posted
Whoo, things have been getting a little quiet here. Anyways...
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?
posted
Yeah, I kept checking in here, but nobody was posting all weekend.
As to your question, really only you can know. How's that for frustrating?
It could be the setting, the conflict, the character development. Or maybe it's just the terror of your own inner critic telling you you're too busy or not good enough. Have you tried work on other pieces just to get the ol' feel back?
posted
Really, it is different for every writer. I have known some people who write amazing stories but struggle with every word. I've seen them actually write and it is like watching someone squeeze water from a stone. On the other hand, I have known people who are equally talented for which writing is a breeze.
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.
posted
I agree, it has been very quiet around here of late…
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.)
As a reader, as long as the beginning promises more good stuff to come, I’m going to be interested.
posted
There are different answers for each stage of a work.
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.
I'm assuming that you aren't in the final stages of rewriting for publication, but if you were, then it would be natural and healthy to be closely examining the work for errors, implausibilities, and other unwanted features. This should be work, but not drudgery, in that you should be fully engaged with a clear process of critically examining every line and deciding if it could be clearer, more expressive, effective, or what have you (depending on the aim of the work). The process shouldn't by any means be overwhelming or tiresome. If it is, then the work simply hasn't progressed to the point where you feel able to simply rewrite it into a final form.
posted
Personally I like books that throw me into the action. I hate reading a story with an incredibly dull prologue or a three paged of describing the every tree and blade of grass (Robert Jordan) The opening of Wizard's First Rule always stuck out in my mind. Richard notices the vine and how odd it looks. Goodkind started his story from the beginging. Enchantment opened with a line of dialouge that threw you right into the characters lives. If you want me to read your book, open with a bang even if it's a little one.
JOHN!
[This message has been edited by JOHN (edited May 06, 2002).]
posted
Interesting, I usually begin a little before the beginning of the conflict, so that my readers can get a sense of the world before I turn it all upside-down. Maybe that's only nessesary with strange worlds that are central to the story and large-scale plotlines, though. Come to think of it, I have a ton of trouble getting started after the beginning, though, so maybe I though try putting it later.
OSC wrote a piece about openings in which he went through the process of beginning Ender's Shadow -- it may be helpful.
posted
It might be interesting to have people list favorite starting lines (first sentences) here.
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.
If you start the story then, you will have a much better chance of hooking the reader and building strong character identification for the protagonist.
posted
I agree about the whole coming into the story in the middle of a fight, but you gotta get me hooked. Long descriptive openings just don’t do it for me. Actually long descriptive anything annoys me. I refer to this as literary masturbation (talking to hear yourself talk (you being the narrator) )
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).
posted
at first glance (and I must admit that's pretty much as much as I've given the thought) it seems that the idea of starting the story where the story starts is damn near impossible. (At least in reference to my style of world building and writing). The reason for that is pretty simple. When you build a world you build characters, and those characters have lives before the story (as I so painfully learned) and lives after the story. The world is also moving around them. This means that no matter what there is something that you could write before your beginning (for instance in the story I'm working on now I start the story 2 years before the birth of the main character and end it about three or four years after his death) and something you could write after your ending. I'm not sure what the point of this post is though. I've been having small problems deciding where to start, but that's not the point. Gtg now.
posted
I find a few things usually have to be true of a beginning. Prologues are different, but the beginning has to have several elements. And has with every rule, these have exceptions, but here's the general truths.
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]
[This message has been edited by Falken224 (edited May 14, 2002).]
posted
Nate, Darth Vader shows up in the first part of STAR WARS, Episode IV.
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.
You, as the author, should always know more than you tell in the story. Don't be guilty of making the reader pay for all the extra work you've done in developing the world, the character, etc.
posted
KDW - Good point. Damn! I suppose I could argue that Vader's not REALLY the big evil . . . the Emperor is. ACTUALLY . . . in the grand scheme of things, Vader/Anakin is who the story is REALLY about . . . right . . . maybe?
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.
posted
The "nothing's set in stone" part is the reason I mentioned Vader.
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.
If you find stories that follow the rules, fine. If you find stories that break the rules, fine, too. Learn from both kinds. See how they follow and how they break the rules. And then use what you've learned to write you own stories.
posted
The thing about a really powerful opponent is that you never get to see how powerful he is until you've run up against him several times.
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.
That is assuming that you use a conventional 'villain' to focus the dramatic tension in your story. I would tend to move away from that idea in my own work.
posted
Falken (and others), in light of your suggested start structure (above), you might be interested in what someone has posted about the "Buffy formula" involving the introduction of bad guys through past seasons of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.
posted
It has been rather quiet here lately, hasn't it...
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...
posted
Try starting at the end and work your way to the begining chapter by chapter. It worked for Margret Mitchell in Gone With the Wind. That way you know how the conflicts will be resolved before they arise. Sound like fun? Try it with a short story first; one that you have a great ending for. Or maybe do it with and outline. It is a great excersize.
Posts: 33 | Registered: Jun 2002
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