How do you start your stories?

[TammyTang]

Hiya! I have a bunch of stories at various stages of completion, but most share a common theme of starting in the morning. Personally, I feel the most frisky when I wake up, so maybe that’s why I find comfort in AM settings.

I’ve also read that many beginner writers follow the same trope. Some say it’s an easy way to describe a character’s routine and mindset; others think it’s just boring.

Where do most people like to start their stories? Do you dive straight into the action and pepper in exposition, or do you take your time to ease the audience in?

Do you have a preference as a reader? I usually like to meet the characters before they get into any fun, but that can change from story to story depending on how hot it is.

Thanks!

 

[BeechLeaf]

There's certainly a beginner's temptation to start from waking up (you've turned into a hideous vermin, or whatever). There's also the dramatic in medias res:

'So!' Count Malvis roared, slamming his fist upon the table. 'You choose to defy me!' The princess trembled at his feet.

There's the slow build-up: It had been many years since I'd been back to the old Tooraloo mansion, where so many young women and men had had their lives changed forever, and as I approached it tonight I contemplated those I had known.

Nothing wrong with any of those, and if I was writing one story I would have to choose from among them, or devise something better. But with multiple stories, you won't repeat the same approach. You vary it, as you vary every other element in your writing, from one story to another. I don't think there can be such a thing as a favoured beginning.

 

[EmilyMiller]

A selection taken from the beginnings of some of my last few stories. Not many “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” contenders, TBH:

—

Eden was a little confused. She'd anticipated an office building, or maybe a converted house. But the Uber had deposited her in front of a large single-family home, which was quite clearly a personal residence. Single-family mansion might have been a more accurate term for the imposing building. As she walked up the short driveway, salt air filled her nostrils. Cape Cod was quite a change from upstate New York, where she had lived for the last few years.

—

What's the Hemingway quote about bankruptcy? It happens gradually, and then suddenly. That's what the progression of my sex life had been like. Well, more nonexistent for way too long, and then everything, every hole, all at once, to coin a phrase. I was closer to nineteen than eighteen when I lost my virginity, and - later the same day - my anal virginity. That's perfectly normal, right? After that, I really started to make up for lost time.

—

"I'm just going to have a quick walk," declared Henry with a stretch he hoped didn't look too theatrical.

"Have fun, honey," replied Barbara. His wife rolled her eyes in a manner that told Henry his attempt at subterfuge had been in vain.

—

It was hot, in the mid-nineties outside according to my watch. Sitting at my desk in the air-conditioned office, the azure sky and sun-soaked trees visible through the nearest window were beckoning me. When the first hot day of the year had been forecast, I'd booked a half-day PTO; I had a lot of time off built up from last year. Now I was debating what might be the earliest permissible time to quit.

—

I loathed condoms for anal. They got crinkled. They abraded and made me sore, no matter how frequently re-lubed. But, considering the circumstances, it was a necessary evil. And I was even managing to somewhat enjoy the rather callow way in which Matt Jacobs was attempting to plow my ass.

—

So, not a lot of consistency there. Establishing a location. Establishing a backstory. Jumping into dialog. Establishing the weather/season. Straight into a sex scene. A mixture of third and first person narration. Different times of day. I guess I’m not very consistent.

 

[yowser]

A famous Flannery O'Connor quote: “In most good stories, it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.”

I think you can safely start with the mindset of your protagonist, and they can start at any time of the day, season, or year. Sounds like you're a morning person and nothing wrong with an AM beginning. There's certainly no 'rule' or convention on this, you'll see folks begin from the beginning, drop you right into excitement straight away (maybe then backing up for context) or even the end, although that is trickier.

I'd focus on your character's personhood, motivations, mindset, for whatever time works best for your One, and go from there.

 

[THBGato]

Do you have a preference as a reader?

My preference is for in media res - chuck the reader into the inciting incident, let us learn about your characters from the way they behave. Drip feed in backstory through dialogue as required.

Check my favourites list(s) for some superb examples - Ventura Highway, Three crushes and a wedding, Hero Worship, The Dress, Aftermath...

 

[ChuckWolf]

I think most of my stories start shortly before a sexual situation (not necessarily sex) starts heating up.

My most recent story starts with the main character waking up, restrained and receiving a blowjob.

