So, I'm planning to write a story about some explorers in the near-ish future exploring a weird, surreal planet that was recently discovered, and close enough to reach. My problem is I have no idea what the very start would be. Once I get it going I think I'll be fine, but I don't know where to start. Should I start with launch from Earth? Should they be preparing to land? Just landed? Already off the ship, maybe? I don't know, please help me. Also I know the idea is a bit cliche, but I don't care to much.
It seems like you've already got some ideas. Why don't you write out some of them and see how they feel and if they fit? You can always scrap or alter them once you got to the thick of it. That said, one advice I've gotten regarding beginnings (and endings) and that I think is pretty good is this: start late, end early. It basically means that you should try to stay as close to the action/conflict as possible so it doesn't get boring. So if the launch from earth, for example, is only backstory and no conflict involved, I'd skip that.
My MO is to follow the advice "Start as close to the end as possible". Do you know what story you want to tell? Not the gist of the plot, but the actual story? What's the very last thing that needs to happen before it can get underway? I would think that starting with the landing could be it -- opening on the touchdown or the explorers' first sight of the new planet appeals to me.
I agree with that. And that is appealing. If the story is a travel log and there is some difficulty, right at the outset, that might be right. Is there conflict before the doors open? Imagine the POV character. He's going to be about something at the beginning of the first chapter that might not have to do with the overall later plot. Maybe he thinks the mission is suicide because of some condition, so maybe it starts with him getting ready to argue with mission control. Maybe he's worried about leaving his family, so it starts with him bribing someone for antenna time. Really though, I've written two novels. The first I had to rewrite the first three chapters. The second I had to add a five page scene to the beginning. I think you'd have to be pretty smart to write something complicated and then keep the first beginning you came up with. I'd just write whatever, knowing you can go back in revision.
Other posters are so much nicer. I'm like, what? you need to ask strangers how to start your book? I can understand general discussion and understand people get stuck, but you haven't done anything. I don't see why you wouldn't have already started if that is truly something you wanted to do. And do you honestly care what kind of answers you want because I'm not even sure you should. Writers question themselves all the time, but writers write all the time. Lately it seems like no one wants to read or write. What is going on with everyone? And I don't actually mean everyone and this is not a personal attack and I get it that everyone can do there own thing, but writing is a very specific and hard thing. Maybe go ahead and tackle that blank page then report back. Good luck to you.
Thanks for this advice, and you were right, but I feel like there were much less aggressive ways to say that.
Maybe a Prior adventure or mission. I have my story with my MC getting the second to Last golden statuette, which is part of a Quest set down by her Ancestor, to whom she had found a tablet outling the quest, and giving the first clues. She's been on it for about three years when we meet up with her. (Not including the prologue where she is born, lol) . Find a way to introduce your MC, I typically start my stories that way, Closer to the end is not always an option as my books have a tendency to be long with alot of stuff in them.
The ship just crashed. The captain's dead, the food supplies were destroyed in the crash, the ship's potable water supply is contaminated by a reactor leak, and the rest of the crew are screwed if they can't find clean water and figure out what's safe to eat on this planet. What happens next?
Start anywhere and get writing, because the odds are you'll rewrite the beginning multiple times before you find the right place to start. In the book I'm finishing editing right now, the original opening chapter had become chapter six by the time I'd finished the first draft. I just realized after a while that I needed more stuff to bring the reader into the story world. In Rendevouz With Rama, which seems like a similar kind of book to yours, I think they started with the discovery of the mysterious object on Earth, then cut to the ship arriving to investigate.
How much are you annoyed by excess writing that you throw away? If you're not too annoyed by it, then I might suggest that you write it from as early as you want, with the understanding that you're going to end up throwing away a lot of those pages. But the possible value in writing is that character information and subplots and world information will creep in, and those things might tell you where to start. You'll need to start at a point (IMO) where there are important stakes for a character, stakes that the reader will care about.
I would potentially have an issue with this. Any planet which is remotely human-habitable and is reachable using any technology we will realistically develop within the next 1000 years would already have been discovered. Because we can see them. We already know of planets which are potentially human-habitable, but are much too far away to reach. So I think you should start with some kind of explanation of how we discovered this planet, and how we got there. Wormholes, alien tech, generational ships etc. are possible methods. But you'll have to get the science on point, otherwise sci-fi fans won't suspend disbelief.
As I understand it, we still aren't absolutely sure we've discovered all the planets in our solar system. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/20/463087037/hints-of-a-hidden-distant-planet-in-our-solar-system, etc.) With that in mind, I don't think it's a big stretch to think there could be planets further away that we haven't yet noticed.
I agree with this completely. In the 50's, it would have been unthinkable to start this story without all the Cape Canaveral/Houston stuff, because the zeitgeist was furiously fapping to the sound of a launch countdown. Today... meh. I read the OP and immediately saw the story opening with a young scientist, in the field, deeply in the zone as regards what's happening at the other end of her Sci-Fi microscope.
If there are planets within our own solar system which are far enough away from us that we have not yet seen them, they they will not be human habitable. It would be far too cold. Anything which is close enough to the sun to have a human-habitable surface temperature is already visible. In other words, only Mars. Once you get as far out as Jupiter the temperature is so far below human-habitable range that it would be impractical at best, and impossible at worst, to live there. (Not to mention Jupiter itself will never be human habitable as it does not have a solid surface).
I think you've missed my point. I'm not saying the mysterious Planet Nine within our solar system is likely to be habitable. I'm saying the possibility of Planet Nine shows that we aren't confident we've discovered all the planets right next to us, so we certainly can't be sure we've discovered all the planets in other solar systems. And some of those other undiscovered planets may be habitable.
Oh right. Yeah, that makes sense. Though, any technology remotely possible within many, many generations to come still won't get us even to the next closest solar system, so the presence of a habitable planet even in Proxima Centauri still wouldn't help in this case. You'd still need to invent a plausible way of getting there.
@WaffleWhale, the purpose of the first chapter of the first draft is for you, the writer. It focuses your mind on the story you are going to tell, and the first sentence of that first chapter is the hardest one you will write. The second hardest is the last one, to get to the finish line. Very few first chapters survive the cutting board, though never throw anything out... nothing that you took the effort to write down is wasted effort, because you can always go back into that folder where you keep your discards and not quite rights, pick up and recycle it into something. That is what happened to my first chapter... it was confusing, a flash forward to Romans in China followed by the beginning of that trip. But there was a part that absolutely had to be recycled into a chapter in which I needed to people doing a deadly-serious training bout with steel swords. So get started!
I would start with a need to land on that particular planet. Not just curiosity. Maybe the captain got into an argument with his robot assistant who launched himself out of some pod leaving a message behind -- I quit, even an living on an unknown planet is better than working for you.
Do you know what your story is going to be about yet? So far, this new planet is just a setting. What is the story going to be about? If you know that, or something about that, see if you can launch the start in that direction. Presumably the explorers aren't just going to find things hunky dory, report back to earth, settlers follow, end of story? So what will their problems be? With the planet? With the people who sent them to explore? With each other? (With all three?) If you know what direction you're taking this tale, keep that direction in mind when you start your story.
This- and if there is something from early in the adventure you want to refer to then it could be included as a flashback or referenced in a more interesting way?