Six Ways To Begin A Story

Openings are frustrating. At least for me. So much is riding on them. Often, if you don’t catch your reader’s interest with the first sentence their eye will wander.

It seems to me there are 6 general kinds of openings. I’m sure you could make a case for their being 5 or 7 or some other number, but I’m going to hold firm—for now at least—with 6.

Let’s start with ...

Setting

Some stories open by describing the story world. For example:

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That is the first line of, that’s right, “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. This sentence is about where and who, there isn’t even a trace, a smidgeon, of conflict. 

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

That’s the first line from William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” Again, no visible conflict.

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

You likely recognize that sentence, it’s the first sentence from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novel “Paul Clifford.” This sentence is famous, or infamous, for being the epidomy of what one does not want to do when it comes to descriptive openings. I think the sentence begins all right (but then and again I’m a fan of dark and story nights) but then it meanders somewhat drunkenly toward the whimsically unconnected. 

So, having seen the good and the bad, why might we want to open with description? Two reasons.

A. The setting, the world, is why we’re interested in the story.

As Orson Scott Card mentions in his book “Characters & Viewpoint,” some stories are primarily about a milieu while others are primarily about characters, ideas or events. In Milieu stories we’re interested in the world at least as much—perhaps more—than we are the characters. Or, rather, the world is a character and it’s the one we’re the most interested in.

What we’re really interested in is the cultures of that world, the alien biologies, the customs, the inventions, the magic, and so on.

I’ve already mentioned the first line of “The Hobbit” (“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”) That’s information about the world, and it’s interesting information. My response as a child was, “What! Hobbits live in holes in the ground?! How cool is that. And what on earth is a hobbit?” Right from the beginning I was eager to learn about this universe.

Here’s another way of creeping up on the point I’ve been trying to make: If exploring the world is the whole point of the story, then it’s perfectly appropriate to alert people to this from the first sentence.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that Gibson’s “Neuromancer” was a milieu story—I think it might be more of an idea story—but whatever the case (punny, punny)—the world that Gibson created was certainly creative and different and utterly captivating.

B. To establish a particular mood.

Charlie Jane Anders, author of the article, “How To Create A Killer Opening For Your Science Fiction Short Story,” writes:

“This [scene-setting] can be a workmanlike "Smith yawned and looked around his space capsule" thing. Or it can be a gorgeous literary flourish, that sets the mood and creates a strong image in the reader's mind at the start of the story.”

An example: The beginning of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl.” I wrote about this recently (On Breaking The Rules) because it breaks one of the canards of writing: Don’t begin a story with a character waking up. But Flynn does! And—as millions of satisfied readers will attest—it works beautifully.

Why? Because those opening paragraphs set the mood of the book. They anchor us within Nick’s psyche. Because they set the stage for what is to come. (And, last but certainly not least, because they were beautiful and powerful.)

That’s it for today! As I mentioned, this post is part of a planned series. Future posts will cover other sorts of openings.

Update: Here are links to the posts in this series:

1. Description (this post)
2. Conflict: What Is It Good For?
3. Puzzle Openings

4. Archetypal Openings
5. Character Driven Openings
6. Humorous Openings

Photo credit: "aussicht vom wilseder berg (169,2m)" by fRedi under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

On The Art Of Creating Believable Characters: No Mr. Nice Guy

I love my characters. This is what you'd expect. After all, I've created them, they have (in some way I don't begin to understand) been formed from the very stuff of who I am.

So perhaps it's not surprising I find it agonizingly difficult to put my protagonist in harms way, to tempt her, to see her stumble and fall all in the service of creating conflict. I'm not talking about physical, external, obstacles/conflict like the kind Jason Bourne or Indiana Jones might encounter--blocked lanes, men with guns, exploding cars. These type of obstacles are important--they batter the character, test their courage, their mettle--but the real grist of character development occurs when internal obstacles, internal conflicts, enter the mix.

You don't--I don't--want my lead character (who, since I write in the first person I can't help but think of, at least a little bit, as me) to betray what they believe, to make a wrong choice, to fail or do something she'll regret. And yet these are the events which create tension and drive a story forward.

