The beginning of a story is a very difficult thing to get right. It’s a crucial part, just like the first few years of a child’s life. My fascination with the first few chapters–hell, even the first few pages–is how the typical “formula” has changed over the years. I remember romance novels from when I was a young teen that started off with back story, a little bit of a character profile, and even some historical context for me to keep in mind. This was considered kosher because how else would you know what was going on?

Nowadays, it’s more fun–and pretty much required–for an author to get straight to it. Readers want to be sucked into the drama immediately. Perhaps it’s simply a sign of the times that readers would rather do without the foreplay and go right to the down-and-dirty. I’ve found that it’s at least made writing the first few pages more exciting and more complicated. A lot of condensing is done. Only a few hints and tiny tastes of back story are included to make the reader want to know why the drama is happening, how the character will react to it, and what the outcome will be. Readers must identify or at least be intrigued by the character(s), even if they don’t know their whole psychological profile, and they must care about what happens to them.

This makes the first five to ten pages very volatile for the first few drafts. Paragraphs deleted and replaced with one line, other paragraphs fluffed up to twice their size, only to be trimmed again in another run-through.

IT’S SO MUCH FUN.

It’s amazing what things you discover when you dig a little through history–some pretty appalling things, I’ve gotta say, such as the lack of basic human rights and equality, the ignorance of scientific or medical knowledge that is well-understood today, and the mindset of high-class people long ago dead and buried that today would alienate most of modern society. It makes me wonder how posterity will look back at our time now. I’m sure some things about early 21st-century society will appall them, too.

The progress we’ve made is encouraging. :)

I had a rough idea for my fifth story, but upon discovering an amazing alignment of historical trends during the approx 2-3 years in which I wish I set the story, a basic element was changed. I can tell that it’ll be difficult to write it, but I’m almost ready to start doing so. Just a bit more research material to explore.

Brainstorming a new story (setting, characters, plot, themes, et al) takes a good chunk of time. Then there’s research, if any–usually at least a little, sometimes quite a lot. Then there’s planning the actual story (or stories), as in writing down a rough idea of the order of scenes and what needs to be accomplished in each. Often, these three steps become a dance because you end up needing to go back to brainstorming and research several times–like, a few dozen times. @_@

It’s fun, but also chaotic because ideas are tossed around like pieces of food in a food fight. Some ideas are solid and will be used, some have merit and might be used, but most just emerge only to be immediately discarded.

Let the food fight begin!