Choosing where to start a story

pandaponies said:

Obviously we all say "start where the story begins, where the action starts" but I understand the urge to want to contextualize and world-build a little bit first and then build up to the initial conflict at the end of the first chapter or something. Sometimes it works (I can think of multiple authors who pull it off GLORIOUSLY [and some who attain enormous success despite not pulling it off at all/terrible openings like ahem a MC fussing with her hair in front of a mirror]), and sometimes it doesn't. What do you guys think? Can this work as long as it isn't boring?

Personally I find I tend to want to:
a) mention the intial conflict
b) 'backtrack' temporally to contextualize
c) build up to the initial conflict usually around the middle of the first chapter

Does that method offend anyone?

Like, "Gerald didn't mean to set the school on fire. It was an honest-to-God accident--cross his heart and hope to die--and it wasn't even really his fault. It all started that morning when Arnold showed up at his house to play basketball like they did every Saturday" blah blah etc. Obviously very simplistic but just a bare bones MG example of the general concept

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Personally I somewhat did something similar w my MS. I established some of the characters and then at the end of the chapter started the beginning conflict at the very end. In my opening chapter for a WIP I start off with the MC getting chased by a horde of monsters through the mall but since the story is told through first person he begins to relay the strange things the lead through the events of the day. So are you trying to do something like that?

A clarification: Are you asking where to start the story, as in, where do I start writing? Or are you asking how to work out a beginning after you have a substantial portion of the story written? Those really are two separate things, IMO.

Beginnings, for me and a lot of writers, are damn difficult to get right. But that shouldn't be a blockade for starting the writing itself. Often getting a good chunk of the story down generates ideas for the way to construct a beginning.

By the way, I quite like this for an opening sentence:

Gerald didn't mean to set the school on fire.

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caw

This is a good question. Where the action begins is always a good way, but you can have a flashback, introduce some of the characters the reader will be reading about, and take it from there. The example you gave of Gerald not meaning to set the place on fire is fine.

Right now I'm editing a novel in which the MC has already been captured by the military. He's in a cell and the General in charge is asking him to tell him the events of the past few days. So right there, the MC thinks back to who his friends are, some of the events that have already transpired, the accidents, and so on. It's a very short prologue--only about two pages--so the situation is set up from there and the bulk of the story is in flashback mode.

I think that as long as you have something for the reader to be interested in--who is Gerald and why was there a fire, for example--then that should be sufficient as a hook.

pandaponies said:

Can this work as long as it isn't boring?

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"Don't be boring" is the only writing rule you can't break, but keep in mind that "boring" is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.

You can start stories in all kinds of ways. Looking at your simplified suggestion, yes, a writer can begin a story that way, but it's been done and done and done, so even if well written, it might not seem fresh. Wouldn't it better, in that particular case, to just go ahead and show what leads up to him starting the fire?

I'm probably going to get shouted down for this, but how much do the opening few sentences of the story really matter? Has anyone ever actually put down a book after reading a solitary sentence? Surely, if they've read the blurb and like the concept, unless you can already tell the writing's terrible, the first sentence is no more important than any other?

I do understand, however, that the first chapter is v. important, if only to risk boring the reader if the conflict is introduced too late. I think in the case of Gerald and the fire, he needs to start the fire in at latest the second chapter, though with other types of hooks, as long as the conflict is hinted at, and we're shown the character being affected by it (even if it hasn't happened yet) it can be okay to have a slower opening.

And don't do the mirror thing. I still shudder when ever I see published authors doing that.

Obviously you need a hook which will make the reader care enough to continue reading. I think your one line is a good example of how to pique interest. I want to find out why he set the school on fire, like.

But, many novels don’t start with the main conflict right away. Some take their sweet time getting to the meat of the story, and that is an okay way of starting - given you have something that is interesting to read.

JK Rowling, for instance, didn’t let Harry Potter know about Hogwarts and his being a wizard until quite late into the first story. Before then it was about going to the Zoo, seeing the big snake, getting his cousin into trouble, getting an avalanche of mail from Hogwarts which makes everyone flee to the remote island. So, the scene where Hagrid bursts into the room to invite him to Hogwarts and tells him he’s a wizard comes like a hundred pages into the book.

