License to Prologue

I know I said I was going to talk about creepy clowns this week, but I couldn’t get the idea to gel quite right in my head. Plus then I got the social media question and had to deal with some other stuff. Anyway, I figured I’d backburner the clowns for now and talk about something more exciting for a minute.

Prologues.

Sorry, not prologues. Everyone knows prologues are awful and you should never, ever use them. Except, y’know, when they work. What I meant to say was Bond.

James Bond.

Let’s talk about James Bond and prologues.

If you think about it, prologues are kind of baked into the Bond film formula, especially the classic films. We’d always begin with James off on some little side mission, or maybe just finishing up a larger one, and then the opening credits would roll and we’d begin the actual movie. You know what I’m talking about, yes? It was the standard structure for decades, and even the new films kind of hold to it (although not quite as rigidly).

So why were these prologues so amazing that they were used through over twenty movies?

Three reasons...

First, it’s starting with action. By dropping us into the story right as a mission’s being brought to a close, it’s a perfect time for face-punching, explosions, gunfire, and bigger explosions. So not only are we starting with action, it’s action that has a clear purpose, a reason for its existence.

Second, the prologues always directly involve Bond. We don’t get long prologues about what other agents are doing, it’s about what our hero is doing. Right now. He’s part of the action, and usually the driving force behind it.

Third, and maybe most importantly, the Bond prologues always end up tying back to the main plot. Often directly to it. We get far enough in and learn that guy’s not dead after all, she was related to that other guy, or that other person got away with the goober that’ll let them do the thing in act three. So the prologues also serve as a bit of worldbuilding for the overall story and maybe some character introductions, too.

Three solid reasons the Bond prologues always worked.

And it’s not just Bond. This structure became so popular dozens of other action movies followed it. Hell, they’re still following it. Look at Thor: Ragnarok. Drops us right into the action with Thor winding up a mission to get Surtur’s crown, which ultimately ties back and becomes a key part of resolving the movie’s main plot.

So don’t be scared of doing prologues. Just make sure they follow Bond’s three simple rules. And if they don’t, well...

I was going to make some sort of “licensed to kill” joke here but everything I came up with was pathetic. Just pretend I said something fantastic. And accept there’s a good chance I’ll need to get rid of a prologue that doesn’t follow these guidelines.

Next time... I may double-post again next week. So there could be multiple topics.

Until then, go write.

Where to Begin

Look, taking all the requests and granting wishes in the holiday season.

A few weeks back a friend of mine from the Burbank Writers Coffeehouse (and hey, have you bought anything from Dark Delicacies during this rough time?) asked me about when you begin a story. To use his example, if 98% of my story takes place on Mars, but we need to know just how our protagonist got to Mars... what do we do? Do we start on Mars and do flashbacks? Do we start on Earth and have a slow burn to our main story on Mars? Where does the story actually begin?

I’d been mulling over how to answer this for a few days when I sat down with my partner to watch a Christmas movie or three. And one of them had...a lot of beginnings. It had a frame story. Then an introductory story. Then we jumped ahead a couple years to (I guess) the main story. And each new beginning forced us to ask is this when the story starts...? And if so, what was all that earlier stuff for?

So, hey... let’s talk about beginnings.

First and foremost, this is all going to be kind of vague and loose. Not in a hand-wavey “don’t think about it” way, but just acknowledging the fact that every story is going to have different needs. If I (or anyone else) tried to set down a hard rule for “always begin here” we could all come up with a dozen or more well-known examples that break that rule. Every story (and every writer) is unique, which means every starting point is unique.

That said...

One of the first things we should be clear about is that “where to begin” is a structure question. We have the linear structure of the story—A to B to C to D—but we also have the narrative structure, the order I’m choosing to tell this story to my audience. A lot of the time A is an acceptable starting point, but it’s not uncommon to start at B or maybe even D. It depends on what I’m trying to do as the writer, and being able to recognize that telling a story in a different way creates a different story.