An exception is a story I've been working on, where there are a lot of characters, dialogue and world-building, but maybe that's OK, because the story takes place in a porn company.

For erotic stories, I generally want to get to sex or sex-related stuff fairly quickly.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

'Twas the night before the orgy and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, they all needed their rest.

Well, except for that one little pest.

 

[Britva415]

I don't start with "had." If stuff that already happened is part of the story, I tell it like it happened, I don't start forward of that and then tell it as it "had happened" for paragraphs at a time.

This isn't only a habit for beginnings of stories. A lot of "had had had haddy hadhad" is just as clumsy in the middle or the end as it is as an opening.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I'm all over the place, with maybe the exception of almost never using in media res (I personally feel like I need an exceedingly compelling narrative reason to do so, and "the actual start of the story isn't interesting enough" is not a good reason for me to do it, it means I need to write a better intro; not knocking anyone who does it, this is just me and my quirks).

It helps to know the scope of the story, it helps shape how to begin it. I usually will begin with quick characterization of the protag, usually via how they're interacting with the setting/plot, so I'm doing multiple things at the same time: introducing the protag and the scene/plot/conceit/other characters. I like me some utility in my writing and am always striving to do more than one thing with anything I'm doing in a scene if I can. What that looks like depends on the type of story, the plot, the genre, reader expectations, keeping it interesting, etc. I try not to cram exposition into the first few paragraphs if possible in favor of just getting started with the story, rather than having to tee it up, but sometimes that expository writing can be interesting enough to be worth starting with.

Like I said, I'm all over the place. Earlier in my writing, scenes would begin with someone waking up, and end with someone falling asleep in some fashion, but I grew out of that. It becomes predictable and same, too rigid and formulaic, and introduces a lot of extra fluff on the start and finish that likely isn't as relevant as the main crux of the scene, which is the main reason to avoid it. Now, if there's a narrative reason for starting when someone wakes up and ending when they fall asleep, great, but considering the shape of a scene and its boundaries is really the key question when figuring out where to stop and start, and that equation is different for different stories, genres, and writers, it's a fairly subjective thing for the most part.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Where do most people like to start their stories? Do you dive straight into the action and pepper in exposition, or do you take your time to ease the audience in?

One thing is certain, there is no single answer**, and once you get a bunch of stories under your belt, there won't be for you either - unless you keep writing the same story over and over (don't do that!).

Do you have a preference as a reader? I usually like to meet the characters before they get into any fun, but that can change from story to story depending on how hot it is.

There's your answer, right there.

** There is in fact a single answer: "It depends on the story."

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I've done a few that start when someone gets home from something, work, school, shopping .....

What DO they walk into?

 

[MrPixel]

I start my stories with a strong pull on the rope, provided I set the choke just right. Starter fluid helps when it's cold.

Like @EmilyMiller and @anthrodisiac, I'm all over the place, intentionally. I vary my openings between scene narrative and "stepping into the middle of an argument", or at least dialog among the main characters. Generally speaking, I try to set the flavor of the moment and go from there.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Don't start off with an alarm clock.


My goal with an opening is to make the reader curious, so they'll keep reading.

My Halloween contest story opens with:

"Get the fuck out of my room!"

"Stop being a baby."

"I am NOT being a baby; I just want you out."



If you want to know who is arguing and why...well you're going to have to keep reading.


My story prior to that,:

The small brass bell jingled as he pushed the heavy door open and stepped into the shop.

"Welcome to Vintage Vault," a women's voice called out.

He turned looking for the source.

"Th..." was as far as he got in response, freezing up as a young woman emerged from behind a clothing rack. She had jet black hair styled into double victory rolls and bright red lipstick on an otherwise unadorned face. But it was the dress that had stopped him in his tracks. A crossover dress, red irises on a yellow background, and puffy sleeves accented with ivory cuffs, collar and belt.

Want to know why a dress would stop him in his tracks? Keep reading...

