The difficulty of opening a story

[Brian G Turner]

I've always felt nervous and self-conscious writing the first chapters to my series - there's so much to establish in terms of world and character!

The result is that those chapters have never felt as though they flow so well as later ones.

Apparently it shows - I've just had a great piece of editing from @Jennifer L. Carson on the start, pointing out areas for improvement, especially in terms of emotional engagement.

Perhaps the biggest problem with rewriting early chapters is that I've worked so often on them - because of the pressure to get them right - that I end up simply reciting them from memory.

Still, at least I have something to go on, and hopefully improve upon.

But the very first part of a story - opening it - still seems the most frustrating part for me!

 

[HareBrain]

there's so much to establish in terms of world and character!

I think there's a danger that if you focus on doing this, what's human and alive about the story can get dulled by the mechanics of trying to get in everything you think needs to be there.

Advice I've heard quite a lot is to dump the first chapter. Yes, the reader has to work harder, but that's more than compensated for by the story being actually underway at that point and having more life to it.

 

[VinceK]

One technique, which I have used, is to write the beginning last. When I've finished the book, I know my characters and story world with a clarity that would have been impossible at the beginning. As @HareBrain has already mentioned, structure is important, but it should be invisible to the reader. Emotional engagement can often be achieved by placing the characters in a situation that invokes empathy, the stronger the better.

 

[ctg]

Perhaps the biggest problem with rewriting early chapters is that I've worked so often on them - because of the pressure to get them right - that I end up simply reciting them from memory.

It surely is a challenge, but to counter that, I can always try alternate the PoV or even let a side-character to describe the main one and tie through him/her/it the main storyline to the MC.

Personally I find beginnings easier to write, while the endings give me real trouble.

 

[Nick B]

It isn't the opening chapter I find hard, just the opening paragraph. Almost every opening line I read sounds cliched, overused.
I hate writing that first paragraph with a passion.

 

[James118]

I often find the beginning one of the easiest things to write, actually. Usually because I've had ideas in my head (or on Google Docs) for so long, that to actually begin the text of the stories themselves is a huge relief and often great fun when I finally get to play with the meat of the story.

For me, the real grind begins a few chapters in, when the initial buzz fades away and now I'm to forge ahead to the next exciting development. But great characters and a compelling hook tend to push and pull me respectively.

 

[The Big Peat]

These days I try to focus on a very specific event and group of characters to try and dodge having to introduce too much at once. Introduce the story with the bare minimum, then build once I've got their attention... not sure this ploy is working mind.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

These days I try to focus on a very specific event and group of characters to try and dodge having to introduce too much at once. Introduce the story with the bare minimum, then build once I've got their attention... not sure this ploy is working mind.

This is absolutely the way forward, and it applies equally to novels where you chuck the reader in at the deep end (a technique i almost always use, as the reader then has to invest time and emotion into the book) or where you let the reader have an easy time.

 

[The Big Peat]

This is absolutely the way forward, and it applies equally to novels where you chuck the reader in at the deep end (a technique i almost always use, as the reader then has to invest time and emotion into the book) or where you let the reader have an easy time.

Me, I prefer not going for the deep end, partially as I put down a few too many books these days because I'm being asked to invest emotion before I'm ready to, but I think that's a matter of author skill than an inherent flaw.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

I've been having this problem too. It feels alot worse in alternate world fantasy. I wish i could just write a bunch of paragraphs at the beginning to just set the tone of the world and get all the stuff dealt with off the bat so people have a clear sense before going into it, like the way they do in some movies.

For me it is hard to find the right place to start the story. I've been quite adamant about making my plot start fast so I only given myself one chapter to get a sense of the world and the characters before everything explodes.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Sometimes I find it easy - Waters and the Wild, next year, has a clear inciting point - sometimes not so. Inish Carraig was hard as it has two protagonists and in the end I ditched the original prologue for a start with the teenage protagonist. Abendau's Heir was hellish. In the end, one of the betas decided for me.

 

[crystal haven]

My beginnings are nearly always written again. I've even started in the middle of a novel, written to the end, then gone back and written the beginning. I understand the characters and the story much better, so it helps quite often to go back and do the beginning later.