Second, there’s one or two things we can say with a lot of certainty shouldn’t be my starting point. I talked a while back about the problems a lot of prologues have, one of the big ones being that describe-and-die thing that tends to show up in a lot of B-movies. Not saying these things will never, ever work as beginnings but... wow, it’s going to be a tough hill to climb, y’know?

Third, I should really be clear when things happen in a story has a lot of bearing on how we receive those things. Doing this now looks brave, while doing it then just highlights my cowardice. Putting this here is somewhat interesting, putting it there makes people shriek with excitement. There’s probably a whole post’s worth of stuff in that to discuss, but for now I just need to consider what this starting point is (or isn’t) doing to some of these first bytes of information I’m giving my reader.

Fourth is kind of the unspoken one under all of these. I can’t really figure out  a good starting point until I’ve got a story more or less assembled. It might not be written out in full, but I should have at least a rough sense of my plot and story. Maybe it’s a rough outline or just a good set of character ideas and plot points in my head. I can’t decide where to start telling my story if I don’t have a story, right?

I think this step trips some folks up. They come up with a cool opening, or they want to mimic the structure of a cool opening they saw somewhere else, but ultimately this opening doesn’t work for the story they’re trying to tell. It might be the coolest hat ever, but it just doesn’t go with this outfit. And if I keep insisting it does, I won’t notice that my little Kangol cap would go perfectly with that tie and really help bring out some subtle colors in the jacket.

(writing tips and fashion tips!)

But all of this still leaves us trying to figure out what makes a good starting point. Again, it’s tough because our stories are all going to be unique to us. I can’t really say “do this” and think it’s going to work for... well, maybe for any of you.

So here’s two thing to try.

Thing One—look at that rough draft or outline or framework and just lop off the first chapter (or its equivalent). Whatever you were thinking of using as a starting point, go past it and start there instead. As I mentioned above, a lot of us develop bad storytelling habits because we got hit too many times with the “start with action” stick. So our gut reaction is to create an artificial starting point that has a boxing match or a car chase or a two-headed shark attack.

And a lot of the time, if I snip off that artificial opening, what I’m left with is still a very solid opening—usually a better one. It gets me right to my characters. It gives me a stronger dramatic structure. It works better for reveals. Does it always work this way? Not always, but a surprising amount of the time... maybe 83%...

Thing Two—I’ve mentioned the idea of an elevator pitch before. Lucky me, I’ve just ended up in an elevator with a high-powered Big Five (is it Big Four now?) editor. So I’ve got one, maybe two sentences tops, to tell them my story and get them interested. No run-ons or rambling. I'm going to get three breaths, tops.

Do that right now—how would you pitch me your story in one sentence? Yes, now I’m the high-powered editor. Surprise twist!

Where did you start your pitch? Did you skip over anything? And if something wasn’t important enough to mention in the big sales speech... does it need to be there? 

And in both of these, please keep in mind I’m not saying I won’t ever need these bits I’m cutting loose in my story. They might be things to come out in backstory or flashbacks. I’m just saying maybe I don’t need to start my story with them.

 So go forth and find new beginnings! Or confirm the old ones are solid. That’s cool, too. Just as long as you’ve got a great opening.

Next time...

Holy crap. Next time is Christmas Eve. I’ve got to get these last few cards in the mail. And wrap stuff.

But maybe next week, as we’re all settling down for our long winter’s nap, we could talk about something seasonal. 

Like Die Hard.

Until then, go write.

Not THAT Kind of Action...

How’s everyone’s week been? Anything interesting going on in the world?

Today I’d like to dissect one of those chestnuts of bad advice that keeps floating around the internet and showing up in different writing-related groups. Well, it’s not so much bad as really misunderstood. Which is what happens when a lot of these things get distilled down to quick little buzzphrases instead of, y’know... explained.

So, an explanation.

The advice in question is start with action. I’m sure you’ve heard it once or thrice before. I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times and why it isn’t the best rule to follow.

Because starting my story with action doesn’t mean explosions and automatic weapons firing.  We don’t need to have dinosaurs in mech suits fighting vampire kaiju while SEAL team sixteen  (the best of the best of the best) blows up the Washington Monument to take out the ninja lizard men trying to steal the Declaration of Independence. No boxing matches, no car chases, none of whatever other type of wild action scene might grab the reader immediately.