Internal conflicts set up an impossible choice for our characters. These aren't win-win situations. Just the opposite.

Janice Hardy has written an excellent article on ways to force your characters to do things neither of you want them to do ("Forcing the Issue: Adding Conflict to Your Scenes"). Here are five questions you can ask yourself as an author that will help you grow horns (and perhaps a tail) so you can introduce internal conflict into your story and give your saintly protagonist a few regrets.

1) "How can I force them to go against their morals/belief system?"
Janice writes:

This plays off the inner conflicts. If they need to steal a car to save the girl, how can I make stealing that car involve a choice that would eat at them?

For instance, the car could belong to someone in the mob and "borrowing" it would mean your character would owe them a favor--if they decided not to kill her first!

2) "How can I force them to make a choice they really don't want to make?"
For instance, a triage situation. You have two people, a friend a your client. Your friend has stood by you during difficult times, you've known this person their whole life. They've become more than a friend, they've become your family. You also have aclient, someone you have pledged to protect and take care of. They are both mortally wounded but you only have enough supplies to save one of them. Which one will you choose?

Either way your protagonist chooses they will lose something of great importance.

3) "How can I force them to make a bad choice?"
Janice writes,

Mistakes are great fodder for plot. Protagonists can act, and that action causes more trouble than they were trying to prevent in the first place. This works even better if they make the wrong choice because they're try avoid violating one of their belief systems.

Let's say your character believes strongly that meat is murder. She is a hot-shot bodyguard and has taken on a job to pose as her client's date at a black tie affair. Her professional reputation is on the line: she must keep him safe no matter what. Your client has received a tip that an assassin tasked with killing him is attending the banquet.

At the gathering their obnoxious host announces, long and loudly, that the only good animal is a dead one--and preferably slow roasted with a touch of pepper. Your character is presented with a choice: eat meat and stay at the party so she can guard her client or be true to what she believes and refuse to eat meat. This, though, will get her kicked out of the party and put her client in danger.

Your protagonist remains true to her beliefs/ethics and refuses to eat meat. While standing up for what one believes is admirable it forces her to abandon her professional obligations. This leaves her client vulnerable and he is killed.

4) "How can I force them to fail?"
Your character, if you want them to be interesting, can't win all the time. They have to fail as well. But they can't just fail. The trick is to get them to fail because of an inner conflict.

I just finished reading A Discovery of Witches. In it the protagonist, Diana Bishop, fails to extract the secrets from an enchanted grimoire because she has sworn not to use her magic.

Her inner conflict is that she has a desire, a need, to be normal, to make her way in the world without her magic because she feels it was magic that was responsible for her parents' death. This failure--which may in the end turn out to have been a good thing--is the event that launches the protagonist on her journey. This is the event the story grows from and revolves around. No failure, no story.

5) "How can I force them to do something they'll regret?"
For instance, take the situation in (2), the triage example. Let's say that, at her friend's urging, the protagonist let her friend die and saved the client.

But perhaps the friend wasn't just a friend, perhaps he was her business partner. Perhaps he had a wife and children.

Now your protagonist is faced with running the business all by herself. On top of that her partner's widow hates her. Still, she doesn't shirk her obligations and takes on the financial responsibility of of helping support her late friend's widow and children.

You can see how the protagonist could regret the choice she had made for the rest of the novel.

Conclusion
Janice concludes:

It's easy to throw more "stuff" in the way of your protagonist, but also look at your scenes and see what mental obstacles you can toss into their path. Not only can that help deepen your plot, but deepen your characterization and themes as well.

Agreed! I would encourage you all to read Janice's article in its entirety: Forcing the Issue: Adding Conflict to Your Scenes.

Do you suffer from NWS (Nice Writer Syndrome)? Take Janice Hardy's test: Do You Suffer From NWS?: Living With Nice Writer Syndrome.

How do you produce inner conflict in your characters? Do you have any hints or tips you'd like to share? :)

Other articles you might enjoy:
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- What Is A Writer's Platform?
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity

Photo credit: Rafael Peñaloza