 

[KittyOfSteele]

It depends. Sometimes, like in To Meet a Maiden, I begin with a variant of "once upon a time," because using "it was a dark and stormy night" makes me feel like John Dalmas is about to shoot me, and Perry Mason will clear him out of the homicide charge. Sometimes I rewrite the first thousand words and ditch the original draft because I needed to do a rehearsal. Sometimes I think of a song, think of vibes, and begin with one scene, and just follow the lead, like in Nightcall. Or sometimes I already have a scene in mind, or copy the idea from somewhere else. Sin City's first chapter begins with Marv waking up after having sex with a woman the night before, only to realize she's dead, and he's blamed for the crime. The idea of an amnesiac character waking up next to a dead body with no idea of how it got there is a recurrent theme in my work since I read the comic, and actually that's how Clean Girls, Dirty Soda began: when @PennyThompson and I discussed about the collab before we took it seriously, I mentioned the first chapter briefly in a post, combined with the same idea she mentioned.

There are some stories that I began writing in the middle, and others I began writing in the end, but most of my work I prefer to write since the beginning.

In a nutshell, there's no one true begin to start a story. You just start.

If there's one true way to begin a story, in my opinion, it would be in medias res. If I deal with an entire Lit page of just introduction and backstory, I'm more likely to skip your whole thing. I don't care if you put effort in your precious opening; I don't have time.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Hiya! I have a bunch of stories at various stages of completion, but most share a common theme of starting in the morning. Personally, I feel the most frisky when I wake up, so maybe that’s why I find comfort in AM settings.

The last book I started was very meta about this.

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchiakovsky. I haven’t finished it yet but I'm enjoying it so far. Over the next eight pages, we learn that the main character is a political dissident and he's waking from suspended animation while being delivered to an alien planet on a ship designed to be one-way. As in, he's being waked up while his parachute deploys, and it's expected that some percentage of people being delivered this way won't survive.

So, to generalize, sure, start with a waking, as long as something interesting is happening then. For the purposes of Lit, start with a waking if it means a wake-up blowjob, midnight nookie, jealous spouse barging in on the protagonist and their lover, or something like that. If your hero is having a normal day until aliens attack, start with the alien attack, not the normal day.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

My preference is for in media res - chuck the reader into the inciting incident, let us learn about your characters from the way they behave. Drip feed in backstory through dialogue as required.

Check my favourites list(s) for some superb examples - Ventura Highway, Three crushes and a wedding, Hero Worship, The Dress, Aftermath...

^ This (also highly recommend checking THBGato's lists, plenty of links to great stories )

@TammyTang I tend to start in the middle of a scene.

Ex. Outside of class as where three university students are in the middle of a conversation after class....
Or, at a trailhead, where the MMC is about to go on a solo trip into the backcountry, a little worried about what he might find...
Or, in the middle of a bicycle ride, as the MMC is observing the FMC cycling in front of him, noticing how her legs flex..
etc.

I don't think I've ever started a story in the morning as someone's woken up. Mind you, I've ended a few chapters as the day closes and people go to sleep.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

'Start with waking. End with a Wake.'


Sounds like something Dave Allen would say.

 

[Imstillfun]

No consistent formula here. My Halloween story I wrote the ending first, then the beginning. I write whenever my bipolar manic cycles are at just the right level to be able to sit still ad think and high enough to be motivated

 

[bi_cathy]

My goal is to make you read beyond the first 3 words, one more, then one more, and one more, until you're invested, so I will drop you into the thick of an intriguing situation and go from there. My longest story to date starts with "781 notifications. WHAT?" Others play on different interesting situations. I have a bit of a fascination with dialogue to start a story, too.

Perhaps the only time I didn't do this was when my narrator was waiting at the airport luggage pick-up belt, but that's because the story was called "A Spectacular Pair of Tits" and I was hoping that alone afforded me a couple of paragraphs of lenience

 

[Cagivagurl]

I'm not a writer, sometimes I doubt I'm even cognisant, but I do have a method...For me, I get a thought, a tiny idea for a story and I start from there. That doesn't mean that's where the story starts... I just write. At some point, you find a natural starting point... It becomes obvious... I think every story has a natural point... It just feels right... Everything flows...

Not saying it's right, just right for me...

 

[anthrodisiac]

Perhaps the only time I didn't do this was when my narrator was waiting at the airport luggage pick-up belt, but that's because the story was called "A Spectacular Pair of Tits" and I was hoping that alone afforded me a couple of paragraphs of lenience

Still pissed there were no birds in it...

