I have to admire the fact that you can get them all on a bulletin board. Perhaps you have a really, really big one, I don't know, but I need the entire wall of our living room (25 feet long) to get all my cards up at the same time. I tried doing story-planning in Scrivener, but it didn't work out. I was convinced at the time that it was because of some failing in Scrivener itself, but it just struck me that if I had one of those wrap-around monitors I just might be able to see all my index cards at once. Of course, I'd still need the ability to do a non-linear sort, but maybe they'll add that feature some day.
Ha, I wouldn't have been able to fit them all if I'd finished doing it manually. I realized I was quickly running out of room, I wasn't even a 1/4 of the way done, and switched to Scrivener. But 25 feet of index cards! That's quite a feat! I'm not sure mine would cover even half that. Maybe if I wrote out all the scenes I've now got planned in Scriv, it would cover the 10 foot wall in my bedroom. Maybe.
What surprises me with the core question and discussion about how do you start, is that apparently no one starts with the climax of the story then work back to a beginning, etc. I thought a big inspiration for a story in someone's head would be the dramatic climax scene and wanting to tell that part would inspire the bulk of the novel. This whole story writing concept sort of throws the old adage: "start at the beginning" out the window (not sure what you Mac users do )
Isn't it great? I'm new to it too, so still learning, but so far it's been blowing my old methods out of the water. Now I finally know why Wrey is always going on about it
@Lyrical I know right?! It really is fabulous. I feel stuff just coming to me and it makes everything so organized and easily accessible.
I have a story ideas book that I write down everything into (even if it's just a little synopsis). A lot of these idea come from picking apart dreams I've had until it becomes something I can use. Talking to myself in the voice of various characters to see where the story takes me (call me crazy? works for me!). Going for walks is a great way for my brain to come up with new ideas. Once I have an idea I start writing the main point of the idea and most of the time it just goes into my "roughs" folder but it's always there ready to go back to if I ever want/need to. If I feel the idea has something more than just a page of interesting writing I will start to plan it a little more.
Everybody's experience is different, but I didn't read any writing how-to books till AFTER I'd finished my entire first draft. The books were immensely helpful at that stage. They illustrated many writing problems I'd created and helped me correct them. But I reckon if I had read these books before I started, I would have been so hamstrung by do's and don'ts I'd have struggled to write at all. That being said, I do have a BA in English and have been a voracious reader all my life. I understood from the start how to string sentences together and what a book of fiction looks and sounds like. But how to achieve that myself? It took a lot of work and a lot of study. If you're not a reader of fiction, I think you need to cultivate the reading habit if you want to write it. It's just as important to know what you're trying to create, as well as getting a blueprint for how to create it.
I read tons of craft books before I started writing anything of length. I never felt hamstrung by the rules they laid out. Like you, I was always a reader. I guess I intuitively knew, roughly, what a book was supposed to be. I felt MUCH more hamstrung by the advice of other writers. I'm not sure why that is. I think what those books do well is provide examples. I was able to process the information and see why a particular "rule" was in place. The advice from other writers tends to come with a little more vigor on the part of the person offering advice without examples (in most cases). Now that I've thoroughly derailed the conversation, I'll bring it back around by saying that this is great advice, to read fiction as a writer. Some will argue that it's not necessary to be a voracious reader to write, but I'll always contend that it certainly helps.
