Being the sixth part of a seven-part series based on Your New Favorite Writer’s recent WWA workshop “A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways to Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One.”
I can’t tell you how to write a great beginning. But here are FIVE BIG IDEAS—three Dos and two Donts—that ought to help quite a bit:
- Engage the reader immediately.
- Do not drown the reader in information.
- Introduce important characters and plots early.
- Do not let INFORMATION bog down the profluence of the narrative.
- Shape early action toward later plot points.
This week, let’s look at the fifth Big Idea: Shape early action toward later plot points.
When you write the beginning of your story, it is very helpful to know what the middle and end are going to look like. The beginning establishes the conditions under which the rest of the story is revealed. If you don’t know what’s going to happen in the middle and end—or if you do think you know, but it changes when you actually write it—then you may have to go back and rewrite the beginning to match the rest. Do not be alarmed. This is actually pretty normal.
It’s all because every story has a structure.
Plot Points
As we mentioned in the first installment of this series, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This seems obvious, but it can help us understand the dynamic aspects of story structure.
And structure is vital. If you have no structure, you have nothing. This becomes alarmingly obvious when you’re trying to write a screenplay. Movie scripts are all about structure. If the structure does not follow good, long-established storytelling traditions, chances are it will not be filmed. If it is filmed, it will quickly find a niche in obscurity.
Beginning-middle-end is also what we know as a “three-act structure”:
Act I: The main characters and situations are introduced. An inciting incident gets the story rolling. A challenge is issued, or arises, that cannot be ignored, and we know this is what the story will be about. The emergence of this Big Question or Main Challenge, in its true dimensions, kicks us into the main part of the story. Therefore, it’s often called the Act II break—that is, the break into Act II from Act I. That, and the inciting incident, are plot points.
Act II: Complications arise. The protagonist—let’s call him hero for short, though not all protagonists are heroes, and not all heroes are protagonists—meets obstacle after obstacle and overcomes them or is defeated by them. If an obstacle defeats the hero, he or she must make a new attempt to overcome it, or else find a way around it. These actions reveal the hero’s character and add meaning to the story. Act II is twice as long as Act I or Act III, but there is an interesting structural trade-off. Halfway through Act II—which is also the midpoint of the whole story—something happens that works dramatic, almost magical change in the story. It goes from light and sunny to dark and forebidding. Or vice versa. Maybe something happens that reveals new vistas of meaning. Whatever it may be, a striking change of color—of meaning, of urgency—occurs at midpoint. After midpoint, Act II continues, building more tension as the hero faces higher and higher hurdles until at last everything is set up, or stripped down, for the Final Confrontation, the payoff of the whole story. The gears shift as they did at the Act II break, only now we are thrust into the last part of the story. Therefore, this movement becomes the Act III break. The midpoint and the Act III break are plot points.
Act III: The chips are down. The hero has removed his mask of timidity and incompetence, the villain is at his evil maximum, and the Battle Titanic begins. The outcome of that battle is the action climax of the story. The main dramatic question is answered and the final situation arrived at. Usually a few loose ends need to be tied up. This is called the denouement, a French term that means “untying.” So the untying ties it all up. Very satisfactory. (See also “ravel/unravel.”) At any rate, the denouement ought to be as brief as possible. People can usually see what is accomplished by the climax. There’s little need to belabor the point. The action climax and denouement are plot points. The term “action climax” suggests there may be other kinds of climax. And there are: internal climaxes, moral climaxes, emotional climaxes. But only the action climax is a plot point. The others are more in the nature of thematic material.
As Usual, So What?
The reason Your New Favorite Writer mentions plot points is this: The plot points tend to give the story its emotional punch or dramatic force—especially the midpoint and the action climax. And this punch or force is greatly increased if those plot points recapitulate themes already present—foreshadowed—at the beginning of the journey. It’s like in Scripture or folk tales, when certain events are seen to be the fulfillment of earlier prophecies. The prophecy adds weight to the actual event.
Therefore, when you write the beginning, it’s good to have in mind the things that are going to happen in the middle and the end, so that speeches or actions prominent in Act I can come back to haunt the reader in Act III.
So, once you have told the whole story, it’s a good idea to check the beginning and see if it includes elements that suggest the end. If not, maybe you can work some in.
Next week: The grand summation. Stay tuned.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers
Your New Favorite Writer
