Beginner Mistakes - Where to start the story

One of the biggest beginner mistakes in writing is where to start their story. But there’s all this important stuff that leads up to that. So finding the beginning of the story is probably the most difficult thing for newbie authors to do. Start with the action. Um, yeah, what are you writing? Not everyone has the reflective glint as the knife slashes into the shadowy figure in the alleyway. But maybe she is standing on the ladder at the building supply store, and as she lifts one thing from a shelf, she sets off an avalanche of boxes. Or maybe she turns her ankle as she steps off the curb.

Is he attempting to settle the feeling from his morning granola bar of the peanuts and raisins battling in his stomach as he gets into the elevator? We don’t want to know that he’s a Yale graduate and has always been top in his class or that his father was a former Senator and now CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You can tell us that stuff later! The first few sentences need to grab the reader’s attention and let the reader identify with the character. And all that important stuff that leads up to that starting point? Weave it in later. And don’t give it in big chunks. Little bits carefully chosen can be added here in there, often in conversation.

Since I don’t write suspense or anything that will make you sit on the edge of your seat finding the beginning isn’t always easy because there are no dead bodies. It’s that way for many authors, so look for those places to start. I often suggest that people write whatever it is that they want to write with all that back history stuff and then put it in its own file. Now what?

I’ve heard agents say they don’t want to read another opener with someone sitting in the car with the windshield wipers sloshing back and forth. But we have to start someplace! Maybe sitting in that car isn’t the best place to start. Can you move it up another paragraph or two? Maybe she need to scurry into the building - drenched.

Yes, you want a powerful first sentence that will set the tone for the entire story. It was the best of times… Is considered by many as the most famous and most powerful opening line and the worst is considered to be: It was a dark and stormy night, the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals… But writing that incredible first line is often near impossible and even if you found that amazing line, the next few paragraphs have got to be great. The next few pages have to be super and you’ve got to keep your readers turning the pages breathlessly awaiting the conclusion of your story and if it ends too soon for them because it’s not a 150,000 page tome… You got the picture? The trick is to draw the reader into the story. Allow the reader to bond with the character or characters. You must do that quickly.

Years ago, we’d walk into our favorite bookseller and grab a book with a cover that appealed to us. Maybe it had that hunky guy on the cover or a beautiful mansion/castle in the English countryside. And what did you do? You read that first page. You might read the first pages of ten books, but one of those books had you reading to page five and that’s the one you bought. Was it really the opening line? No. It was because that story sucked you in. It made you identify with the character and keep reading.

For some, reading an opening that had a man stumbling across the battlefield with the stench of decay all around him would be enough of a hook to keep many readers reading. For others, it’s an instant shelf return. Just remember to set the tone, capture the reader’s attention quickly, give them some info instantly without telling too much, and keep moving forward.

That beginning is important. I don’t begin to write a single word until I’m certain where that story starts. That means I write it in my head, but occasionally I will type the story until I find where to start - the moment that pulls it together and kicks off the story. I promise it’s not where she’s home alone waiting for her husband to come home from the war because there’s nothing happening with her at home. Speed it up to where something does happen and then let the reader see that she’s alone and her husband is at war.

James Michener was famous for opening his books with lots of description. As a newbie, don’t do it! People today don’t want three pages describing the mansion, the gardens, or the cemetery. Yes, you need to anchor the scene and set the tone, but it can be done in other ways that aren’t pure description.

I’m going to present several openings from my books to give you an idea of smooth setups that drop the reader right into the story. Each imparts relevant info that becomes apparent later and captures my reading audience.

Here’s an example from my book Mariner’s Cove.

"Be good for Grandma,'' Nikki Winchester admonished her daughter.

"Yeah, whatever.'' Hannah frowned then rolled her eyes at her younger brother.

Logan shrugged and started to turn away.

"Don't I get a hug before I leave?'' Nikki asked.

Logan threw his arms around his mom and almost towered over her. Skinny, yet sinewy, he was going to be tall like his dad. He wasn't her baby boy anymore.

That terrible empty feeling filled Nikki. Her heart pounded against her lungs. It was all she could do to keep from crying. She reached out and pulled her daughter into the embrace. When she let go of her children, Nikki turned to her mom and forced a smile. "I'm going to be fine. I need this.''

"I know you do. I just hope you find the peace you've been looking for since…''

Nikki nodded. "So do I.''

Nikki gave her mom one last kiss and walked out the front door. She'd never done anything like this in her life, and if she had to start over she was determined to make it a positive experience. Tears welled. She swiped her fingers across each eye wiping away the moisture that had collected and forced herself to focus on the long drive ahead of her.

