Last Friday, I had the good fortune to present a workshop titled “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One” at the annual Wisconsin Writers Association Conference, held in Stevens Point. 

I say “good fortune” for several reasons:

• I got paid.
• I heard the sound of my own voice—sweet music to my ears, indeed.
• Most of all, I was with 175 friends of the Writing Persuasion—folks who have an itch they can scratch only by setting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. These friends understand one another’s need. About sixty of the 175 attended my breakout session.

A lot of people have told me they got something good out of it. 

So, why keep it to myself? For readers who did not have the opportunity to attend, I will try to encapsulate a 50-minute talk in the next seven weekly blog posts.  

Here goes:

A Bulletproof Beginning

What’s the big deal about a beginning? Why the fuss?

Dear Reader, a philosopher named Aristotle said, about 2,400 years ago, that every story has a beginning . . . a middle . . . and an end. That may seem obvious, but apparently nobody before Aristotle thought to write it down. 

And nobody since Aristotle has gone much beyond that simple observation in explaining story structure. If you want to hassle me about Joseph Campbell’s/ Christopher Vogler’s Twelve Stages of the Hero’s Journey, or about Blake Snyder’s Fifteen-Beat “Save the Cat” structure—sure, let’s have that argument someday. But in the meantime, consider:

Of the three parts of a story, the beginning is most important. Why?

Because if your beginning is no good, no reader will experience the joys of the middle and end. They won’t stick around.

More so, if the reader is an agent, editor, or publisher considering your story for publication or film production. Typically, such mandarins want the first ten pages included with a cold query. But that does not mean they will read ten pages. 

No. They will read maybe one page. Or maybe just the first paragraph. And if that doesn’t knock their socks off, they’re done. They have a lot of scripts to read. You must earn your way to the second and subsequent pages. 

Most of all, the beginning is important because it establishes the conditions under which the rest of the story plays out. The break into Act II, the many twists and turns thereafter, the great change of color and tenor at mid-point, the swiftening action as you move into Act III, the exciting climax and final denouement—all are present in embryo in the beginning of the story. If they’re not, it won’t work.

Billy Wilder—the great German-American film genius responsible for Ninotchka, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot, and many other classic movies, said, “If you have a problem in the third act, your real problem is in the first act.” If you go back and fix the first act, the third act will work better.

By the way, Gentle Reader, did you ever notice how many lectures, workshops, or articles about story construction for prose fiction rely heavily on movies for their examples? Here’s the reason: Owing to the format and function of film scripts, the screenwriter has nowhere to hide from the need for STRUCTURE.

A seasoned scripter can sit in a darkened movie house, discern the arrival of the Great Change at Midpoint, look at his watch, see that 58 minutes have elapsed, and predict—with dead accuracy—that the film’s total run time will be 116 minutes. It’s really that cut and dried. It’s all about structure. 

The beginning is the first great pillar of structure in any story, filmic or otherwise. That’s why it’s important. 

As I told my friendly audience last Friday, I cannot tell you how to write a good beginning. It’s your story, you figure it out. 

But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:

1. Engage the reader immediately. 
2. Do not drown the reader in information. 
3. Introduce important characters and plots early. 
4. Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative. 
5. Shape early action toward later plot points.

Now, Dear Reader, go ponder these things in your heart. Come back at this time next week, and we will consider Point 1: How to engage the reader immediately.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer