Five Thoughts About Beginnings

“A beginning is a delicate time.”

Frank Herbert, Dune.

Ironically, the opening of the film of Dune is one big infodump!

One of the hardest decisions about writing a story is how to start it. Too slow, and too padded with backstory, and it runs the risk of losing the reader’s attention. Too fast, and you risk of simply chucking the reader in at the deep end and confusing them. Here are five suggestions about avoiding those problems. As ever, what follows are not rules that can never be broken, but what works for me and avoids the most obvious dangers.

1 Focus on one person and hit the ground running

To get interest from the reader, it's easiest to focus on the actions of one person as quickly as possible, preferably from the start of the story. That person is going to be the point of view of the reader, as if the reader is watching the events of the story from a camera strapped to that character’s head. Of course, you can change viewpoint character later on, or introduce more central characters, but to zoom in like this will give the story a sense of immediacy from the moment it begins.

It's probably best to introduce only a few characters at the start, which might be a problem with an ensemble cast. I'll talk about this in a separate post, but I'd suggest that you drip-feed them in. A good example is in the first Dragonlance novel, which is literally the write-up of a Dungeons and Dragons game involving six main heroes. The characters meet at a rendezvous, but arrive in ones and twos, so the reader isn't swamped with descriptions. Then, once assembled, they leave in a group.

What I think you should avoid, or at least treat with great caution, are the writing equivalent of those panoramic shots you get in films, which take several minutes to look over the landscape before narrowing down to follow one person. Apparently, Stephen King often begins a book with this sort of sprawling introduction - and then deletes it when he edits the story.

2 Our sympathy is with an innocent, dynamic character

If the story starts with a man running through the undergrowth, pursued by sirens and snarling dogs, we’ll automatically side with him until we have a good reason not to. He’s the underdog, he seems not to have deserved what’s happening to him, and he’s doing something exciting. This is important in an opening. Characters become sympathetic partly by being likable, but also by doing exciting things (often, but not always, physical ones). Readers will automatically want to read about a character who drives the plot forward, unless they are a blatant villain (and even then, they may still want to, as per The Day of the Jackal).

Lovely chap.

3 First impressions last

I’ve heard that Pixar have a rule that when the lead character in one of their films is introduced, he has to be shown doing the thing that he does best. This immediately sets him up as That Kind of Guy. My own book, God Emperor of Didcot, begins with Isambard Smith escaping from two angry aliens, jumping across a bridge and stopping for a cup of tea. He then expresses puzzlement that aliens don’t want to join the British Space Empire. This tells you a lot about him, and the sort of things he can be expected to do. If you give a misleading first impression of the character at the start of a story, it may take a lot of time and effort to alter the reader's view.

4 Start at a point of change

I particularly dislike stories that begin with the lead character being bored. This seems to be very popular where the hero is a student of some kind. The trouble is that it’s tedious in itself. If you are successfully evoking the feeling of boredom, you are boring someone! Best to start at the point where things change: the hero is sitting in a dull lecture when a bird flies through the window. The heroine is eating breakfast when her husband opens a letter and faints. The point where normality breaks is usually the point where the story – not the background for the story – begins.

5 The reader doesn’t need to know everything

And shouldn’t, either! A good beginning poses two big questions (and many others): “Why did that happen?” and “What will happen next?” People will want to read on to find out the answers. They will have to have answers, too, or their interest will fade, but no doubt those further questions will be answered in turn. Even a book without much action can raise questions. Take the opening of 1984, which includes all sorts of intriguing hints that something is wrong with the world. The rest of the book, in a way, is Winston Smith’s quest to find out why. Not that it did him any good...