Just to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. But it should be clear there’s a lot of genres they won’t work in (although I do think a lot of Hallmark’s Christmas rom-coms could be improved by introducing kaiju). Heck, even in genres where this kind of high energy intro could work, they might not fit in the particular story I’m telling.

Trying to force these high-action openings into every story is the misunderstanding I mentioned up above. It makes for a lot of clumsy openings that often don’t match up with the tone or plot of the actual narrative. When we say a story should start with action, what we’re really saying is that characters should be active from the beginning. A story should start with something happening.

But... and this is why I’m revisiting this...

I’ve had a few people point out to me (with a few different tones to their voices) that lots of things count as something happening. Right now I’m typing. And pausing to re-read a bit as I go. And digesting lunch. And breathing. I mean, technically, sleeping is me “doing something.” So is walking from room to room. Taking a shower. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. Yeah, those are all actions, no question. But none of these make for really compelling openings. They’re not exactly what I’d use to kick off a book.

So we don’t need to begin with gigantic, all-caps ACTION, but we also don’t want to begin with a light breeze making a few strands of my character’s hair drift side to side while she naps. 

I’ve been trying to think of a simple way to explain this better, that level of action that falls between explosions and mundane. And the other day I came up with what I think is a pretty solid one. With two small provisos.

So here’s your new rule to replace start with action.

Start with someone’s life changing.

This sounds big, but hear me out. It doesn’t need to be a permanent, scarring change. It doesn’t need to be gigantic. It just needs to disrupt the flow of their life to some level. It should be something that they notice happening if it’s going to be worth us using it as a starting point for the story.

Wakko finding out he’s got a flat tire when he’s heading into work is a change to his life—it’s going to affect his whole day. Same with Dot spilling her coffee and having to stop and clean it up. Phoebe finding out her ex thought she was “comfortably dull” (yes, no matter what they were doing) is going to change her life. And to use an example I’ve mentioned before, Sam Wilson realizing the guy he’s trying to run laps against is Captain America is definitely going to make some ripples in his life.

Keep in mind—the big change in Sam’s life comes much later, when Steve and Natasha show up at his place looking for a place to hide and learn Sam has some skills of his own. But the action of that opening scene... Sam’s just met an actual living legend and had a moment of bonding over their experience as returning combat vets. If nothing else ever happened, if Sam and Steve never saw each other again, we still know this moment would’ve had some effect on Sam, for the rest of that day if nothing else.

Simple enough, yes?

Okay, here are my two little additions/provisos to this rule.

One is that this life changing event doesn’t need to be connected to my main plot in any way. Or even a subplot. It can be, sure, but it doesn’t have to be. It's more about giving us a first impression of the character. Wakko’s flat tire doesn’t need to lead to the bigger overall story. The opinions of Phoebe’s ex don’t have to tie into a larger arc about relationships. And honestly, if you snipped that morning jog scene off The Winter Soldier and just began with Cap rescuing the ship at sea... what would really change, plot-wise? 

Two is a little trickier, but... it’s definitely worth keeping in mind. I’ve blathered on a couple times about the idea that characters should be used to things in their world. To the point that what would be amazing to us might be almost boring to them. With that in mind, I can start with something that might not be life-changing for the character as long as it would definitely be for the reader. Taking a gravity elevator-shuttle to the Moon is normal for Cali and Kurt, maybe even boring, but we can still appreciate the idea of kids bouncing around the cabin as people glide through the aisles and over seats. It’s nothing to them, but it’s something to us.

And one more time, just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with explosions, car chases, and vampire kaiju. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with dinosaurs in mech suits. But these big action pieces need to work with my story as a whole. They shouldn’t be something I just wrestled into place so I can say my story starts with action.

Look at the opening of your book. Does it change somebody’s life? Because that’s the big goal here, right...?

Next time, I’d like to hit you with a rock.

Until then... go write.

On Your Marks, Get Set...