What do we know from that? We know that Nikki is going far away, she’s a mom with two children, but they aren’t little. The children are staying with their grandmother. And Nikki’s starting over. What the reader isn’t getting is why. Well, the why is a little complicated, but I will tell you that she’s a widow and it’s a huge part of the story because it’s made her what she is.

From A Skeleton at Her Door.

The peephole revealed a man in a skeleton costume. Angie laughed and opened the door. "Omigod, Matt, come in. You look a little bony. Did you lose weight? Where did you get that costume?" She turned and called up the stairs of the tiny two-bedroom townhouse that she shared with her daughter, "Lissy, come see Matt in his Halloween costume."

She turned back to her neighbor. Every speck of his face was covered in black and white paint, including the lips that were painted like teeth. "Who painted your face? They did a phenomenal job."

The skeleton didn’t answer.

"Afraid to talk for fear of messing it up?"

The skeleton nodded.

She stared at the incredible hunk standing before her in his skintight, black and white costume with a hood. It looked like something a speed skater would wear during the Olympics. "Geezzz, if you weren't such a baby compared to me and didn't have a steady girl, I'd be all over you. Really, Matt, you need to show off those muscles more often. You're hot! Very hot! Talk about jumping bones." She giggled. "Oh yeah!" She fanned her face with her hand and grinned. "Lissy, get down here!"

"Coming," a young voice hollered back.

At the sound of footsteps, Angie turned and watched her young daughter descend the stairs. Seeing the child's face was worth it.

"Wow!" Lissy's eyes grew round with amazement. She sat on a step so she was equal in height to the man standing by their front door. "But, Mommy, Matt has blue eyes and this skeleton has brownish eyes."

What do we know? Angie just opened her door to a total stranger - it’s not Matt. Angie has a daughter. And this skeleton is hot.

This is from A Rancher’s Woman. 

     "We're here." Frank Coleman called from his buckboard.

Malene Goddard kept the quilt tucked tight to her body and watched as her sister, Adie Reiner, pulled herself to the edge of the open wagon and looked around.

"What do you see?" Malene asked.

"Nothing. A wooden fence and more nothingness. Frank is opening a gate."

Malene protectively slipped her hands over her lower abdomen where the child within her grew. As Adie snuggled back between the quilts that failed to keep them warm, Malene groaned and her teeth chattered. "I will never travel in the winter again. Never."

The wagon jerked forward a few feet and stopped. She listened to Many Feathers jump from the driver’s seat of their wagon. Then she heard the squeal of the gate being closed. She pulled the wool scarf once again from her nose and lower face to speak. "I'm going to die of cold."

Adie giggled. "Ja. But we are warmer than they are."

"We can't get any colder," Malene whined. Frank had promised they would have a bed and a warm place to stay tonight, but she was beginning to doubt it. She tried to remember the last time she'd had a real meal or slept in a bed.

What do we know so far? The opening sets a tone. It’s obviously a historical, bitter cold, there are two sisters and one is pregnant, plus there’s Frank and an Indian named Many Feathers. And wherever they are, they aren’t really there, and they’ve suffered some hardships.

Here’s another example from A New Beginning. (Warning: adult language in example)

The doorbell rang as the microwave beeped. Patrick Makowllen wasn't expecting anyone so he ignored it. His stomach rumbled as he removed his meal from the microwave and peeled off the film covering his food. The rising steam stung his fingertips. He winced. With his fork, he stirred the mashed potatoes and then the mushroom gravy surrounding the Salisbury steak. The obnoxious bell sounded again. He scraped the vegetables into the garbage disposal. Why do they put peas and carrots in these meals? Disgusting.

Then the doorbell rang a third time. Whoever it was laid on the button. Annoyance crawled up his spine. Can't I eat my dinner? The grating noise sent him to the door. Through the peephole, he could see silver and blue spiked hair on a short person. He wasn't about to open the door to some kid trying to sell magazines.

He started to turn away when the stranger began to pound on the door and called, "Patty, it's Dallas. I know you're in there. Open the door. It's freezing out here!"

The familiarity stopped him in his tracks. He turned around and opened the door.

Dallas shot into the house. "Fuck, it's so cold, my tits will never defrost."

He looked at the apparition in front of him. Yep, Texas has tits.

His gaze traveled upward. Whatever makeup she was wearing had now run in dark rivers down her face and then had been smeared across her cheeks. She also had yellow contacts in her eyes and her ears were so heavily pierced there wasn't any place left to make a hole.

What do we know about Patrick and Dallas? He’s older, eats microwave meals, hates peas and carrots, she’s still somewhat young with a Goth/punk/grunge-look, they know each other, and they are total opposites. Does it matter that he doesn’t eat his vegetable? Yes! It’s an odd tidbit that is important to the story

Here’s an example from A Child’s Heart.

