I get Randy Ingermanson's regular emails about writing, organizing and publishing and I often learn new things about writing that didn't occur to me before.
The most recent one I received talked about how a story often doesn't start from nowhere, it starts in the middle of another less interesting story. Ingermanson explains it better. Basically that people aren't waiting around doing nothing before the story begins, they have thoughts, ambitions, and lives that they are already in the middle of. Little Red Riding Hood was going to her Grandmother's house to have tea when she meets the Wolf; David Copperfield lived in a little house with his mother in a loving home until his mother married and her new husband expected Davy to go to Boarding school; Lucy Pevensie was at a mansion because of the war with her siblings and playing a game of hide and seek when she discovered Narnia.
The main point is that the characters have a purpose and an idea of how their world works and what their future looks like before the new story begins. The character's old story is the world as they understand it. The new story begins as their world becomes upset. And when they launch into the new story, their old story influences their thoughts and decisions.
Of course after I read about it, I knew it wasn't any extraordinary secret. Obviously you see it everywhere when you're paying attention. But I realized that this could be a big help for me in writing beginnings. Because I have a really hard time pin-pointing a place to start my stories, a lot of times I start going back further and further into backstory trying to figure out where to begin. Honestly, I most often have to do some free-writing about what I want to say in the story in order to start comfortably writing the actual story.
In Practice.
I am developing a story about a man who is traveling and comes upon a village on the side of a mountain. The sun is setting soon so he decides to stay for the night and continue the following morning. Throughout the evening however, he gets the feeling he is being watched by the villagers whenever he isn't looking. He tries to ask the serving woman about it, but she merely dismisses it as normal for people in a small place to stare at strangers. He agrees, until he realizes later that night that there are very few men in the village near his age, and none that look to be older. His first impulse is to leave, but after learning about the town's curse, he begins to believe his only hope is to stay.
Now I need to separate the old story and the new story. Obviously the new story begins when he feels there is something strange about the way people are acting in this town. The old story is where I begin, however, and it's the part I'm not sure of. So here's for a short summary.
| Old Story | New Story |
| Man is traveling a long distance. Why? He stops in a village he's never been to before.What is his original destination? He is alone, who are the people that he knows and is familiar with? | Man feels people are staring at him. He asks about it. His concerns are discounted, but then he realizes some disconcerting things. |
I don't know anything about where my character is coming from or what his initial purpose is. It's a block because I need to know where he's coming from to write his point of view.