Last week I talked about action and I almost spun off on a whole little semi-related tangent. I cut myself off there, but I still want to talk about it, ‘cause it’s one of those things that comes up a lot. And people get it wrong a lot.

What I wanted to address (revisit, really) is that old chestnut that gets dragged out in almost every writing class or discussion or guru-lecture. Start with action. I’m guessing you’ve heard it once or thrice, yes?  Probably just this year.

The problem here is action. Most people see that word and think of... well, all that stuff we talked about last time. Car chases. Ninjas fighting cyborg lizard men. Giant two-headed shark attacks!

So, naturally, this is what they begin with. They come up with a reason to begin with a bank heist. Or a plane crash. Or an armed home invasion. Which is kinda weird in a romantic Christmas story, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right? And we need to start with action!

To be clear, this almost never works.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me do one of my Saturday geekery binges, watching three or four bad B-movies in a row. And one of the most common problems they all have is that they start with action. Something crashing to Earth and killing some rednecks or, y’know, a giant two-headed shark attack. Usually in three feet of water. Most giant two-headed shark attacks occur in three feet of water.

But every time, these action-packed events involve people we don’t know and have no investment in. Which immediately lessens the action because it’s not involving anyone I care about, it’s just... happening. To put it in current events terms, we’ve all seen the news about hundreds of thousands of people dying across the globe from Covid-19—heck, we’re past a hundred thousand deaths just here in the US. And while it’s awful, it’s also kind of abstract... until it’s somebody we know. That’s when it hits home and all this stuff happening really connects with us.

Weirdly enough, as a side note... a lot of time the people in these opening action scenes tend to be awful, so I don’t even have basic human empathy for them. I want them to die, and that can switch the whole tone of my opening. Far too often, these events won’t even end up tying back to the story. They’re just little disconnected blips with characters we’ll never see or hear about again.

When I try to start with action like this, I’m just delaying the actual starting point of the story. And I’m doing it in a way that alienates my audience, too. Why would I want to do that?

And one other problem when I start this way. If I structure my story so it begins cranked up to eight-point-three, there’s only two things it can do. It can either take a huge hit and drop down to three or maybe four as I establish some kind of norm. Or it can stay up in that top fifteen percent of dramatic tension and be... kind of monotone. I mean, think about it—a whole story where the tension never shifts by more than ten percent in any direction?

So... why does start with action keep getting parroted around?

As I mentioned last time, there’s more to action than just swordfights. My typing all this up for you to read is action, and you reading it is action. Getting lectured by your boss, trying to get to class on time, cooking dinner, mowing the lawn... All of these things are action. They’re things happening.

More importantly, I think, is they’re actions we can all immediately understand, and they’re actions that can easily tell us something about the people involved in them.

Take mowing the lawn for example. How old is Wakko? Is he mowing his lawn or someone else’s? Why is he mowing it? How much effort is it for him? What’s he thinking about while he’s doing it? These are all really easy questions to answer while he’s pushing the mower back and forth. So something’s happening, we’re meeting the character, and maybe even getting to set up some simple, basic stakes.

When we say “start with action,” we want to feel that events are in progress. That these are real people who existed before page one. We just stumbled across them right now at what’s (hopefully) the point when all the interesting stuff’s about to begin.

Also, just to stop one train of thought real quick—yes, thinking is technically an action. So is fantasizing, realizing, remembering, reading, staring into space, and many other such things. But the key thing to remember here is all of these are really just Yakko sitting at his desk and not moving. So really... nothing’s happening.

And we want to have something happening. Something that falls in the middle ground between daydreaming and demon ninjas roaring down the street on AI-guided murdercycles. I mean, just off the top of my head, let’s look at some action-filled books and movies and see how they start...

Captain America: The Winter Soldier begins, as I’ve often pointed out, with the two main characters doing their morning jogs.

Fractured Tide by Leslie Lutz begins with a young woman writing/narrating a letter to her father, warning him not to come looking for her.

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A. Lee Martinez begins with the main character trying to explain her very thin resume at a job interview.

Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine’s Journey begins with the main character reshelving books in a book store while she complains about her older sister not taking her seriously

My latest book, Terminus, begins with a guy half-listening to a sermon being given on a beach at night. Heck, Ex-Heroes, the post-apocalyptic superheroes vs. zombies book that launched my career, begins with two people on guard duty chatting while a zombie keeps bumping into the wall below them.

Hell, you want an absolutely crazy one? Do you remember how the Transformers movie begins? Yes, Transformers by Michael “it still needs more explosions” Bay? A bunch of Army Rangers get back from a long patrol and hit the showers while their CO goes to call his wife and baby daughter. Seriously. That’s the opening of the movie.

And again, they’re all starting with action... but they’re not starting with action! They’re putting us right into the ongoing story. They’re introducing us to characters rather than slamming us into them.

They’re catching our interest and drawing us in. Getting us invested. Making us want to read more.

Which is a pretty good way to start a book.

Next time, I’d like to share a special message with you.

Until then, go write.

In The Beginning...

Running a bit late with this today.  Sorry.

So, I’m wading into a new book this month, and I figured... well, that’s probably a great time to talk about getting started and the draft process.

Of course, right off the bat... did I really start it this month?  I mean, sure, about two weeks ago I sat down and started actively working on an outline for it.  But the truth is, this is actually the second outline.  I first pitched it to my agent almost two years ago (and then again to my editor that summer).  They both said (and eventually, I agreed) that it needed some more work.

And, really, the bare idea came almost a year before that.  Back in early 2016, if memory serves.  I know I talked with another author, Kristi Charish, about one aspect of it back then, to get her thoughts and expertise on parts of it.

When do we “start” writing?  When does it count?  Is it when we first start thinking about a project?  When we actually make some notes or an outline?  Or is it not until I write VAMPIRE KAIJU: BOOK ONE by Peter Clines   CHAPTER ONE...?

I think that’s worth mentioning, because whenever I see someone talking about writing a book in five weeks or two months or whatever, I always wonder what they’re counting.  A finished, polished manuscript?  Just the first draft?  Are they counting the time they spent outlining, or that they started mulling it over months—maybe years—in advance?

Paradox Bound came out in 2017, but I pitched it to my editor and wrote up a first rough outline back in 2013.  And Dead Moon, my new one that just came out on Valentine’s Day?  My very first stab at that actually happened back in 2011, right after I finished writing Ex-Patriots.  Yeah, it was a different book back then, but still... when I sat down to “start” writing it in 2017, I already had about 30,000 words done.

So how long did they take to write...?

Again, just think about that the next time you see someone say they wrote something in a short amount of time.  Or in a very long amount of time.  We all have our own thoughts about what counts as starting and stopping points.

Anyway...

At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me walk you through my process.  Well, more of a quick stroll, really.  I’ve talked about a lot of this before (so I’ll add a lot of links), and I don’t want to bore you with it since... well, odds are you won’t be doing things this way.

No, seriously, you won’t.  The process I use is pretty much unique to me.  And the process you use is unique to you—even if maybe you haven’t figured it out yet.  Or you’re in the process of evolving from one process to another.  I’m just showing off mine to maybe spark some thoughts and help you think about such things.

So... let’s get started.

All of this always starts with an idea.  Maybe you’re the type who writes them down, maybe you keep it in your head for a while.  I’m 50-50 on it.  If an idea really sings in my head right at the start, in any sort of way, I always write it down.  But some I mull over for a while.  I let them ferment in my brain, see if they grow a little or get a better shape.

Eventually all these notes come together in some form of rough outline.  I think we all do some kind of outline.  Even the most random of road trips starts with, at the bare minimum, “let’s head west.”  Maybe it’s just a page or two of those rough notes.  Maybe it’s an extensive beat sheet.  It might be a huge stack of color-coded index cards.  This stage is really going to come down to “whatever works for you.”  The outline I just finished up for this project is twelve pages, with another two page document about the characters, but that’s just me.

And now, I guess, we’re ready to “start” writing.

