Starting Your Story Too Late -- Plus It's Release Day For Abducted Life!

One rule of thumb for writers is to start your story at the last possible moment, right before the story takes off. Boring your reader with descriptions of scenery or having the main character doing regular everyday stuff (usually while thinking about how boring and/or terrible their life is) is a sure fire method for convincing the reader put down your book forever. What’s rarely mentioned, however, is that starting too late can be just as bad. 

The other day I was reading a story that suffered from this exact problem. The story began with the heroine willingly walking into what she knew was a trap. Now this can be a perfectly fine way to begin a story, but it turned out that in this case the author had jumped so far into the story that she had to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining everything that had happened prior to the scene in order for the scene to make any sense. 

Every single page had backstory. So much backstory that I kept checking the front cover to be sure I wasn't accidentally reading the second book in the series instead of the first. Besides being terribly confusing, all this explaining really killed the pacing. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far into the book before giving up. 

Why did the writer begin their story here? I don’t know. Perhaps she wanted to begin the story right before the big fight scene in order to capture the reader with action. The problem is, everything that led up to that scene—the mysterious message the main character received that morning telling her that someone would be killed if she didn’t come, the conversation where her paranormal friends told her that they would help her fight when she met up with the bad guys, the difficulties she had finding the designated rendezvous point as the clock was ticking down—were all exciting enough to have been the story’s starting point. There was no reason to begin the story right before the fight.  To be honest, I suspect the real problem was that the author wanted this scene to be a prologue, but if she’d stuck in all the necessary information as real time action instead of giving it to us via backstory, the prologue would have become much too long. 

Choosing your story’s starting point can be a tricky thing. You want to start the story close enough to the inciting incident that only a little backstory is needed to get us through the first chapter, but not so close you have bury us in backstory for the scene to make any sense.
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One writer who does know when to start a story is fellow Michigander, Patricia Lynne.  And today she's celebrating the release of her new novel, Abducted Life.  So be sure to drop by her website and wish her congratulations.

Blurb

Savannah Janowitz’s perfect life was destroyed the night she and her boyfriend vanished without a trace. When she reappears a year later––alone––she’s a shell of her former self. Robbed of her popularity and her boyfriend, she has no memory of what happened to her. Savannah struggles to move forward as strange, new abilities manifest.

Evan Sullivan never gave extra-terrestrials much thought until the night he and Savannah were abducted. While Savannah’s memory was wiped clean, he remembers every horrific detail. Constantly reminded of the experiments that made him less than human, Evan hides in the shadows and watches Savannah rebuild her life without him. But neither can let the other go.

When their paths cross, Savannah and Evan finally see a glimmer of their old lives return. As they face what happened to them, they soon discover they aren’t safe. There’s more to fear than what’s hiding in the stars.

Available for 99cents at Amazon.

About the Author

Patricia Josephine never set out to become a writer. In fact, she never considered it an option during high school and college. She was all about art. On a whim, she wrote down a story bouncing in her head. That was the start of it and she hasn't regretted a moment. She writes young adult under the name Patricia Lynne.

Patricia lives with her husband in Michigan, hopes one day to have what will resemble a small petting zoo, has a fondness for dying her hair the colors of the rainbow, and an obsession with Doctor Who.

You can find her lurking on Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, and Wattpad. Find the latest news at her website or sign up for her newsletter. A link to all her books can be found here.

Three Steps To Finding The Beginning Of Our Story

I have a special treat for my readers today.  I recently won a contest over at Jami Gold's blog, and for my prize, opted to have Jami do a guest post.  If you don't already follow her blog, you should.  It's chock full of useful information on the craft of writing.  I've also taken her course on building a WordPress blog (something I plan on doing in the near future) and was happy with the experience.



So without further ado, here's Jami.

Three Steps to Finding the Beginning of Our Story

Thanks for inviting me over, Ken! I’m excited to be here for your win in my Blogiversary contest and grateful for the opportunity to share some (hopefully) useful information with your readers. *smile*

Shortly after Ken’s win, he posted about a problem he was having with the story he’d started during last year’s NaNoWriMo. He was stuck on the first chapter and couldn’t come up with a beginning he liked.

Like Ken, I’ve also struggled with story openings. We have to accomplish so much at the beginning of stories it can be difficult to cram all the must-do’s into those first pages. It doesn’t help if we can’t think of the right place to start the story or what we want the beginning to accomplish.

Let’s see if we can break down the steps to figuring out our story opening…

Step One: Discover Where Our Story Should Start

Unless we’re pantsing our story (writing by the seat of our pants) with almost nothing in mind, we’re usually going to have an idea about our story’s premise (“It’s about a man who has to save his wife from kidnappers.”). Our premise usually contains clues about the ending of our story. In our example, the man will save his wife from kidnappers (unless we’re writing a tragedy).

Stories are about change, so once we know something about how the story ends, we know what kind of contrast to set up at the beginning. We can think about that ending and brainstorm ideas about what sort of beginning would show the change we want for our theme.

