Q: How do I begin a story?
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Answer(s) to this Question ( 1 / 5 ) |
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Starting with conflictBegin with whatever is eating at your character. Relationship failing? House burned down? Get to the point as quickly as you can. In the first line if possible. The faster you engage your reader in the heart of your story, the more likely they´ll be to finish it. Boring, over-intellectualized beginnings that leave the reader asking "What´s the story here?" are simply doomed.
Focusing on an imageMany wonderful stories center around a single image that carries thematic weight. Experiment with some free-writing on an image that speaks to you and see if a story could surround it. If you´ve already got an image that grabs you, see what happens when you place it in the first line of the story. Make sure you build up some tension around it--in other words, it will need to have some meaning for each character in order to carry meaning throughout the story.
The unavoidable heart of the matterDig deep into the heart of situations you have found yourself in in the past. A story lies not in the infinite mix of details that beget a scene, but in the one unavoidable fact that alone necessitates action from the character. A bank teller is robbed by the kid she used to babysit. A man believes his wife has secretly terminated her pregnancy. Etc. When deciding to recreate a story on paper, you must distill it to the one element that keeps it from going in any other direction and work outward from there. If there´s no *one* element, it may not be the story you want to tell.
Drawing on basic emotional experiencesA story can, on one level, be "about" something in the abstract emotional sense. Shame, fear, regret, disappointment, the sense of having failed...These are the emotional elements that cause us to act in life. So consider crafting stories inspired by these emotions.
Examples:
*My most shameful act
*My most painful betrayal
*My most profound regret about someone no longer living.
Stories about ShameWhat are you most ashamed of? The subject of shame is simply fascinating. You can be ashamed of just about anything for just about any reason. Cheated on your girlfriend? Didn´t visit your aunt in the hospital? Made a bad showing at the reunion? You could probably write shame stories for years on end. It is that pervasive to the human experience. We all have things that we wish we had or hadn´t done, and it´s not simple regret. Explore the various shames of your life, and extrapolate from the life stories of others. Shame will get characters moving in some amazing ways!
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Creative Writing Frequently Asked Questions
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