My first drafts are big, messy things.  I write a lot, but I also skip a lot of things.  The only goal with a first draft is to get it done.  Nothing else matters.  Not punctuation, not spelling, not finding the exact right word or crafting the perfect cool line to end that chapter on.  These things’ll matter eventually, but right now... I just want to finish this draft.

NaNoWriMo is really all about this.  It’s pushing yourself to just focus on finishing a first draft, rather than slowing down to worry about individual scenes and chapters.  If you’re especially determined (or masochistic) you could try the 3 Day Novel contest.  My partner’s done it a few times now and... well, I just try to keep her supplied with coffee and stay out of her way.

Once I’ve got this done, I dive into my second draft.  This is me in clean-up mode.  All the stuff I skipped gets filled in.  Sentences I never finished, incomplete descriptions, the places where I had to look up a certain place or name and for now it’s just ######### or [ADD BIG FIGHT HERE] or [MAKE THIS NOT SUCK SO MUCH!!!]

I also take a good look at the things I skipped.  Why didn’t I write it earlier?  Could I not come up with anything to go between these two elements?  Was I just not interested in writing that bit? If I’m not interested in writing it, people probably aren’t going to be interested in reading it.  This might tighten things up right here.

For me. the goal with this draft is to end up with a solid, readable manuscript.  Someone should be able to go to page one to page 500 and never hit any weird gaps or confusing typos or anything else that immediately kills the flow.

Third draft is editing.  I go through the whole manuscript line by line.  I check all my spelling.  I look for repetition and redundancy.  I cut a lot of excess words here.  Thousands of words, usually.  This involves a bunch of passes, the last one to make sure all this random cutting and tweaking hasn’t created any new hiccups.

When I’m all done with this—which can take a week or so—I try to get it in front of a few people I trust.  My partner.  Old friends who've ended up in the storytelling line of work.  People who’ve heard me talk about it and people who don’t know a thing about it.  The important thing is they’re all going to give me honest thoughts and opinions.  Which may sting sometimes, but will be much more useful.

Once I have all these notes from folks, I start my fourth draft.  Now I’m going through all these copies one line at a time, taking notes of my own and implementing changes where they’re needed.  How many people liked this bit?  How many didn’t like that one?  Whoops, guess I missed a comma there.  Now, having been away from this for a month or so while other folks were reading it, that line’s really dumb, isn’t it? Did I actually think that was deep and clever at some point?

This takes at least a week. Often more.  I’m simultaneously reading three or four copies of the book line by line, getting everyone’s thoughts and takes on it.  Weighing their thoughts against my own and each others.  Sometimes it goes fast, other times... it’s really slow.

And this eventually, finally brings us to the fifth draft.  This is me going through the whole thing again to make sure those fourth draft edits didn’t leave anything hanging or tweak a key point.  Just a nice, slow read-through.

One thing I like to do at this point is switch the whole thing into another font.  If I’ve been writing in Times New Roman, I switch it all over to Courier New.  If you’ve been doing that Comic Sans thing, hey, you needed to switch anyway.  When I do this, it makes everything sit differently on the page.  The words look different.  And suddenly passages I’ve been glossing over (after going through this a dozen times) are fresh and new.

And at this point... I wrap it up.  I think it’s important to just say “done” and move on to new projects, or else you can get stuck in an endless trap of rewriting again and again.  After all these rewrites and edits, there’s not much else I can do.

So that’s my process, beginning to end, in a nutshell.

Hey, what do you want?  I just started a new book.  I’ve got work to do.

Speaking of which... next time, I’d like to talk to you a bit about that guy across the street who just said the weirdest thing to me.  See him right over... where did he go?

Until then... go write.

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning...

            Sound of Music reference for the WIN!!!!  

            Okay, maybe not

            So I’ve been thinking about what would make a good first topic for the start of the year.  Which made me think of a topic that comes up a lot at the Coffeehouse or at different con discussions.  And that topic is “how should I start my book?”

            Now, right up front, here’s the catch.

            I can’t tell you.