If we want a story about not taking things for granted, we might show a beginning where the couple snipes at each other for nitpicky things. If we want a story about finding our inner strength, we might show a beginning where a mean boss bullies the man at work.

We can start our story thousands of ways. To narrow down our choices, we need to figure out the big picture of what we want to accomplish: What impression do we want the reader to have from our beginning?

Step Two: Discover When Our Story Should Start

Those examples above give us a concept for our beginning, but we need to decide how that scene ties into the rest of the story. A story opening with a bullying boss will fall flat if it goes on and on and is followed by ho-hum grocery shopping on the way home from work.

Instead, we want that beginning scene to occur just before something happens to the protagonist that forces a change or decision. Many stories will end the first chapter on an Inciting Incident. Inciting Incidents can be a hook or twist to start setting up the main conflict, or they might act as a bridging conflict to keep readers interested until the main story conflict begins.

Our goal at this step is to tie our beginning scene into the rest of the story. Maybe our bullied protagonist is deep into a high-pressure work deadline the boss gave him when the kidnappers call with their demands. Or maybe our sniping protagonist is at the grocery store when his wife’s cell number displays (“Yes, I remembered the milk, Deanna! I’m not stupid.”), and he discovers it’s not his wife on the other end of the line.

Once we know the opening scene and how it ties into the rest of the story, we’ll typically have anywhere from the first tenth to the first quarter of our story planned. Now we just have to write it. *smile*

Step Three: Discover How Our Story Should Start

We know the concept of the opening scene, the impression we want readers to have, and the story direction for the opening. With all that in mind, we’ll draft those first pages.

Our draft doesn’t have to be perfect. It won’t be perfect.

We don’t have to come up with the perfect first line now. We just have to get our opening scenes close enough that we can move forward with the rest of the story. The way to get close is by focusing on the conflict.

Beginnings aren’t about setting up the character and their situation. Beginnings are about setting up elements of the story’s conflicts. Readers will learn about the character and their situation along the way.

Show a choice the character makes that demonstrates how they’re sabotaging themselves from reaching their potential. Or show a problem the character has to deal with that gives readers the impression we want about some of the character’s traits. Or show a problem that gives readers hints about the main conflict. The point is to show conflict.

Too often we skip right to this last step and obsess over the “perfect” first line. But if we’re focused only on the first page, we might lose sight of what impression we want the reader to take away from our beginning.

(Note: Blogger extraordinaire Janice Hardy has some great posts on this topic as well: where to start your novel and what to do with that first page.)

This “going from the big picture to the specific” method forces us to know our goal before putting our fingers to keyboard. Or worst-case scenario, we could use this method during revisions to come up with a new beginning that won’t lead readers astray. *smile*

If you’d like more insight into how pantsers can use this method to prevent tangents and pointless scenes, check out my upcoming workshop on how to plan our story just enough. Ken’s readers can use Promo Code “gopants” to save $10 on registration.

Have you had problems with a story beginning? What step do you have the most trouble with? Do you have other suggestions on how to figure out the right beginning?

About Jami

After her potion to become as smart as Hermione went horribly awry, Jami Gold moved to Arizona and decided to become a writer, where she could put her talent for making up stuff to good use. Fortunately, her muse, an arrogant male who delights in causing her to sound as insane as possible, rewards her with unique and rich story ideas.

Fueled by chocolate, she writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy tales that range from dark to humorous, but one thing remains the same: Normal need not apply. Just ask her family—and zombie cat.

Find Jami at her blog, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

Why Can't I Just Move On?

I’d planned on posting on another subject today, but the hell with it—I’m going to whine about my own writing woes. It’ll make me feel better. :)

As you may know, I’ve been concentrating on my own original story (not the fan fiction) for the last several months—a story I started writing for last year’s NaNoWriMo. I felt pretty good about it at the time and I managed to write over 25k words before deciding the plot needed some revamping. Unfortunately, although I’ve dedicated myself to this story for the last several months, the writing has gone absolutely nowhere.

What’s the problem? I’m stuck on the first chapter, and have been for the last two months. I’ve approached it from several different angles, but as of today I still haven’t come up with a beginning I’m comfortable with. And it’s driving me bonkers.

I’m sure many of you would argue there’s no point in spending all this time on the first chapter, since I’ll probably end up rewriting it after I finish the first draft anyway. And I would agree with you, except that I’m finding it impossible to move on without some sort of closure. I can’t explain why my mind works this way, but I have to know how the first chapter ends before I can concentrate on the second chapter. Believe me, I’ve tried. Argggh!

So everyday I try something new, waiting for that beginning I know is buried in there somewhere. I realize I’m going to solve this eventually. It’s just frustrating to watch the weeks go by with nothing to show for my time.

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This month hasn’t been all bad news, however. My family and I just returned from a five day vacation in southern Ohio. It was a great time, and we took lots of pictures, although I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t write a single word during that time. I was just too busy. Or tired.

I also won a contest hosted by Jami Gold. If you aren’t reading her blog, you should. Her site is loaded with all sorts of great advice about writing.