   Trent Callahan intended to fill the day with a few pleasant memories of his four-year-old son, and he was not about to have this day ruined over false advertising. He brought his son to see dinosaurs, and the child was going to see them.

   He strode into the room to have a word with the museum curator, but what he saw made him want to gag. Mummified remains of small animals seemed to be everywhere, and in the middle of all of it was an Oshkosh-clad young woman with white-blonde hair. Trying not to stare at the dead creature next to him, he held his son's hand a little tighter as he cleared his throat. "Excuse me. I was told I'd find the curator in here. It's quite obvious that no one in this place seems to know anything."

   The young woman rose from her crouched position and smiled. Her eye color matched the denim blue of her overalls. Pulling a pair of gloves off and extending her hand to him, she politely answered, "I'm Cassandra Jones, the curator. How may I help you?"

   Taken aback, he hesitated, then took her hand. Standing there without a trace of makeup, she looked very young, except for the crinkles around her eyes. He stammered, "You're the curator?"

   "Yes. Again, how may I help you?"

   "We came to see the dinosaur exhibit, and I'm being told we can't go into those rooms."

   "Oh, I'm so sorry. The exhibit officially opens to the public tomorrow. Tonight is the Dino Tread."

   "I can't afford to come back tomorrow. I took today off from work to bring my son. According to the billboard, the exhibit opens today."

   Tears were brimming in the child's eyes.

   "I understand the confusion. The posters are more accurate than that billboard. Give me a moment to finish," she replied with a broader smile, which made the lines around her eyes more noticeable.

   He watched as she returned to what she was doing when he walked into the room. It was as if she were ignoring him, and his blood boiled. He looked down at Shawn, whose eyes were washed in tears that were starting to spill. "Don't cry, Shawn," he whispered. "I didn't pay all this money for you to miss seeing the dinosaurs. You're going to see them."

What do you know? Trent has a son, he took the day off from work to take the child to the museum to see dinosaurs, and there’s a mistake in the way the exhibit has been advertised. Trent is angry and determined that his son is going to see dinosaurs. Obviously, Trent is not a wealthy man.

The last two stories are from my River City books, which are more mainstream with romance, but both examples immediately put the hero and heroine together. That’s not required. Yet in both instances, it kicks the story off without a lot of background on either character.

Only you can decide where your story starts, but start it quickly. Don’t look back, look forward, and weave in that important info from their backgrounds in tiny pieces as the story progresses. Give the reader a reason to like the character or even feel sorry for the character. The reader must identify in some way in order to connect with the character. That commitment will keep the reader reading.

Got a question? Just ask.

A World in My Head

I belong to a local group of writers, not novelists, just writers. A few write short stories, a few write books, a few write nonfiction pieces, and the rest of the group writes poetry. It's an odd mix of some super wonderful people who officially meet twice a month. Once a week, we get together and spend about two hours writing, or at least we're supposed to be writing, but often we wind up chatting.

Well, the other night one of the members came with new notes. He's writing this mother's story, a fascinating tale of a woman who came from nothing and has suffered incredible hardships. She's well in her nineties with failing vision but living quite comfortably. He made the comment that he now feels like he's living his mother's life by taking down her stories as she recounts her life and turning those stories into a memoir.

He's bounced between writing in first person and writing in third, trying to find the groove of his voice and present a strong point of view in which to tell the story. Two of us at this non-official writing session are published authors, and while trying to help him, the other author brought up the diary that I'm writing. That sent him into the tangent of what am I writing. So I tried to explain how my contemporary western romance, A Snowy Christmas in Wyoming, mentioned a diary. And I've been asked for the diary... But since it's supposed to be a diary, I have to write it in first person and that's not my natural voice. Then I got into how  writing the diary sparked the invitation to be part of Sweetwater Spring Christmas with Debra Holland and that story evolved into my historical western, A Rancher's Woman, by using the grandson of the woman in the diary.

I gave him a quick overview of this woman's life in the diary. He stops me and asks where I found the diary. Um, in my head. He looks at me askance and wants to now how I pull this stuff out of thin air. Do I just make up these characters? Yeah.

Maybe it was the innocence of his questions or the fact that I spend so much time around other writers that I forget just how strange we must seem to the rest of the world who doesn't have a clue how characters form or how we conjure up a whole world for them to live in. It's impossible to explain to someone who has never had an imaginary playmate, just as it is impossible for us to imagine life without these characters. For many of us, we do more than create characters, we are the architects behind the houses, cities, and new worlds.

We talk about muses, but maybe what we have is an extra chemical in our brains or some neuro pathway that others don't. But writers, like artists, are different. I love ballet, but I have the coordination of a drunk fly. I can't imagine having unwritten music in my head. Thank goodness I'm not cluttered with music that needs to be transcribed. That doesn't mean I don't love music, it's just that I don't create music. I create people, and places for them to live.


Even though my friend is writing, his approach is totally different. That won't make his mother's story less worthy of reading. But it might be why he's struggled to write it. But when my friend said he's now mentally living his mother's life, a little smile came to my face. I think he's discovered what it's like to be in a character's head. He'll find his mojo, stop struggling, and the story will begin to flow as it should.

Because good writing is good writing. The story needs the words to bring it to life, and we as writers must choose those words. It's the sequence of those words that make the difference. That is the craft. But the story comes in many different ways, and for the vast majority of us who write fiction stories, they are populated with characters who exist only in our minds - characters who live there until they are ready for the story. We know how they drink their coffee for we have watched them fix a cup of coffee as we fix ours.

I won't say I've never filled out a character sheet. I tried that one time. I almost destroyed a hero and heroine trying to do it. Maybe they don't want or need sheets.

Do we? Could we put ourselves in neat little blocks of data? I might have a preferred way to drink my coffee but I can drink it straight, sweetened only, or white only. I suspect I'm not alone. So why must my character choose a favorite color? Maybe my character's favorite color is lavender, that doesn't mean he's going to buy his next suit in lavender or want his girlfriend wearing it. But maybe something in his past that he's long forgotten was lavender and that particular color gives him warm fuzzy feelings. The painting that hangs in his living room has that color in the sky or the tie with the tiny stripe of lavender mixed with other blues is his favorite. And maybe he doesn't really know it's his favorite color.

Does it matter if I see my hero with a nose that might have been broken when he was five years old? Probably not. What matters is how the reader perceives him and his personality will override anything physical. And when he has ripened and I have my story, I pull upon that character and let him shine. He might have been waiting patiently for years to come alive in a story and maybe he's as fresh as a spring bud sticking its nose out of the snow.

But characters live with me - many have for years and years. Some have become like close friends and will never be placed onto a page, because once I do that, I must give them up. I don't mind being alone. Maybe I never am truly alone. Is that why other people who don't have characters in their heads walk into a house and turn on the TV to keep them company?

As a child, I would tell my mom wonderful stories of my imaginary playmates and what we did. I was told I was being silly and to stop the nonsense. I learned to be silent. If I said I went swimming with my real friends in the duck pond, I was in trouble. I learned to be silent about real life. That silence carried into young adulthood where I kept my dates secret. It wasn't until I married that I could actually tell my husband that I had all these people and places in my mind. He said he never did, but thought it was interesting that I did. He later supported me when I started writing fiction for our children, and when I started writing romance, he said I had found my niche.

I envy those who can ski off a slope, perform an entrechat, skate their way to an Olympic gold medal, or a dozen other things. But in my mind, I've done them. In real life, I've surfed, sailed a catamaran, ridden horses, skied hills, skated on ponds, seen the Taj Mahal, the Lourve, and the Vatican, and done more than probably most. But that wild imagination allows me to write so that others can read, and for a few hours, they can be someone else. I grew up thinking those characters in my head were a curse. Now I know they are a gift.             

WHAT DO YOU THINK? DO YOU LIVE WITH CHARACTERS?

Throwback Thursday!

The internet takes a step back in time every Thursday as people around the world share old baby pictures, vintage prom and wedding photos, and other assorted oldies. Authors can share too! This Thursday meme highlights those books in your backlist.

In comments, tempt us with a snippet, 300 words or less, from your older works. Don't forget your buy link and website/blog link. Have fun!

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Hump Day Blurb Share!

This Wednesday meme is all about the blurb. Can a few tempting words of introduction grab a reader's attention? Let's find out!

In comments, tempt us with the blurb off your book jacket -- just one book, please. Don't forget your buy link and website/blog link. Have fun!

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Tuesday Reviews!

Choose the best one-liner from a review (a single sentence) and share in comments. It doesn't matter how much time has passed. All reviews are new to someone. Don't forget your buy link and website/blog link. Have fun!

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Wash Line Monday!

Our Monday meme shines a light on apparel. From Regency to Steampunk, and everything in between, we dress our characters to reflect the story we want to tell.

In comments, and in 300 words or less, give us a snippet from your novel that describes what your heroes, heroines, or bit players are wearing. Don't forget your buy link and website/blog link. Have fun!

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Snippet Sunday!

Sometimes a little goes a long way. In comments, share a snippet one to three sentences long.

Be sure to add your website/blog link and one link to where your books can be found. Example: Your Amazon Author's Page.

 
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