More mango writing advice! This episode on Writing Tools, Not Rules, we answer the question:
Where do I start my story?
In the middle! Unless it's better to start at the beginning.
There is some advice I've seen a couple places, about starting a scene "late" and ending it "early", that I think is good advice—for the most part!
But sometimes it's not good advice, because perhaps starting late and ending early isn't actually what you want to do for the specific story you're telling.
We'll start with talking about what "starting late" means first.
What this common advice is getting at is the importance of hooking the reader and building interest.
"But how do I hook a reader?" you ask. Good question. And people will tell you, "By adding curiosity! By leaving information out! By starting in the middle!"
But what the fuck does any of that actually mean?
All around us, every day, we're surrounded by (and filtering through) tons and tons and tons of information. Some of it's environmental information that our brain is subconsciously taking in and categorizing, some of us are in school, reading textbooks, or scrolling through Wikipedia. Or maybe a waiter is telling us the specials of the day!
It's all information, and it's all being processed, and it's all being sorted and subconsciously (or sometimes consciously) judged.
As a species, we've gotten real fucking good at being able to tune out what's not important and at anticipating what might come next.
And we know, when something starts out at the beginning, with something like, "There was a girl," or "a long long time ago," or "Jimmy wakes up on Sunday," or "Janine takes a bucket of chicken feed out to her chickens," that it could go fucking anywhere.
Starting like that isn't wrong, but it's asking the reader to invest time in something that could end up going nowhere at all. Hooking a reader is about giving them right in the beginning: A) why they need to care, B) why what you're writing is interesting, and C) why the reader can trust you to deliver something interesting.
Consider these two options:
Janine takes a bucket of chicken feed out to her chickens.
Janine stares up at the sky, chicken feed spread out in a chaotic smorgasbord across the lawn.
The first one: okay, what's she doing with the chicken feed? Feeding chickens. Great. Cool. What next? Something cool? Is it gonna be about how much Janine loves her chickens? What's this story?
The second one: What the fuck happened to Janine and why'd she throw chicken feed across the lawn?
This is what people mean when they say "start in the middle."
Don't start with Janine taking her chicken feed out, trying to scatter it, and how she, I don't know, steps on a banana peel, chicken feed flying, chickens tumbling out of the coop like bowling pins.
Start with her slipping on the banana peel, chicken feed flying, chickens tumbling out of the coop like bowling pins, or start with the aftermath of Janine lying down surrounded by chicken feed.
You immediately hand the reader something interesting, something they now want to know more about, a mystery for them to solve. They're invested. What happened to Janine and her chicken feed?
Then you can go into the backstory. You've seen the technique before in other places, I'm sure. We've all seen a movie or TV episode where it starts on a chaotic scene and you get the narrator character voiceover of, "So how did I get here?"
Exact same concept, just a different medium. You want to tell the reader there's something interesting here, give them a flavor of what to expect, and then you can pull back and start to fill in the blanks—or not! You don't have to! You can just go forward from Janine and the chickens tumbling out like bowling pins, or from her staring at the sky, surrounded by chicken feed and tumbling chickens.
See, you don't really need the, "she walked outside with a bucket full of chicken feed," if your story isn't about how she has chicken feed, and where it came from, and even if that is what your story is about—where can you start it instead, that gives the reader a taste of what to expect? That leaves a little mystery?
Let's explore another example, and explore what your intro is actually doing and what the impact of the words is. We're going to take one of the examples I gave that I implied you shouldn't start with, and tell you how you can start with that.
"Jimmy wakes up on a Sunday."
What does this tell the reader about what kind of story this is? What's the relevant piece here? That he's waking up, that it's Sunday? Is any of that relevant? What's important about him waking up on a Sunday?
Jimmy = our character, who will be revealed anyway.
Wakes up = something everyone does. Well… usually.
on a Sunday = this adds specificity. Specificity is an indication that something is important.
What's your next sentence going to be? Will it give context as to why Sunday is important? If it doesn't, the reader is going to either think, "okay maybe the next sentence will," or they're going to throw, "on a Sunday," out as unimportant.
You've just given the reader a sentence that does nothing. It tells them nothing.
"Jimmy wakes up on a Sunday. He checks his clock—fuck, it's 12:00 PM already."
Jimmy = our character, who will be revealed anyway.
Wakes up = something (most) people do.
on a Sunday = specific, potentially relevant.
He checks his clock = He has a clock, he checks it, that's a normal thing.
fuck = Oh. An emotion. Something's wrong.
it's 12:00 PM = the time. Most people wake up earlier than that, but not everyone. Why is waking up at 12:00 PM bad?
already = he did not mean to wake up at 12:00 PM.
You added just one sentence, which did the following:
It confirmed that Sunday is important information. Wonderful, now your reader knows there's something to discover here.
It gave some more very specific information. Using our fantastic brains and how we are pattern matching experts, we have the beginning of a pattern emerging—that you are giving us specific information that is, in fact, actually important.
It gave emotion. It tells us something about the character. He's not just Jimmy anymore, he's a Jimmy who is unhappy about waking up at 12:00 PM on a Sunday for some reason. What could be the reason?
It gives something to anticipate. Is it because he's missing church? Is there important band practice? Why would he be upset about waking up so late if it wasn't something interesting? We don't usually feel fuck-level emotions about mundane shit.
It drives the story forward. It adds important information. It confirms the first sentence wasn't empty and purposeless.
The thing is, you still started at the "beginning." You went against advice. You broke the rules. Does that make this start bad?
No. Why? Because this does what the advice is trying to tell you to do. It's a quick hack to build interest, starting in the middle of the action. It's advice that's easy to follow, a great formula for people who aren't sure.
But it doesn't tell you why starting in the middle acts as a hook, it doesn't tell you what that does to the reader, how that hooks the reader, not in a way you can repeat.
And this information I present to you isn't just useful for starting stories, either. Maybe you're starting a new scene, or a new chapter. Or maybe you're in the middle of a scene, and you don't know where to take it next. Or maybe you're reviewing a scene, and editing, and it drags a bit, and you're not sure why.
Understanding the reader journey, where you're leading them, and what they're getting from your writing—that's useful regardless of where you are in your story.
So you've learned what starting "in the middle" looks like, you've learned that it isn't always necessary, and you've learned why. You've learned how to repeat the process. You've learned why certain things work, and certain things don't. You've learned how one sentence leads into the next, what drives a story forward.
You've learned how to start your story.