 

[MWagner]

I think I've mentioned the one-minute slush pile exercise before. It's a writing convention event where you submit the opening page of a story, a volunteer reads it aloud, and a panel of editors and guest authors raise their hand when they would toss it out if it were a submission. When all four hands are raised, you're out. Only about one in twenty submissions last a full minute.

An opening can go wrong in so many ways. And the number of things you're expected to establish - a dramatic conflict, a setting, some sort of engaging POV or voice - is daunting. I wouldn't sweat getting it right until you're pretty much finished the story, because it's something you're likely going to revise and revise and revise.

 

[Phyrebrat]

All this talk of being asked to invest too much... I really don't understand.

Is it that you (we're) worried that the author isn't any good, or you'll feel tricked if you like the opening and then not the story?

I know reading is meant to be a pleasure but surely unless it's a book you've been given blind, you've chosen it based on genre - or recommendation?

I wonder how many reader-not-authors twist themselves up about this!? I bet less than here.

The craft of the story is at stake when it comes to editors and publishers - stakeholders in your IP - but for readers it's the art side that's more important simply because to get published (traditional) you'll have gone via an editor etc.

It's horses for courses I suppose, but so often I marvel at how we can turn such a pleasurable thing into a thankless task.

As far as openings go, I think the best advice here is to get it down and then tweak/delete/marinate as needed - for agents, not for lazy readers.

Self-published novels obviously have a much wider margin for poor quality but is the risk that worrying, with ratings systems and reviews in good supply?

It's all very pompous, isn't it? I would have missed out on some great books if I'd needed the reading equivalent of a sugar hit on page one.

When I read Catch 22, It, or The Raw Shark Texts - all blockbusters- I didn't have a clue what was going on for a considerable time. I had to invest trust in Heller's skills as a storyteller as C22 is barmy and seemingly mad and at times inaccessible; TRAT opens with us as clueless as the single POV, and It, waffles on about a carnival and flu and für Elise for pages and pages before anyone gets chucked in the Kenduskeag, or have their arm ripped off.

pH

 

[Ihe]

For me, the real grind begins a few chapters in, when the initial buzz fades away and now I'm to forge ahead to the next exciting development.

This happens to me as well. Just like a roller-coaster, after the initial "Woah!" (hopefully that's what the reader will think after the first page ) you have to slime uphill until the next big thrilling plunge.
But I'm also keenly aware that when this extreme up-and-down happens, I've usually fallen a bit into episodic storytelling, rather than letting the characters carry the plot in a more organic manner.

 

[The Big Peat]

Its probably better to say that if an author asks me to think before I have invested emotion, they'll lose me.

Basically, if an author kicks me off into the deep end - a fight scene, some complicated new magic system, some great and unclear event, too much philosophising on a multitude of things, whatever - and they end up confusing me before I've grown to care about the characters, I'm probably gone.

Now, if the author's saying "Just hang on and you'll see where I'm going", that's cool, because I don't have to think. I can just go "Ooh" and "Aah" and follow blindly. But if I can see I was meant to take something immediate from that fight, or magic, or ramble, and I didn't, that's when we have problems.

And this most certainly isn't a request for a first page sugar hit. On the contrary, I associate this most with people trying to do so. I get why people go for stories that hit the ground running, but when they get it wrong, its painful.

What it is a request for is for authors to show me their characters before we start running. A good author can make me like their characters in a couple of paragraphs, I'm not asking for anything huge here. But if I've laid down some emotion on the character, the author can do virtually anything.

If I have no emotion for the character and the story goes right into the deep end however - or, if the story has assumed I am rooting for the character before I am i.e. asking for emotion before I'm ready to give it - then yes, I'll probably stop reading.

Hmm. Probably could have just written the last sentence. Oh well, all the extra text hopefully makes it clearer


Whether this is just me being weird or a thing a lot of readers have, I don't know. I've been like this long before serious authorly ambitions though. And yes, it will cost me a few of the classics. That's okay in my book - there's a lot of classics by now.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm on my way to work so can't reply properly, I just wanted to say that my earlier post wasn't aimed at you, P.



pH

 

[The Big Peat]

... *shakes fist*

Oh well. It said what I was saying more clearly, so no bad thing

 

[ratsy]

I don't like the first 1000 words of my book. I have to spend some time figuring out how to improve it!

 

[The Big Peat]

I don't like the first 1000 words of my book. I have to spend some time figuring out how to improve it!

Get it critted?

*secretly very nosy*