I've heard it said that begginings are important, but how do you know when you're starting a book off right? I've already begun things from a point of conflict, slightly after the protagonist gets involved in the fray.

My problem is, I'm having to plod and force my way through it. Is this normal, or is this a sign that I haven't done enough world building, or that I don't know my characters enough, or that I've begun from the wrong point?

As to your question, really only you can know. How's that for frustrating?

Do you usually have a hard time writing? If so then you just might be that type of writer. If not then perhaps there is something wrong.

If it really worries you, you might try a fresh re-write. Sometimes a particular beginning will have no visible flaws but still be ill-suited as a beginning to the story.

Just a random

Anyway… Some babbled thoughts on your question…

As somebody who, except for rare days of gushing, somehow inspired outflow, every day of writing is a slow and plodding experience, I feel your frustration. And after all the input that beginnings are so important, that puts a lot of stress on a person to get it right right off the bat, when maybe everything isn’t as clear as it will be after you work with it a bit more. I’ve had some luck coming back later, and making some adjustments that help out the beginning, but which I probably wouldn’t have thought of ever if I hadn’t pushed on a bit and got the feel of how things are working.

As another thought, I know that if I don’t have some idea, even a general one, of where I’m headed, the plodding increases painfully. After starting with A, a loose plan for the up coming steps B and C, which ideally all fit is with then final Z step, works well for me.

“I've already begun things from a point of conflict, slightly after the protagonist gets involved in the fray.”
Have you maybe started off a place that is too much in the middle of the action, so that now, when you’re trying to set up the character, you’re also involved extensive action, which makes it hard to do both. I did this once, and keep slowing down a part that needed motion to put in characterization so that the reader would understand why the action was important. I was never happy till I started a bit earlier (with other, more character exposing action), which I think fixed the problem. (This thought brought to you from someone who is admittedly a bit character obsessed.)

If you are in the stage when you are just brainstorming the plot, practicing the 'voice' of a POV or milieu, or doing the other freewheeling exercises of developing an idea, then you shouldn't be stressing or having a hard time. These essentially creative and preliminary activities, like drawing a freehand map or light sketching, shouldn't be taken seriously as publishable or even exposable material, and so concerns about whether the material seems silly or whatever should be far from your thought.

If you don't usually play with an idea in that manner before writing about it, then perhaps you are at the stage where you are trying to represent it rather than simply imagine its possibilities. If you don't already have a fair idea of what generally it is that you are trying to represent, then you will indeed find yourself frequently wondering what to have happen next, what your POV character should feel or think about certain things, or even who your POV character should be (actually OSC posted a helpful demonstration of an informal version of this process on the site somewhere). This does indeed mean that you have to allow yourself to relax and simply write about the story elements, rather than the story itself, but that isn't a problem (unless you are suffering from a deadline). It simply means writing something that will be only for your own reference.

JOHN!

One of my favorites is at the beginning of DEVIL'S TOWER by Mark Sumner. (I apologize, but I don't have it right here to quote from directly.) It goes something like

"The Indian shaman rode into town on a dead horse."

Not a lot of action, but it hooked me good and led me into a very interesting fantasy novel set in the "old west."

Damon Knight used to say that the best place to start the story is when the story starts. (He didn't like stories starting in the middle of a fight scene, which was after the story had started, because there was no reason to care for any of the characters or to care about what was happening.)

Think of the start of the story as the place where your protagonist got "hooked" into what is happening.

Obviously ending’s are equally as important. Not to keep mentioning Goodkind but I totally hated the ending to Wizard’s First Rule. I’m all about the ambiguous ending, but if you’re going to end with a line of dialogue you better be bringing something. I really like the way Robert Jordan ended Eye of The World. If you can pull off a happy ending without being predictable or cliché that more power to you. Personally, I don’t believe happy ending exist in real life (at least not for me).

On the other hand, a conclusion, resolution, or other form of dramatic closure can be better than just happy.

1) The first main character we see HAS to be the protagonist. Otherwise they never seem like the 'hero'. (or anti-hero as the case may be.)

2) Tension must already be present from the first word. Epic-scale stories have an 'establishing-shot'. e.g. Robert Jordan's "wind", Star Wars' opening credits/pan to deep space. Then . . . immediately afterward, the tension starts. If not, the reader won't care and will put the book back on the shelf.

