luck, and have fun!

 

[rservello]

I just finished my first novel and the first thing I did when I finished was completely re-write the first chapter a couple times. My book has a cold open. So something happens that gives information about things yet to come, but it's much later in the story. If done right I think this is a really captivating way to start. If done poorly it just spoils what's to come. I've read plenty of great books that start in a nothing situation, but it's just not as gripping as starting somewhere intriguing. The middle and end of a story tends to be a lot more interesting than the start, so giving something juicy out of context, without spoiling what it means can make for a more interesting opening and ending.

 

[Maryn]

(I'm not sure what this has to do with the work posted for critique, rservello. That's what we're doing in this thread, helping the Original Poster improve. Are you suggesting they scrap and rewrite it the way yours is written?)

 

[rservello]

(I'm not sure what this has to do with the work posted for critique, rservello. That's what we're doing in this thread, helping the Original Poster improve. Are you suggesting they scrap and rewrite it the way yours is written?)

Sorry, I was replying to the original post at the head of this thread. Was there a writing sample somewhere to check out?

 

[rservello]

The start of the first draft is whatever gets you writing and into the story. Period.

IMO, the first draft is NOT to be shown to anyone else (especially when you first start writing) because it's pretty much just glorified notes--the author trying to find the story. Quite often, I'll throw out the first scene, if not the first 10K of the first draft because it takes me that long to figure out what the story really is and where it needs to start.

Once you know what the story really is, who the characters actually are and what they need to be doing, what the world actually needs to be, you can't actually start writing it. That's the work the first draft does for the writer. Generally other people, even your bestest beta(s), aren't able to follow your thought/note processing, so you're just opening yourself up to confusion and doubt if you start showing it.

Now, as you become more aware of your story-creation process, your first drafts will be more like an actual novel, but that takes practice. Give yourself the time.

I like to point out that writing is one of the few arts where the artist start with NOTHING to really work with but their own creativity. A painter has canvases and various types of paints. Sculptures have marble or wood or whatever they're going to carve. Needlecrafters have cloth and threads.

But we writers--we have to create ours from the ether, from within ourselves (which is why many consider the totem animal for writers is the Spider--we both take something from within us and attempt to create something beautiful). We have to create a first draft, to get some kind of words down first to find the story within the mess. There's a quote I like:

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
― Shannon Hale

So take or leave the comments you received, as you wish. Good luck.

I agree with this so much. I've found it most useful to just write something. So I will write 5-10 pages one day, then walk away. The next day I'll read those pages and rework everything to sound and flow better. Then after 100 or so pages go back to the beginning and rework again. After I finished my first draft I went back to the start, and ended up rewriting the first chapter a couple times and the second draft was about 5k words longer. Overthinking seems to be the biggest hindrance to progression. Seems way better to just get SOMETHING on the page even if you end up scrapping it all.