I agree. I don't think anybody would argue that in order to be a moviemaker you shouldn't bother going to movies. Or that TV script writers shouldn't watch TV. Or that playwrights shouldn't go to the theatre. So why do some people contend that they can be writers without also being readers? Maybe a few of them can, but I'm skeptical. Why would you want to produce something for others that you don't actually enjoy yourself? I have a very sneaky suspicion that many who fall into this camp just want to create stories, and they feel that writing is the easiest/cheapest method to do it. But scratch the surface and what they are is computer game players, or TV watchers, or cinema-goers, with the urge to create something similar. They love stories—but not the act of reading. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But they might be better off pursuing another way to tell the stories circling inside their heads. There is a certain school of thought (often applied to writers of Romance) that writers shouldn't try to write something they don't actually enjoy themselves—because the lack of love will show. I think that applies to writing in general. If you don't read, or don't like to read, your writing will likely betray you. You will struggle to produce writing that keeps a reader glued, because you don't understand how that works. You can spit out a complicated plot, give us a list of character traits that would work fine if you had an actor willing to portray them on screen, etc. But you won't understand that creating the emotional experience that engages a reader within a book takes time ...and yes, it also takes words. I suspect that most people who get focused on cutting all 'unnecessary' words, to the extent that their stories read like a newspaper side column, probably fall into this camp. They're in a hurry, and will always prefer to get the Cliff's Notes version of any story, rather than the full version. I really think they're missing the point.
Thanks. I had a photo of it in my progress journal, but it seems to have disappeared. I'm totally flummoxed in regards to this post-a-photo thing on this site. I've done it a couple of times, but can't figure it out now. And the one time I did figure it out, well as I said, the photo has disappeared. WUWT?
I've come to agree with this very wholeheartedly. For my next novel, I'm starting with working out the third act and if I can't find a way to make it work, I can move on to the next story idea without wondering if it was gonna work.
I have read about famous writers (can't remember who exactly) who do exactly this. They don't ever start writing until they have the last line or the last scene written. I think that's a very smart way to proceed, if you have that ending or scene clearly fixed in your mind. It give you leeway to explore character, plotlines, etc, as long as you end up There. You'll know where you're going, so you probably won't get sidetracked or run out of steam. Even though I've not tried this myself, I expect it would work brilliantly.
I know this may sound confusing. I know the big plot points of my story. I know how it ends, I know what should generally happen in the beginning and the middle, but I can't seem to start it in the way that I want. It's like I've written the first chapter a million times. I don't know what to do. My problem is with how I should introduce all of the characters when they're meeting for the first time. For the majority of the story they're in a group and writing for each chapter is easy but when it's in the beginning and there's eight characters I have to introduce I don't know how to do it. Like should each character get their own chapter? Do I just introduce five all at once? I don't know how to do it. I've been struggling with it forever. Please help me with this. Should I start with the main character for the majority of the first few chapters and then slowly add in the other points of view?
Try writing the middle and ends bits first, so as to get a proper feel for your characters - see who they are, how they interact with one another, etc. Then, the beginning will feed itself to you. For example, you may find as you're writing that while Character A likes drinking, Character B is a talkative, sociable person, so Character A met Character B at a bar where Character B was a bartender. In this situation, you would be integrating traits from both characters to create a realistic scenario in which they meet. However, if you just start from the beginning immediately, you'll still be figuring out who your characters are, and therefore your beginning may not be what it could be. So, in short: just write the parts you do have figured out, then the rest will come to you.
There is no single right way. If you know what "generally" should happen, then just write a scene that shows it. Don't worry about style or craft, just write the scene. Because whatever you write the first time around probably almost certainly won't be the final product. Good luck with it.