3) The 'right side to root for' must be clearly defined by the end of the scene . . . even if it changes later on in the story. In fact, RARELY will the 'good' side ever be unquestionably good in a well-written story.

4) The opening scene must carry itself without exposition. The exposition has to wait until the immediate tension is resolved. The amount of exposition you are allowed (required, even) to do is directly proportional to the amount of tension that gets resolved. The reader's feels satisfaction at seeing a piece of the puzzle fall into place. If there's no resolution to coincide with that satisfaction, they will be pulled out of the story. And once the exposition is done, there must be enough tension left to be built to carry the story through to the end.

5) We must never meet the villain in the opening chapter. Only in the prologue. Otherwise we short-circuit the protagonist's journey toward the defeat of the antagonist. If we don't hve a gradual build-up to the big evil, either it doesn't seem quite so evil in the end, or we don't care about the rest of the story, because none of it matters compared to the 'big evil'. If we glimpse the 'big evil' in the prologue, we should never understand it completely. Else the 'mystery' is lost and the reader won't care.

So . . . find a point in the story that fits with those 5 points. Then tell any relevant previous details in the form of flashbacks, or memories, or some such device.

That's my advice. Take it with a grain of salt.

-Nate

[This message has been edited by Falken224 (edited May 13, 2002), but still contained a few REALLY embarrassing typos . . . so]

Anyway, Uberslacker, I'm sure I said something about starting a story when the protagonist becomes involved in it. If you look at my post, you'll see that I did.

"Think of the start of the story as the place where your protagonist got `hooked' into what is happening."

Of course a "real" character has a past, but you don't have to tell all of it. You only need to tell what the reader needs to know.

I've heard that Sinclair Lewis wrote up "biographies" of some of his characters that were actually longer than the books he wrote about those characters.

Okay, that sounds lame even to me.

I guess that's the exception to the rule. And I'm sure there are others. Part of it is . . . the opening scene of Star Wars feels more like a prologue than anything. Here we are seeing ship get taken over, a Princess captured, a big, black-clad evil guy, something about stolen plans and a rebellion. But there's no explanation. We're thrown a LOT of information with no real sense of understanding. The REAL story starts when C-3PO and R2-D2 end up on the Lars homestead, embroiling Luke in the whole big story.

But . . . would YOU have kept watching if Star Wars started out with a whiny brat in the middle of a desert having to find the household robot before he can go play with his friends?

That's why I think it counts as the prologue. Now there's holes in that argument, I realize, but remember, the prologue is the hook, the bait, the 'keep reading because THIS is how big the story gets' sort of thing. I should qualify that . . . that's what prologues have always been to me.

But good point nonetheless.

And it just goes to show, nothing's set in stone.

I think there are a couple of ways you can show the bad guy in the first chapter and still have the buildup you were talking about.

Certainly in a murder mystery, no one knows who the bad guy is (unless it's a how-solve-it, so to speak, where the murder is shown to the reader right off the bat, and the tension is watching the sleuth figure out whodunit).

You can also show the bad guy if you want one that is at all multi-dimensional. As the story proceeds, the bad guy can become worse and worse.

As Damon Knight has said, many times, when someone gives you rules, go look at successful stories like the ones you want to write and see if those stories follow the rules you have been given. I call this the Writer's Reality Check.

In the first scene where we see Vader, he really could just be a minor character, there isn't a solid indication that his black cloak and armor is anything other than the uniform of a captain of the Storm Troopers. Sure, he's really big and strong, but we don't know about him single-handedly hunting down and killing most of the Jedi, or having the ability to use the force to kill people over a video link or bend Luke's mind or anything like that.

A good villain grows with the hero, always showing more power until the climactic point at which the hero overthrows him.

You'll find it at

In terms of actually writing the story, I would advise you not to worry about starting at the beginning of the book. If you're like me, you're exploring the story as you write it, so in fact what at first you consider to be the beginning may not prove to be so. I generally start in the middle, and discover the beginning and the end as I go. A great example of the beginning ceasing to be the beginning would be OSC's expansions into novels of his short stories. He originally thought they were finished, but in the process of revisiting them, he discovered all sorts of new material.

I'm one of those writers that has to fight for every word too...