Writing a Story for Dummies

When a Story Should Begin

        In my opinion, the beginning is without a doubt the most important part of the entire story. It is the first part of the actual story that anyone will read. Before then, the reader doesn’t have much they can judge your story on besides the cover, the blurb, and possibly things that other people have said about it. If these catch a person’s interest, that is a good sign. They might give your actual work a shot. The problem is that you only have a short window to capture the reader’s attention before you completely lose it.

        Although I’m sure there are plenty of good arguments as to why the ending (the part which will shape how the reader views the rest of the book after they have finished it) or the middle (the meat of the story) could be considered the most important section of the story, the beginning’s role is simply too massive to ignore. In a novel, the first chapter usually introduces the protagonist, helps us learn about the setting, sets up the main conflict, and generally serves to make the reader hooked on the story as quickly as possible. Nobody will bother to read past that first chapter if it doesn’t make the reader care about what will happen next. No matter how amazingly awesome the rest of your story might be, the reader won’t want to risk wasting their time on a story with a weak beginning.

        Let me put this into perspective for you. Let’s say you pick up a book whose blurb says that it is about a man who finds out that his child has a disease with a very low survival rate. You decide to start reading it since it sounds like it could be quite an emotional read. You expect the story to start at the very least by the time the kid starts showing worrying symptoms if not the day the horrible disease is diagnosed. Instead, it starts with the man eating breakfast before having a completely average work at least a few days before anything related to the main conflict happens. 

        As you can imagine, that would make a lousy beginning for the book and would turn off a lot of people. Nobody wants to start off a book with a whole chapter about someone eating cereal before spending the whole stinking day sitting at a desk. Without any sign of the story’s main conflict in sight, the reader might just give up right there. At the bare minimum, the beginning of a story needs to get the readers invested in something or someone. 

        Technically, a reader could abandon a book at any time. I’ll admit that I have given up on a few stories myself. This does not always happen soon after the story starts. Sometimes it can even happen just before the ending. If a reader will stop reading a book, they will most likely do so within the first few chapters. Readers typically become increasingly invested in the outcome of the story as they go. Protagonists who were once complete strangers to them now feel like friends. Once the reader becomes significantly invested in the characters in a story, they will be much less likely to stop reading just because the story’s quality starts to slip. This is especially important for longer stories and series since the reader will need to make a serious long term commitment in order to reach the ending. The reader must be made to care about what happens next in order to keep turning those pages.

        Figuring out how to begin a story really comes down to finding the point where you can keep contributing to the plot while avoiding any other events like the plague. Let’s revisit the example from earlier. There are quite a few points where the story could start and hook the reader very quickly. I’ll discuss three possible beginnings from the story. All of them could work out well, but they lay the groundwork for different scenarios later on in the story.

        For our first example, let’s say that the story starts when the child is only experiencing mild symptoms. They have been happening for a while and will soon get worse. The father is worried although he still has hope that his kid will be able to recover without medical assistance. Starting from this point allows the story to explore how the normal lives of the main characters are changing before the conflict intensifies. For example, the man could be performing poorly at his job due to stress from both his child’s illness as well as a tragic event involving his wife a few months before the story started. The child on the other hand could be struggling through school as his symptoms gradually worsen. This example would allow the reader to learn more about how the characters normal lives used to be like before the conflict set in. This also adds some suspense since the reader doesn’t know how horrific the child’s illness is yet. 

        The second example skips over the whole minor phase of the illness and goes straight to the nasty stuff. The man frantically drives to the hospital after his son’s symptoms greatly worsen. The kid is at the point where he is now most likely too ill to attend school (although he may try depending on the exact symptoms). The child is seen by a doctor. Although the diagnosis may or may happen immediately, it becomes clear that the illness is serious. This example would spend less time focusing on what the characters’ lives used to be like and more on how they are changing. It would still leave room for hope while making the plot much more emotional from the start. The third example is a lot darker.

        The story could also begin after the child has started receiving some treatments although they haven’t been very successful so far. The man tries to act hopeful for his kid’s sake, but he is getting pretty depressed. Despair has started to set in although the doctors have a few more ideas that might help the kid survive. This story would probably be the most heartbreaking. Even if the son did survive, part of the story would probably involve the extremely long recovery process afterwards. 

        All three of the above examples would lead to stories that I would most likely continue reading. They are set at different points, but they all have a lot of potential. Since all three possible beginnings start at a point which would get the plot moving, the story would be able to grab the reader’s attention early on. Getting off to a strong start is the perfect way to make reader’s invested in a story’s outcome as early as possible.