McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Where do you start?

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belgarion:

--- Quote from: Richelle on December 14, 2007, 11:51:34 PM ---I write in a linear way, but it takes me a while until I can get to that point.  I start by writing plot ideas randomly all over a white board.  Then, I group them and start placing them in order in a loose chart.  When I finally have a good idea where it's going, I write up a chapter by chapter summary in MSWord.  That's the part that takes the longest because that's when I actually have to flesh out the ideas.  But, if my outline is solid, I can then just write the manuscript front to end.

Sometimes, though, I'll find that the outline was flawed, and then I'll have to revise the manuscript.  That gets complicated because then I do have to jump into the middle to add and delete scenes.  Lots of slicing and dicing!  That's hard for someone like me--I much prefer going in order--but I know that's how some people naturally work.

--- End quote ---

I was a technical writer for 8 years so I naturally start everything in a linear fashion, outlining, ch 1 to the conclusion.
I make it as detailed as I can which makes it easier for me to write. Of course I do go back and forth when I find I've written myself into a box, one that didn't appear in the outline.

blgarver:
I always start writing from the first scene, and go linear from there.  However, there are usually flashbacks and memories and things of that nature to fill in backstory. 

I know, I know, it's not the best way to do backstory.  But I'll brush it up in the second draft.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: blgarver on December 18, 2007, 04:37:17 PM ---I always start writing from the first scene, and go linear from there.  However, there are usually flashbacks and memories and things of that nature to fill in backstory. 

--- End quote ---

How do you pick where in the story is the first scene, then ?  How do you pick the dividing point between story and backstory ?

Suilan:

--- Quote --- Jack Bickham, in Scene and Structure: "Significant change that threatens your character's self-concept is where your story starts. It may be a birth, a death, a wedding, a divorce, a telephone call, a letter, a visit by an old friend, [etc].  If it's a change and threatens the character, then it's a good place to start chapter 1. (...)

When confronted with a concept threatening change, Mr. Reader begins to worry. So far so good. (...) But in today's hurried, impatient world, that Reader can't be expected to worry passively about the same vague and unchanging bad situation for several hundred pages. He needs something more concrete to worry about. You meet that need at the outset of your story when you show your character coming up with a vital intention or story goal, designed to "fix things" for him in terms of his sensation of being out of equilibrium with his environment. Every good fiction character is thus goal-motivated.

The moment your character thinks or says aloud what his goa is, you can count on your reader to latch onto that stated goal like a lifeline."
--- End quote ---

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
For some reason that's not quoting right; this post is in reply to Suilan's.

That's a way of looking at it, but it seems one that would tend to be weighted in favour of hook beginnings.  And, while I personally think that there are stories that want hooks and stories that want nets, and that they are different styles requiring different skills, there's a bigger problem with this for genre writing, which is that if you are starting in a world that is fundamentally different and unfamiliar to the reader, it's much harder to scale that appropriately.  Though maybe less so in urban fantasy - OK, this would probably be clearer with an example.

If your first paragraph introduces John B. O'Malley of the FBI discovering a crime scene that doesn't make sense in rational terms, which is providing clues to lead him that are going to lead him into knowledge of the secret world of urban vampires/werewolves/whatever, fine.  There are certain things that the reader seeing O'Malley being called in at a crime scene and interacting with local law and so forth gets to anchor them; that it's set in the US, that the law will work in certain ways, and so on.  They may not necessarily be familiar with the intimate details of how one examines and assesses a crime scene, but you can safely assume they know, for example, that murder is a crime.

If on the other hand, your first paragraph introduces Shadow Avatar of the Ninth House of the Dragon on the way to a meeting with the Stationmistress to discuss changes in interstellar trade rules, you not only have to communicate what's new and different and significant and makes this a point that engages Shadow Avatar's and hopefully the reader's interest and starts your actual story, you also have to get across enough of the normal day-to-day functioning of Shadow Avatar's world to indicate why these things are new and different and significant. Which is a whole different level of stuff that has to get in.  There are ways of doing this that allow you to explain more within the story without breaking it, which is why outsiders travelling to unfamiliar societies, young protagonists learning how the world works, and first-person memoirs that assume the "author" needs to stop and explain things are popular.  But what you don't have is any reason for Shadow Avatar to stop and simply think "Interstellar Trade has worked like this for four hundred years, since the Quiddity Wars ended.. " any more than John B. O'Malley is going to stop and think "He drove there in a self-propelled mechanical device called a car, which ran on fossil hydrocarbons extracted from underground deposits; in the United States of America this had been a popular means of transport for about a century."

In a situation like that, it's easy to mess up a simple hook beginning, and it may help to establish things a bit more solidly before getting to your moment of change.

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