How Do I Start Writing a Book? Start Before the Beginning
You may think your story starts with the first sentence. You actually start writing a book by ‘staring out of the window’.
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters’. I have indeed written many.
- JRR Tolkien
They indeed say that the first step is the hardest, but creative writing may be the one field where the saying is not true. We all know that starting a story may be very easy. The beginning is where enthusiasm lives. We are excited about the new shining idea, and that alone will spur us along, at least for some times.
But if the beginning is the only thing we know of our story, many times that story patters out and never finds an end.
It could be said that this is inevitable. That as writers, we need to accept the risk. In the beginning, we cannot know whether a story will pan out.
That’s not necessarily true. Sure, we always need to trust a story to come to an end, but we may figure out whether a story has the potentials to do so from the beginning.
If we know that there is the germ of a story in an idea we have, we may more confidently get into that massive investment of time and trust that is the drafting of a novel.
How do we know that?
Stories are no charm. I mean, not entirely.
Stories are a very specific form of communication, and as all sorts of communication, storytelling has been codified, and so we can recognize it when we encounter it.
Most people recognize the form of a story when they read or hear it. But writers may see a story even before it is written. In truth, we’d better do, if we don’t want to write unnumbered beginnings and no endings.
What gives away a story is the Story Structure. The particular form that sets stories apart from any other form of communication.
What does the Story Structure look like?
In its essence, the story structure is quite straightforward. It only comprises three movements.
- Beginning. The initial situation. This is the introduction to the story. Here we meet all the main characters, their desires and the world where the story takes place. It may seem quite static, but it’s here where one essential action happens: the Inciting Incident. This is the shocking event that breaks the status quo and forces the Protagonist to take action.
- Middle. This is the meat of the story, the part where the bulk of the plot takes place. This may be long or short, simple or complex depending on the form of the story itself (novel or short story), but here a critical change needs to happen. The Protagonist has to face their fears and overcome them or succumb to them. Stories are changes, they naturally evolve. The middle of the story is where this change happens.
- Conclusion. Here the story comes to a new balance that mirrors the balance in the beginning. It doesn’t mean that the situation should be the same. It does mean, though, that the problem caused by the Inciting Incident resolves and find a satisfying outcome.
So, when we look at an idea, it’s really quite easy to see whether that idea can turn into a story. There are very few elements we need to know beforehand: who’s our Protagonist, what do they want, why they can’t have it, how do they get it or lose it forever.
Basically, we need to know the beginning of the story, the end and the crucial event that allows the beginning to morph into the ending.
Ideas are not stories
We’ve all done it. Sometimes we start writing a story because we have an idea, and we trust that idea to carry the story.
Sometimes, we get lucky. Something happens that will indeed allow the idea to carry the story to the end.
Most often, that doesn’t happen.
Ideas are not stories.
Ideas are static. They describe something. That’s why they often suit the beginning of the story. We get a vision of something, and we think that just describing it will make up a story.
But stories are not static. Stories move, that’s their nature. Stories recount how something morphs into something else. How the Protagonist grows, how they discover they had believed in lies and search for the path of truth. How they overcome their pain or their delusions. Always characters start in one place and end in another. Stories are journeys.
Ideas may describe the beginning or the end of that journey, not the journey itself. They may make up themes for the story, they never make up the plot.
Only the Story Structure describes the plot. Our ideas may (and should) fit into one of the three parts of a story, but if we don’t know where it fits, and how it evolves out of the part it stands in, we don’t have a story.
Three Act Story Structure
So the way we know we have a story to tell is to look hard at the Story Structure and see what elements we are able to cover with our idea. Then see how they move from that state to the next. Or to the previous, depending on whether our idea better suits the initial or the final part of the Story Structure.
If you google ‘Story Structure’, you’ll find a lot of different templates. I’d suggest to explore them to see which suits your writing process better, but also be aware they basically all stand on one mother Story Structure: the Aristotelic Three-Act Story Structure.
It was Aristotle who theorized it millennia ago, and it’s rock-solid as you may imagine. It is also quite simple, and quite intuitive. As readers, we recognize a story by seeing this structure plaid out even if we know nothing about structures. But as writers, we need to be aware of it more than anything else.
In its essence, the Three Act Story Structure is quite simple. It comprises three acts (the Begging, Middle and Conclusion I mentioned above) and every act has a climax, a ‘shocking event’ that will allow the story to move from the present act to the next.
This is how it looks like more in details:
Act I : How it all begins
This is where we get to know the world the story will take place, the characters we’ll be following through their journey, the Protagonist and the Antagonist. Although the situation may seem quite balanced and happy, there is something in the Protagonist that doesn’t sit well with them. It may be a desire they don’t follow. It may be a pain they have never resolved and impairs their life. It may be a danger they don’t want to look at or don’t know that exist.
The Inciting Incident (climax) exposes that problem. Usually caused by the Antagonist, the Inciting Incidents shockwaves through the Protagonist’s world and life and makes it impossible just carry on as always. To find peace, the Protagonist needs to take action and mould a new balance for themselves.
Act II: All is lost
This is were the bulk of the plot happens. Here, the Protagonists learns to recognize what’s ‘wrong’ with them. What is the desire or the fear they didn’t or couldn’t see before, and also come to know that to gain a balanced life again, they need to change and cause more change.
To do this, the Protagonist needs to learn and to master different skills which they learned through the journey.
The journey presents many difficulties, increasingly difficult to overcome until the Protagonist comes to a point (climax) where they think they can’t possibly do anything to make their world a place where they can live again. They believe they have lost everything and there is no hope.
At this point of no return, the Protagonist makes a choice (good or bad) that will shape the final act of the story.
Act III : A new balance
In the third act, the Protagonist will have to face and possibly shape the outcome of the choice they had made in Act II (keep in mind that refusing to make a decision, is still a decision, story-wise).
The climax of this act coincides with the climax of the entire story. It’s that point where the story has climbed to, the point we have built as storytellers. The point where the reader wanders “Oh no, how will they get out of it?”
The Protagonist will face this problem with the tools the story has given them, and that they did not possess (or thought they didn’t possess) at the beginning of the story.
The conclusion of the story will depend on how the Protagonist uses that skills and knowledge to face the Final Problem, and of course it isn’t granted that the outcome will be good for them, though it should always be satisfying for the reader.
Conclusion
While there are many elements to take into account in the Story Structure, which guides us in creating a story, the ones we really look at when considering an idea are very few.
Of course, the more elements we can identify before we start writing a story, the more chances our story has to get finished.
It may seem this is a process that better suits planners, but I believe it’s useful for pantsers too. True, as pantsers we think up the beginning of the story and go with it, but we will have to consider the story structure sooner or later in the process of writing a story. At the very least, we’ll have to consider it during revision.
So, if we pin down the very essential elements in the tree parts of the story, we’ll save ourselves a lot of time, energy and rewriting.
It doesn’t have to be specific ideas. It doesn’t have to take the form of an outline. We just need to pin down the essential elements of the evolution of Act I into Act II into Act III, and we’ll have a direction and a goal to move towards.
That’s what may make the difference between writing a story and writing just the beginning of a story.
Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Almost thirty years later, she started working in a bookshop and discovered books addressing storytelling techniques and the story structure. She became addicted to them. Today, she shares what she’s learned from experience and from books about creative writing, hoping to make other writers’ journey easier and shorter than it was for her. Visit her Etsy shop for creative writing workbooks that make a difference.
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