I have story in my head for a While, I have the middal and end all planed but I cant get the begning to work, its eather boring of just bad. Can any one give me advice on how to make a good begning?
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How to start
- Thread starter Loner
- Start date
I read this from a famous and successful editor:
Boring Beginnings: If you have to rely onyour readers' patience while you get the story set up, you're likely to lose most of them. Start where the protagonist's problem starts, or just before that, and feed in the backstory later.This is the MTV era-- people don't like to wait. Be especially wary of books that start with the protagonist on a journey, thinking about what awaits her at the destination. Editors frequently mention that as an example of a boring opening. It helps to decide what your major story questions are and make sure those are posed in the first few chapters-- at least one should be posed in Chapter One.
I hope it helps!
Boring Beginnings: If you have to rely onyour readers' patience while you get the story set up, you're likely to lose most of them. Start where the protagonist's problem starts, or just before that, and feed in the backstory later.This is the MTV era-- people don't like to wait. Be especially wary of books that start with the protagonist on a journey, thinking about what awaits her at the destination. Editors frequently mention that as an example of a boring opening. It helps to decide what your major story questions are and make sure those are posed in the first few chapters-- at least one should be posed in Chapter One.
I hope it helps!
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sunstruckdream
Simply fantastical!
go in with a bang.
start smack in the middle of some sort of action. or start with a character's thought - even if it doesn't make sense immediately, you can use that to make the reader want to understand that. you don't have to clarify everything upon the start of your story - if you did, there'd be no need for the reader to finish it. give them something to bite onto, and make them work for the rest later on.
again...go in with a bang.
start smack in the middle of some sort of action. or start with a character's thought - even if it doesn't make sense immediately, you can use that to make the reader want to understand that. you don't have to clarify everything upon the start of your story - if you did, there'd be no need for the reader to finish it. give them something to bite onto, and make them work for the rest later on.
again...go in with a bang.
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GrinningDwarf
Just a humble servant
Hear, hear!! There have been several stories that I've just had to start writing, realizing that they had slow starts. When I finished the story, I'd go back and read closely to determine where the action or the 'big question' actually starts, and then lop off everything before then. Any neccessary information that got lopped off with it had to then be edited in somehow later in the story.
I've compared it to Richard Dreyfus' character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Remember when he was building the model of the mountain in his living room? He wasn't getting it right, and he finally got so frustrated that he began pulling the thing down. He pulled the top off...and then his model exactly matched the view of Devil's Mountain (or Monument?) being shown on the TV. He had to build the whole thing and then tear the top off to get what he wanted.
The way I see it, I had to get all of that 'boring' stuff out and on paper so I could continue with everything else. I've never looked on writing all that 'extra' stuff as wasted time, effort, or paper.
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wiggbuggie
Senior Member
yea i agree and plus do you play any of the final fantasy games? They have some good intros and good for story telling in general.
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sunstruckdream
Simply fantastical!
i thought of something else...
try more than one beginning. if you have three ideas you're considering, write them all. see what works and what doesn't. have a friend who's into the whole literary "thing" read them over for you and maybe give an opinion. trial and error is almost always a good tool.
try more than one beginning. if you have three ideas you're considering, write them all. see what works and what doesn't. have a friend who's into the whole literary "thing" read them over for you and maybe give an opinion. trial and error is almost always a good tool.
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Jane_the_Bane
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- Feb 11, 2004
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Many of the most renowned novels in history have a slow beginning:
Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" devotes three chapters to the school education and early adult life of Emma Bovary's tender-hearted but boring husband.
The first chapter of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" gives you detailed information about the postal service of the Shire, and after a hundred pages, the protagonists have not even crossed the borders of their home country for good.
In short: it might not always be a wise choice to go in for a streamlined, standardized, marketable "go in with a bang"-beginning.
Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" devotes three chapters to the school education and early adult life of Emma Bovary's tender-hearted but boring husband.
The first chapter of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" gives you detailed information about the postal service of the Shire, and after a hundred pages, the protagonists have not even crossed the borders of their home country for good.
In short: it might not always be a wise choice to go in for a streamlined, standardized, marketable "go in with a bang"-beginning.
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avatarblade2000
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- Aug 24, 2005
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My advice is essentially sunstruck's. Start the story in the middle of the action...
...but, instead of that actually being your beginning, the action the book begins with could in fact be an event from the middle or end of the novel. See, you could write the thing out of chronological order! This way, you have something to build toward, and if you shove the "true" beginning behind that beginning action, the reader will be much more forgiving, and far more interested.
Theoretically.
This is, incidentally, how I write most of my stories. I love it.
...but, instead of that actually being your beginning, the action the book begins with could in fact be an event from the middle or end of the novel. See, you could write the thing out of chronological order! This way, you have something to build toward, and if you shove the "true" beginning behind that beginning action, the reader will be much more forgiving, and far more interested.
Theoretically.
This is, incidentally, how I write most of my stories. I love it.
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N
NavyGuy7
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You could start with something terrible that happens in your character's past, like a burning building or an evil army destroying everything in his/her village, or whatever, depending on your choice of genre. Also, you could start with the character thinking of his past, like he made some mistake that he regrets all the time, that haunts him, or some choice he made that made him miserable but perhaps saved everyone he loves.
I started a book with my character running from his past. He walks into a tavern for a spell, and accidentally uses magic, the reason he runs from his past. Bad guy notices him, blah blah blah, he gets away somehow with two other people who just HAPPEN to be magic users and good people. That's as far as I've gotten, but still. Magic itself is a conflict within the character, something he must come to terms with.
I started a book with my character running from his past. He walks into a tavern for a spell, and accidentally uses magic, the reason he runs from his past. Bad guy notices him, blah blah blah, he gets away somehow with two other people who just HAPPEN to be magic users and good people. That's as far as I've gotten, but still. Magic itself is a conflict within the character, something he must come to terms with.
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