So, as long as what you are doing is relevant to the main story, tangential to it, you can spend quite a bit of time setting the main story up. As long as you make it interesting. Because, harsh as it might sound, nobody cares about the screaming guy that crawls out of a crashed car because if the story starts with the crawling and the screaming, the reader haven’t invested any attachment into the main character.

It’s just a screaming stranger. Odd. Maybe even slightly interesting in a stop-to-watch-the-ambulance kind of way. But at that point, the reader doesn’t yet care.

J.S.Fairey said:

I'm probably going to get shouted down for this, but how much do the opening few sentences of the story really matter? Has anyone ever actually put down a book after reading a solitary sentence? Surely, if they've read the blurb and like the concept, unless you can already tell the writing's terrible, the first sentence is no more important than any other?

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That's a really good point. We obsess about individual words and sentences, especially the first sentence, but do readers really care?

I strongly suspect that they are a lot less interested in individual sentences than we are. They are more interested in plot and character. Perhaps it's a bit like building a house. The builder is interested in the type of bricks to be used and the construction methods, but the person who lives in the house is more concerned about the number of bedrooms.

I've been chatting with some friends about what makes a successful novel. In particular - how come some books seem to capture the public imagination and sell in the gazillions when they don't seem to be all that well written? RYFW prevents me from naming them, but I'm sure you can come up with your own examples.

The conclusion we came to was that it's often about the "snakes on a plane" concept for a particular book. The hook isn't the first sentence. It is the context for the book - the unique characters and plot that give rise to "wow - I've got to read that." It also helps if everyone else is reading it and talking about it.

If you get to that point with a book it often doesn't matter how well it is written. Often the writing only needs to be passable. The story, theme and characters are the things that pull the reader through.

But it's a very different story when you are trying to please an editor or agent. A weak first sentence or page can be enough for an insta-fail and they don't need to read much further. If a writer can't get the beginning right, the rest is probably going to be not much better.

So for me a good beginning is not a sentence that turns literary cartwheels and tries to impress me with its smart-arsedness. It's a beginning which leads me into the "snakes on a plane" concept - characters, plot, conflict.

Reverting to the inevitable Harry Potter. The basic premise is something like "orphan boy fulfils his destiny by going to a school for wizards hidden in a contemporary England". We don't have to see Hogwarts straight away - instead JK Rowling can drip feed the idea of "magic in a contemporary world" and how special Harry is. The hook is the premise, not the first sentence.

Yeah... I don't think that the first sentence of the book is the most important one either. You can always try to make it interesting but if the sentences that follow show an uninteresting premise, your book is going to be put down no matter how radically awesome the first sentence is.

If I were to set up a rule about how books should start, I'd say that there needs to be something attractive to the readers. It doesn't have to be the main conflict, it doesn't have to be some sort of action, although I find it hard to imagine how characters and setting can be interesting without some kind of conflict waiting around the corner.

In my sci-fi novel, for example, I don't introduce the main conflict until way after the first half of the story. But at least three people found it interesting so that means something

pandaponies said:

Can this work as long as it isn't boring?

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Anything that isn't boring can work. It's harder to keep it from being boring if you don't start at the beginning of the story. Readers may lose interest before they get into the story itself.

But you're the writer, you have to write it.

Jeff

Usually I base the start of my story on how my story ends.

J.S.Fairey said:

I'm probably going to get shouted down for this, but how much do the opening few sentences of the story really matter? Has anyone ever actually put down a book after reading a solitary sentence? Surely, if they've read the blurb and like the concept, unless you can already tell the writing's terrible, the first sentence is no more important than any other?

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I don't know if I've ever put down a book because of a terrible first sentence, but I've definitely kept on reading a book because of a great first sentence.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." I mean, come on.

Or: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

A great opening doesn't necessarily have to jump into the main story conflict right away, but I think there has to be some kind of conflict, even if it's only implied.

Of course, a "great" first sentence is pretty subjective, too. I keep seeing the first few sentences of Harry Potter held up as a good example (like above), but when I first read it, I struggled to get through the first chapter, thinking "why should I care?" the whole time. It got interesting as of the second chapter.

