Where Should Your Novel Start?

An exercise for pacing your fiction.

I have worked with thousands of writers, helping them to plot, write, and edit their novels. One of the problems that consistently comes up is whether or not they’ve started their stories in the right place.

This is vitally important.

Start too far forward and when the inciting incident (or call to action) happens, the reader hasn’t had time to care about it. They don’t really know the characters.

Start too far back and the reader is bored by the time that pivotal inciting incident scene finally comes around. Or you’ve set up a different story than the one you’re actually telling.

Let’s start with a novel’s structure.

Novel-length manuscripts can be divided into three acts and eight sequences.

Act one is the first 25 percent of the book and includes sequences one and two. Act two is the next 50 percent of the book and includes sequences three, four, five, and six. Act three is the final 25 percent of the book and includes sequences seven and eight.

Pretty much any book with a narrative arc can be roughly broken up this way.

The story’s beginning then is the first half of the first act, or sequence one. Roughly 10 to 15 percent of the book. And it ends with the inciting incident.

The inciting incident is the first really unusual thing that happens to the main character. I think about it as a question — from another character or from the Universe — that boils down to ‘will you enter the world of this story?’

Let’s use the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee as an example. The inciting incident happens when Scout gets into a fight at school after she learns that her father is representing Tom Robinson, a black man accused of assaulting a white woman.

To understand where to start your story, start at the inciting incident.

There are things that the reader needs to know before they get to this first pivotal scene, in order for it to have the biggest impact. If you identify your story’s inciting incident, you can work backward and make a list of the information that you want to give your readers.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader needs to know these things before Scout finds out about Tom Robinson.

She lives in Macomb County, Alabama in the 1930s. A time and place where racism is rampant.
Her father, Atticus, is a lawyer who is well respected in the community.
Atticus is very fair, so much so that the judge comes to ask him personally to represent Tom Robinson. He also seems fairly mild-mannered, but is a crack shot and willing to put himself in a compromising position to do the right thing.
Scout is a feisty little girl who speaks her mind.
She doesn’t really want to go to school. Mostly because she already knows how to read and the teacher says her father taught her wrong. And also, she has to wear dresses, which she doesn’t want to do.
She has a brother named Jem and a new friend named Dill. The three of them learn tolerance through the story, so their intolerance needs to be shown in the beginning of the story.
Scout and Jem’s mother died when Scout was a baby and they were raised in part by their black nanny and cook, Calpurnia.
On her street, there lives a man named Boo who is an outsider the kids are scared of, even though they don’t know him. Boo is effectively a mirror of the racism in Alabama at that time.
By the time of the inciting incident, the reader needs to be on Tom Robinson’s side. Since we don’t know him, this has to happen through Atticus. We need to like and trust him enough to believe what he believes.

In order for the scene where Scout learns that her father is representing Tom Robinson to have the biggest impact, the reader needs to fully trust Atticus — as much as she does. Because we don’t actually know Tom, it’s Atticus’s belief that the man is innocent that gives depth to the inciting incident.

In order to trust Atticus that much, we need to know why Scout does. And also that the judge does, as well. He appoints Atticus in an effort to make sure Tom has fair representation.

We also need to understand the setting — both the place and the time period. The underlying story of Boo Radley highlights the fear of the other that permeates Macomb County, Alabama in the 1930s.

Once you have your list of information you need to share with your reader, you can craft a list of scenes that will impart it.

Here are the opening scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Scout and Jem meet Dill for the first time.
They tell Dill about the Radley house and that everyone knows Boo Radley is dangerous.
The kids end up near the house and Jem runs up to slap the door. When they make a run for it, they’re nearly caught and Jem gets caught on a fence and has to take off his pants. When he goes back for his pants, they’re neatly folded.
Atticus accepts a bag of hickory nuts as payment.
Scout has to start school, even though she doesn’t want to. On the first day, her teacher gets on her for being able to read already. She’s upset because she’s not supposed to read with her father anymore. Her father gives her a very diplomatic answer.
The judge appoints Atticus to represent Tom Robinson, because he wants the man to have fair representation and is afraid another lawyer won’t offer that.
Scout does her best to make sure her teacher knows about the different families in Macomb County. In particular why it wasn’t okay to offer lunch money to a particular boy, whose family never takes charity.

Make your own list of scenes. How will you make sure that your readers will know what they need to know in order for the inciting incident to have the fullest impact possible.

Once you know which scenes you need in the first sequence of your book, you can choose which one comes first. Usually, this will just be chronological.

The narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird is an adult scout looking back on a time in her life between the ages of six and nine.

The first few pages are narration — we are told some things about Scout, Jem, Atticus, Calpurnia, their town, and the time.

The first real scene is Jem and Scout meeting Dill in the first chapter. Then we learn about Boo and the Radley house. Later Scout starts school and doesn’t get along with her teacher.

The next summer Dill is back. They continue their fascination with the Radley house and the incident with Jem’s pants happens.

When school starts again, Jem and Scout find gifts left in the hollow of a tree, probably by Boo. Atticus shoots a rabid dog from a considerable distance and the kids learn he is the best shot in Macomb County.

And then Scout gets in a fight at school because the kids are teasing her about her dad representing a black man who is accused of assaulting a white woman.

Those scenes fulfill all of the information the reader needs to have in order for the inciting incident to have impact. By the time of Scout’s fight, we trust Atticus, we know that he’s very fair-minded, and we understand the time and place of the novel’s setting.

What if you start in the wrong place?

If you don’t get the opening right, the story’s pacing is off.

If To Kill a Mockingbird started with Scout getting in a fight, the reader wouldn’t know who to pull for. That scene is overtly racist, but other than that, we’d have no context at all for Tom Robinson’s case.

We also wouldn’t have the story of Boo Radley, which is a mirror for the racism in this place and time. Boo is a white man, but he is representative of ‘otherness.’ His story moves along side Tom’s and is something the kids are engaged in on their own, without adult supervision. They learn tolerance through Boo, in a more personal way than they can through Tom, who they do not have direct access to.

If it started further back, say with Scout and Jem’s mother dying, then by the time we finally get to Tom Robinson, it’s too late. The reader is either bored or is expecting a different kind of story. One about grief instead of racism and fairness and justice.

Bottom Line

Your story should start exactly where it needs to, in order for the inciting incident to happen 10 to 15 percent of the way through your book. You’ll need early scenes that give readers what they need to know in order for the inciting incident to have the greatest impact.

The reader needs to care about your character and your story by the time the inciting incident comes. The opening of your book, the first sequence, is where you build the ordinary world, so that there is something to compare the special world of the story against when it’s introduced.

The story of Atticus representing Tom Robinson hits harder when we understand when and where and to whom the story is happening.

Give the exercise a try and see what happens. Identify your inciting incident, make a list of the things the reader needs to know before it happens, and craft scenes that will deliver that information. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to pinpoint your story’s opening.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, King Louie Baloo the dog, and Ollie Wilbur the cat. She is the author of Viral Nation, Rebel Nation, The Astonishing Maybe, Center of Gravity and Here I Am. She is the original Ninja Writer.