This is not that uncommon an issue, or at least it's something I've struggled with myself at times. I do think it might be rather difficult to get all eight characters to meet all at once though, and from personal experience, having more than four or five primary characters is rather difficult to keep straight. I often have trouble remembering to include one or two of them when the party gets too big like that. It also makes it harder for them all to connect in a reasonable and believable way, which could be part of the issue you're having. What I suggest is to focus on introducing your main character to the story, and developing their personality as well. For me, it is much easier to establish the MC if I start from the very beginning with them. In my novel I'm even starting when they are still a child, that far back, and introducing him to his mentor who half raises him from that point. It was important enough to establish their relationship, the place I was originally starting from simply didn't build his character enough. What genre is your book in exactly? is it sci-fi, fantasy, modern fiction? Sometimes this matters when dealing with a large group of people like that, like what is keeping them bonded together for this story. If it's future sci-fi space travel, then maybe they're all on a ship together, for example, which makes sense if they're part of a crew. If it's fantasy, then it might be a Tolkien like situation like they're on a mission. In a modern setting though it becomes harder, mostly because of social media and IM, people are less likely to get together and spend a lot of time with each other unless there's a very strong reason to. Unless it's a company setting which they are all employees, or school, etc., then it just becomes hard and very unbelievable for that many people to become friends and spend much time at all together. Considering the reason why they are together is more important than the actual introduction of them. It will sorta write itself if you establish their reasoning to be a group.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end - Sorry, couldn't resist an Alice in Wonderland quote. I like to start with a hint of what the major conflict will be. Just a hint. No major action just something that will help the reader to understand where my character is mentally. My mc is a young boy, 14, and his pushy mother is trying to break him into acting. Not something he particularly wants so part of the initial first scene after some exposition is him purposely sabotaging his audition. Think about the stories you've read. What do you want to know straight off about the characters? Set the stage - make sure the reader knows something about the world your characters inhabit - but more importantly their status and part in it. Set up the inner conflict (emotional conflicts - what does the character want - i.e. peace of mind) and exterior conflicts (what does the character want per say in general - i.e. a new job.)
If I were absolutely forced to vote, based on absolutely no other information, I would introduce all five at once or almost at once. However, you mention "other points of view" which is different from multiple characters. You can have multiple important characters and still have just one POV character. Do you intend to swap POV across all the characters?
Boy do I sympathize with this. I tie my head up in knots trying to wrangle all the details and get crazy overwhelmed. hence my most recent scrivener hiatus... Personally, my problem manifests when i try to treat my writing as a linear story with a beginning and an end rather than a universe where i'm picking and choosing the details to showcase. i fall in to the trap of looking at what the story HAS to be rather than what it IS; my brain struggles to give up control over the details. Right now i'm trying to train myself to write without assuming that what i'm putting on the page is going to actually make it to my finished product. Everything is backstory; I'm still learning about who I'm working with, what they're like, and what their motives are. i have no idea when this process will end. maybe a bell will go off in my head. maybe i'll wake up and know i'm good to go, like divine intervention. or maybe i'll just look at everything and go "welp. that's probably good enough." two guesses which one it will probably be. i use this as context for my recommendation: maybe you should go back before the book begins, and start writing stories about your other characters. what are they doing? what problems are they experiencing? how can you add depth to them while also giving yourself more material to grab hold of? you may never use it in your book, but it can offer opportunities for crossover between characters. to piggyback off what @Goldenclover179 said, using that additional story material may shine a light on a way that two of your characters have seen one another before or know each other through mutual friends. if nothing else, it's some great novella fodder for your fans later.
My wife used to have an interesting exercise for middle school writers.... start with "once upon a time..." They would write the story, then delete/revise the opening. I think the important thing to remember is that your first chapter is probably going be for you, the writer, trying to do what you are struggling to do, getting your head around how to introduce your characters who haven't even formed yet. Just get it down and get moving with the rest of the story and trust yourself... you will work it out. The reader may never see anything that resembled the first version of your chapter 1, but that launched your writing to get to the end, it served its purpose.
You don't need to have the opening chapter to write the book. I've completely re-written my first chapter a half dozen times and heavily edited it many more. How to begin is very important. How to open the story became more clear to me as the story developed.
Start with something you really like. A sentence, a paragraph, make sure you really like it. If you do, more chances are that others will too. As for characters, I make a point of introducing a character at a time**. I get confused when too many characters are thrown my way; I don't want my readers to feel confused about who's who. **Just to be clear, I mean one important character at a time. If three monks walk into a room they're treated as a collective character of three monks. More detail one each of the monks when and if needed. If only one speaks, maybe no more needs to be said about the other two. Hope I've been of help.
Then I would start by putting some checkpoints between the BME as a guide. Then repeat a couple more times. After you have a well defined path through the forest you can then see at a glance if your story is connected with a logical sequence of events and if there are holes or if there are irrelevant detours. Then start writing at the beginning. If necessary add details to those scene cards or beat sheet points first.