            I mean, it’s not like it’s a secret and I want to make you beg or pay for it.  I can’t tell you because I don’t know.  Nobody knows how your book needs to begin except you.  It’s because every writer is different and every story is different.  We each have our own styles and preferences, and each story has its own needs and narratives.

            Heck, even if we’re telling the same story it’s going to be different.  If I told you to write a modern take on Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist) you’d be telling a different story than me and we’d both be telling a different story than her and a much different story than him.  I mean... seriously, what the heck is that guy doing?  That’s a seriously weird take on Frankenstein.

            But the point is, even though we’d all be telling more or less the same story, we’d also be telling very different stories.  I might decide to start with the lightning storm, the night the monster awakens, but your version might start with Victor in medical school and she might decide to begin with the event that inspires Victor to create the monster.  All of these are completely valid ways to begin a narrative about Frankenstein.

            And this is why nobody else can tell me how to begin my story.  There are so many elements to consider, it’s pretty much impossible for anyone to know but me.  You and I could talk for an hour about your story, and I might get a vague sense of where it should start.  But that vague estimate is still based off a very limited amount of information, and it only applies to that one specific story.

            So... yeah.  I can’t tell you where to start.  Sorry.

            BUT...

            (you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging like that, did you?)

            I can offer you a few general ideas of what you should and shouldn’t use as starting points.  Not things specific to a story, but things specific to storytelling.  As a wise man once said, the code’s more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.

            I’ve talked about a lot of these things before, so be prepared for links.

            So, when I consider how to start my story...

            DO start with action.  I’ve talked about this one before, so I won’t go into too much detail here.  “Starting with action” often gets misunderstood as “my manuscript needs to begin with a ninja stopping a hostage situation on a high-speed train with his explosive throwing stars.”  This is, of course, a really weird way to begin a romantic fantasy novel, but people try to do it anyway.

            All starting with action means is that I need something to happen.  Being fired from my job (or written up, or promoted) is action.  Getting beaten up (or asked out) by the quarterback in high school is something happening.  Buying groceries is something happening.

            And, yes, so is having a ninja stop a hostage situation with explosive throwing stars.

            DON’T start with someone writing their novel or screenplay.  Seriously, don’t.  Yes, technically, it’s someone doing something, but it’s a minimal, inactive something that involves one character sitting alone at a desk.  Plus, it’s an opening every editor, agent, and producer has seen at least a thousand times.  Seriously.  One thousand times, minimum.  I don’t want to begin with something everyone’s already bored of seeing.

            DO start with something relevant.  Relevant to this story.  Relevant by at least a third of the way into the story.  An opening scene that makes no sense until the end of my book is an opening scene that makes no sense (and we’re going to forget).  Which means we don’t need it.

            My opening pages should hook the reader right into my story.  They should pay off soon, and that payoff should draw them in even further.  The goal is always to draw them in, not to push them away or hold them at arm’s length.  If I’m trying to distance the reader in the first chapter... that’s not going to work out well.

            

            DON’T start by killing everyone.  Nine times out of ten, if every character from chapter one is dead by the end of chapter two, it means chapter three is where my story really starts.  No matter how cool chapter one and two were.

            A lot of folks stumble into this trap.  They “start with action” (see above) by having a bunch of nameless, unimportant people get killed by some threat, and then they introduce their actual characters and get on with the story.  Which tells right me there that those opening bits are just more wasted pages.

            DO be aware that the story started long before page one.  There were events in my protagonist’s (and antagonist’s) life that made them the person they are now.  They already have relationships and jobs and histories. We all instinctively understand and acknowledge this (Clive Barker wrote a beautiful introduction about this idea in his book Weaveworld).

            Right from the start, I need to keep in mind that my characters are in this world.  They’ve been there for a while.  It doesn’t surprise them or catch them off guard.  Neither does the existence of their siblings, lovers, employers, or their own body parts.  If my opening is my protagonist expositing about her apartment, her girlfriend, her own body, or the dual nature of this amazing futuristic world she lives in, my readers are going to be rolling their eyes.

