JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #51
May 6, 2021
Today I want to talk about the beginning of a story. There’s a lot of advice about how to start a story. You should start with action. You should have a “hook.” You should do anything you can to trick the reader into reading more. You should begin every story with "It was a dark and stormy night." One of the functions of the beginning of a story is to intrigue the reader so that they will feel compelled to go on until they’ve read half the book without meaning to. The best way to do this is to establish who a character is and what is their problem--the problem that will launch the plot of the story--and intrigue the reader as to how that problem might be solved.
The advice to begin with action is good because action does more than provide a dynamic and interesting scene: action is where character is most clearly revealed. What a reader needs from the beginning of a story is to learn what the status quo is, what long-term problem has been nagging the character--whether it is a flaw of character, an internal issue like self-doubt, or an adversarial or agonistic problem like a coworker out to undermine them. Most of the time, external problems are actually manifestations of an internal problem, and the character must find a way to change themselves in order to overcome the external dilemma. The beginning of the story is where we flesh out these issues.
The next thing that should happen is that the problem comes to a head. No longer can the character ignore it; no longer is it an issue that they can mope about but not confront. Suddenly it becomes the only thing that matters, and they are forced to address it. Once this happens, that can be generally considered the end of the beginning. The event or moment that forces this confrontation is often called the "inciting incident" because it launches the plot and character development--in other words, the story.
A mistake we often make is to begin with the inciting incident rather than establish the status quo before breaking it. After all, the inciting incident is where the story "really" begins, so why not start with that? The problem is that without some understanding of who the character is and where they’re coming from, the reader doesn’t have enough to understand the stakes. We have to earn emotional investment, and that can only be done by giving the reader what they need so that they can invest in the character’s attempts to solve the problem. On the other hand, sometimes we don’t need quite a lot of space between establishing who the character is and forcing them into the inciting incident. Sometimes, these can all be accomplished in the same scene. The key is to realize how we’re accomplishing both, and not to give short shrift to one or the other.
After the inciting incident, the story basically writes itself, right? It’s all smooth sailing from that point on. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.
Next: On Italics