Where to Begin: Starting your story in the right place

Hi guys! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. As you know, this month we’re talking about writing first drafts, those drafts that are always amazing and incredible in our minds—and yet somehow end up being a mess by the time we sit down to edit them. Oh well, at least we have fun along the way!

Unlike previous times when we’ve discussed first drafts, this time, I’m talking it through like you’ve never written a book in your life and just really need a place to start. Why? Because every writer was there at one point, and most need a little guidance along the way.

Where to Begin: Starting your story in the right place

This is perhaps the hardest thing to quantify, out of every topic in this series. A story starts at the beginning, after all. What other starting place could there be? And yet, there are hundreds of thousands of other places where a book could start, and I’m here to tell you that a lot of those other options are the better ones.

Let’s start with a little explanation of why I say so, because this will change depending on who you’re marketing to.

Here in the United States, where I’m from, readers’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Don’t you say anything, UK—you’re right on our heels in terms of attention spans, even if you won’t admit it. What this means for us, as authors, is that if we start our book at the beginning of the story, our reader is more apt to get bored and put it down before they ever reach the end. That’s not something any of us want to have happen.

So, you have to make sure your book starts with some action, or with some gripping event that won’t lose your readers’ attention.

I’ll use some of my openers as an example.

• Coetir: People of the Woods starts with a man being killed, his body disappearing into thin air when he dies.
• Mynidd: People of the Hills starts with a war, which, if you’ve read any of the other Druid Novels, is a complete shock and reversal of character type.
• Dwr: People in the Water starts with Arneia’s discovery that humans are leaving the plains and travelling over the water—something her people have been awaiting for centuries.

If you don’t start with action, you risk readers not being interested at all.

What I suggest, to get around this, is to write the beginning at the beginning. Start writing where you think the story starts—but know, all the while, that this probably won’t be where the actual manuscript starts, once you get into the editing phase. Keep writing, with this idea in mind that you need to find a place to really start this novel, a place that will catch your readers’ attention and hold it as long as possible.

I’ve done that, a time or two. And though it always pains me to cut those first few (or many) pages from my manuscript, it’s always worth it in the end.

If you’re not like me, however, and you’re an outliner. Fortune of fortunes! Your outline can be the place where you decide where to start from, so you’ll have less of a dilemma in the long run. I don’t know how you do it. I really don’t.

[love]

{Rani Divine}