When I pick out a book randomly, I first look at the blurb, then read until either I'm interested or one of my pet peeves has reared its head. Often, one of those occurs before the first page is done. Otherwise, I give it a few more pages, then put it down if I'm still not interested.

To respond to the original question: personally, I find "hook and backtrack" can work in some cases, but can feel contrived in other cases. The example given in the first post might or might not get me to keep reading, depending on my mood at the time.

pandaponies said:

(also, if anyone is interested I wrote a quick intro and threw it up on fantasy SYW)

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FYI - Helps us if you make this a hot link that takes us right to the thread

I'm trying to work out a similar problem in my story - how to weave in the past without pulling the reading out of the story flow.

I finally got around to reading Mistborn, and in some ways Sanderson pulls this off brilliantly, and at other points I kept finding my inner writer shouting "Telling!"
It's a tricky thing to do well.

J.S.Fairey said:

I'm probably going to get shouted down for this, but how much do the opening few sentences of the story really matter? Has anyone ever actually put down a book after reading a solitary sentence?

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Not a single sentence, but I've put books back on the shelf after reading three or four sentences.

The first sentence is certainly not less important than any other, and it probably is somewhat more important. Think of it as a handshake. You want it to be firm and friendly, not rudely grabbing and not limp as week-old lettuce. At the very least, it shouldn't be a throwaway. (Which I define as a sentence that makes no sense without context, or is too vague to be meaningful, or is confusing. Etc.)

As a reader, my general rule of thumb is kind of odd. If I've read Chapter 1, and without realizing it, completely finished reading through Chapter 2 as well, then I know it was a good beginning. My reaction is always along the lines of meeting Chapter 3 with surprise and glancing back to see what happened to Chapter 2.

It might sound a little silly, but that's usually how I know I won't put the book down. If I get through Chapter 1, and I'm staring at Chapter 2, then the story hasn't picked up for me. That means I'll normally dedicate less time to it. I'm not one to dump a book after I begin reading it though. Instead, I'm just incredibly picky about which books to read before even checking out the first sentence. So overall, I suppose it is a plot thing.

Aside from understanding where to start a story, lies the issue of how to start the story. In particular, for me as reader, it's important that the narrative POV get clearly established up front. I need to feel I'm reading a cohesive narrative, and one that drifts all over the place in terms of POV gets abandoned fast. I'm okay with multiple POV narrative, as long as I understand that's how it's going to work, that the writer is consciously working that way, and is in control of it. But I hate wandering POV. A lot.

caw

I have put down a book where the MC ends up in a fight to death with some weird creature on the first page after walking on the street. I need to care about the person I'm reading about and like spending time getting to know them and their world.I must be in the minority.

As Da Bird says, establishing POV or voice is important up front -- it's also something of a contract with the reader; this is the sort of book this will be


As for first sentences -- a really good first sentence will help me roll through the first few paras more than a blah one.

It was the day my grandmother exploded is going to get me to read further (and give me more chance to get hooked by the story) than "John woke up"

It doesn't even need to have an explosion in it. I think there was a Great First Sentences thread a while ago. Some of my faves are waaay more subtle. Some take a para to get going in their entirety. But all intrigue form the outset. All also allude to the setting and/or conflict

From memory a few that I liked:

There was once a city in the north west of a continent called seattle (the Once was intrigues)


"I'm going to kill that bloody bastard if it's the last thing I do" (King Rat, Clavell)

"They'd strung up the king with razorwire in the square across the river (One of Abnett's Warhammer books, I forget which)


He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. -- sets up that conflict in a nutshell - 84 days is a long time to go without eating (never mind selling) a fish

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful but men seldom realised it when caught by her charm...

For a slower start, I'd recc Who Goes There by Campbell (basis for the Thing) which slowly sets up a whole creepy atmosphere sentence by sentence.

And a whole lot more starts that do one thing -- make me want to read on to find out why, or who, or what.

There is only one rule for a first sentence. For any sentence-- make the reader want to read the next one. OFc a great first sentence with a really blah lot of words behind it won't do you no good either...