 

[TammyTang]

A selection taken from the beginnings of some of my last few stories. Not many “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” contenders, TBH:

—

Eden was a little confused. She'd anticipated an office building, or maybe a converted house. But the Uber had deposited her in front of a large single-family home, which was quite clearly a personal residence. Single-family mansion might have been a more accurate term for the imposing building. As she walked up the short driveway, salt air filled her nostrils. Cape Cod was quite a change from upstate New York, where she had lived for the last few years.

—

What's the Hemingway quote about bankruptcy? It happens gradually, and then suddenly. That's what the progression of my sex life had been like. Well, more nonexistent for way too long, and then everything, every hole, all at once, to coin a phrase. I was closer to nineteen than eighteen when I lost my virginity, and - later the same day - my anal virginity. That's perfectly normal, right? After that, I really started to make up for lost time.

—

"I'm just going to have a quick walk," declared Henry with a stretch he hoped didn't look too theatrical.

"Have fun, honey," replied Barbara. His wife rolled her eyes in a manner that told Henry his attempt at subterfuge had been in vain.

—

It was hot, in the mid-nineties outside according to my watch. Sitting at my desk in the air-conditioned office, the azure sky and sun-soaked trees visible through the nearest window were beckoning me. When the first hot day of the year had been forecast, I'd booked a half-day PTO; I had a lot of time off built up from last year. Now I was debating what might be the earliest permissible time to quit.

—

I loathed condoms for anal. They got crinkled. They abraded and made me sore, no matter how frequently re-lubed. But, considering the circumstances, it was a necessary evil. And I was even managing to somewhat enjoy the rather callow way in which Matt Jacobs was attempting to plow my ass.

—

So, not a lot of consistency there. Establishing a location. Establishing a backstory. Jumping into dialog. Establishing the weather/season. Straight into a sex scene. A mixture of third and first person narration. Different times of day. I guess I’m not very consistent.

Thanks for the examples! I really like the descriptions you use, and I'll be bookmarking these for inspiration!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Thanks for the examples! I really like the descriptions you use, and I'll be bookmarking these for inspiration!

Thank you - good luck with your writing

 

[TammyTang]

I think most of my stories start shortly before a sexual situation (not necessarily sex) starts heating up.

My most recent story starts with the main character waking up, restrained and receiving a blowjob.

An exception is a story I've been working on, where there are a lot of characters, dialogue and world-building, but maybe that's OK, because the story takes place in a porn company.

For erotic stories, I generally want to get to sex or sex-related stuff fairly quickly.

I think that's a good observation; it's story writing, but it's erotic-story writing. Are the readers mostly there for the smut, or the characters? Obviously the answer is a little of both, but it's a slightly different approach than normal writing!

 

[TammyTang]

I'm all over the place, with maybe the exception of almost never using in media res (I personally feel like I need an exceedingly compelling narrative reason to do so, and "the actual start of the story isn't interesting enough" is not a good reason for me to do it, it means I need to write a better intro; not knocking anyone who does it, this is just me and my quirks).

It helps to know the scope of the story, it helps shape how to begin it. I usually will begin with quick characterization of the protag, usually via how they're interacting with the setting/plot, so I'm doing multiple things at the same time: introducing the protag and the scene/plot/conceit/other characters. I like me some utility in my writing and am always striving to do more than one thing with anything I'm doing in a scene if I can. What that looks like depends on the type of story, the plot, the genre, reader expectations, keeping it interesting, etc. I try not to cram exposition into the first few paragraphs if possible in favor of just getting started with the story, rather than having to tee it up, but sometimes that expository writing can be interesting enough to be worth starting with.

Like I said, I'm all over the place. Earlier in my writing, scenes would begin with someone waking up, and end with someone falling asleep in some fashion, but I grew out of that. It becomes predictable and same, too rigid and formulaic, and introduces a lot of extra fluff on the start and finish that likely isn't as relevant as the main crux of the scene, which is the main reason to avoid it. Now, if there's a narrative reason for starting when someone wakes up and ending when they fall asleep, great, but considering the shape of a scene and its boundaries is really the key question when figuring out where to stop and start, and that equation is different for different stories, genres, and writers, it's a fairly subjective thing for the most part.

Ha ha, I feel I'm in the same stage as you in the beginning. Whether I plan it or not, a good chunk of my stories start in the morning and end in the evening. Not bad when it's a slice of life chapter, but I agree, it can be too rigid.