            And that's a few things to keep in mind when deciding how to start my story.  Again, these are just guidelines, but... y’know, guidelines exist for a reason.  I should think long and hard before ignoring them and declaring that my story’s the exception they don’t apply to. 

            Because odds are... it’s not.

            Oh, in other news for SoCal folks, this Sunday is both the Writers Coffeehouse (at Dark Delicacies in Burbank) and the dystopian book club We're All Gonna Die (at the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles).  Please stop by and hang out.  Although for the book club, you may want to pick up the book first...
            Next time, I’d like to talk about something really powerful.

            Until then, go write.

Take It From The Top...

            Musical reference.  If you were ever in band class, you already have an idea what I’m talking about.

            Here’s a quick tip I wanted to toss out for a common problem...

            I think most of us have some project—a novel, a screenplay, a short story—that we really loved at one point, but had to put down.  Maybe it was because of work.  Family stuff could’ve cropped up.  Perhaps circumstances forced us to move on to other things.  It happens.

            Then we go back to it.  Not just to dabble with it over a weekend, but to pick up things where we left off.  And—no surprise—it’s tough to make things work the way they did before the break.

            If you’ve been reading this little pile of rants for a while, you may remember me referencing a novel I started about zombies on the Moon.  I began work on it back in late 2009, but put it aside after a few months because my publisher at the time wanted me to try a mash-up novel.  When I tried to go back to the zombie idea, he’d just bought another “zombies in space” novel and warned me he probably wouldn’t want another one (I ended up writing a book about a creepy apartment building instead).  I even tried to go back to Dead Moon again two years ago, and... well, it was a struggle.  I couldn’t remember how the characters sounded in my head, or where some of the plot points were leading.  I banged my head against it for about three months and then, well, circumstances required I move on again.

            My lovely lady recently had a similar problem.  She tried to finish a first person manuscript that was about 4/5 done, but she hadn’t touched it in about a decade and it was very, very voice-heavy with a very tricky plot.  That last 20% took her months.

            And I made the same mistake again, even after my attempts to get back to the Moon.  One of my most recent books began as a different novel back in 2007.  It was set aside twice (much like Dead Moon), and I’d kind of given up on it.  But then I realized I could salvage a lot of the plot and characters and use them as kind of a spin-off-side-quel to that creepy-apartment story.  Which sounded great on a bunch of levels.

            Except what really happened was that I tried to pick up right where I left off.  I fumbled with it for a long time before I realized I needed to forget X and start writing Y.  And I was 2/3 through Y before it hit me that the whole thing was really just clinging to X again.  I pulled it apart (now with a deadline creeping close) and finally got Z put together.

            Which my editor looked at and immediately caught a bunch of Y stuff.

            Y’see, Timmy, if we’re doing things right, we all keep growing as writers.  We gain experience (some good, some bad).  We learn new things.  We swear never to do certain things ever again. 

            And because of this, we stumble when we try to go back.  It’s kind of like bumping into an old ex and pretending nothing’s changed when... well, a lot has changed.  There’s skewed memories, things we know that we don’t want to, and experiences that make casual conversations kind of awkward.  Because we’ve grown and moved on.  There can still be something there, sure, but it’ll never be what it was back then.

            Final anecdote.  A month or two back I was offered a spot in a high-profile anthology.  My first thought for a story that fit was actually an unproduced script I’d written for a television show back in 2001.  But this was a themed anthology—my story had to fit this theme and these characters.

            So I read through the old script twice to get the story and the beats back in my head.  Then I put it aside.  Didn’t look at it again.  I wrote my first draft in a week (about 12,000 words) and had three more drafts done in the next two and a half weeks.  The editor loved it.

            So, here’s my tip. 

            If I’m going to go back to a half-done project that I haven’t done anything with for a significant amount of time, I might be better off just starting from scratch. Don’t try to save or salvage or repurpose.  Just start over.  This way I’m not fighting with present vs. past experience or voices or plotlines.  I’m just writing

            Sometimes it’s faster to start over on a project than to pick it up after a long time away from it.

            Next time, I’m going to introduce a reader request about characters.

            Until then, go write.