A new year means a new beginning for many people, and it presents an irresistible opportunity for me to talk about beginning a story, even if most of you are probably in the middle of something at the moment.
The first question that comes to mind is “Where does a story begin?” It’s not as simple a question as it seems, especially if one includes the writing process and not just the plot or structure. In one sense, The Dark Lord’s Daughter began in the 1980s when I first began to contemplate writing a portal fantasy. In another sense, it began when I mentioned the idea to an editor at Random House, who was intrigued enough to ask for a proposal. Or you could say it began when I sat down and started the first version of Chapter 1 (which I threw away a week later…as I did with Chapter 1.01 and Chapter 1.02. Chapter 1.03 was the one that ultimately stuck the landing.)
In terms of the story (as opposed to the process), the beginning is the appearance of Waylan at the end of Chapter 1.03. The book begins, obviously, at the start of Chapter 1.03, with Kayla and her family arriving at the State Fair. Why do I draw the distinction? Because Waylan’s arrival is what sets everything in motion. If he hadn’t shown up, none of the rest of the story could have happened. The Jones family would have gone on with their lives, and had a different, more ordinary adjusting-to-new-schools-and-a-new-job story, but the story I wrote would not have happened.
So I’m defining “the beginning of the story” as “the point of disruption”—the event or moment after which the protagonist’s life is inevitably going to change (even if it isn’t obvious until later). Take away that event, and the story will not happen as intended; something entirely different will happen instead.
That disruption point does not have to be a sudden intrusion from outside the protagonist’s normal life (like the abrupt arrival of a complete stranger who yanks the whole family to a new world). It can be something that’s been planned for, like moving back home to take care of family business, like starting high school or college. It can be something seemingly small and normal, like seemingly routine assignment from the protagonist’s boss. It can be the result of a choice the protagonist makes, like getting married/divorced or fulfilling a long-held dream to travel somewhere. Or it can be an unexpected intrusion from outside the protagonist’s life, something they had no control over—a car accident, a murder, an owl showing up with an invitation to a school for magic.
It can take a while to determine what that disruption point is, especially if it’s something internal to the protagonist, because internal changes tend to be slow, often subtle, and generally take place over a long time (unless there are outside influences involved). I’ve known particularly character-centered writers who fixate on the “event without which the story wouldn’t happen” and keep tracing back and back until they announce triumphantly that the event is the protagonist’s birth…at which point they collapse under the need to write a million-word biography covering the character’s entire life up to the point where their actual story is supposed to start.
There are two approaches to this “moment of disruption” idea. First, a writer who has a general idea of the kind of story they’re writing can pick the point at which the protagonist becomes involved—a spy has their cover unexpectedly blown in the middle of a dangerous assignment, or a ballet dancer breaks a leg and has to face the possible end of their career. The action-adventure plot or the character-growth plot that the writer intends to write develops inevitably from there.
The second approach is to take a character, throw the unexpected disruptive event at them, and see what they do with it. The spy’s ten-year-old son (who is supposed to be in full custody of the other parent) appears on the spy’s doorstep without warning while the spy is in the middle of a dangerous assignment…how is the spy going to juggle these conflicting obligations? The ballet dancer bumps into someone at the subway station and accidentally switches their choreography notes for their file, which turns out to be detailed plans for a terrorist attack on the New York City Public Library—how is the dancer going to convince anyone to listen while avoiding whoever is going to try to get the plans back? In this case, the writer doesn’t necessarily have a type of story in mind—either story could develop character-growth elements, action-adventure elements, or both at once.
There are also differences in where the disruptive happens in the manuscript. The manuscript can open just before the point of disruption—with the spy bribing someone to get the necessary computer passwords, or the dancer collecting the choreography notes to study later in the evening. The manuscript can open right at the disruption point, with the spy opening the apartment door to find their son on the doorstep, or the dancer bumping into the terrorist and unknowingly switching notes. Or it can open just after the disruption, with the spy staring at the kid on the sofa or the dancer staring at the “choreography notes” that talk about sneaking a bomb into the library.
As a general rule of thumb, the less familiar things are to the reader and the more disruptive the kickoff event is, the harder it is to pull off starting after the point of disruption. This is because it’s harder for the reader to get a feel for just how disruptive the event is if they have no idea what “ordinary life” is like for the protagonist. If the protagonist is a 21st century office worker, it’s fairly easy to suck the reader into a scene where the protagonist announces to her family that she’s just lost her job, but if the protagonist is a dragon-tamer in a magical medieval setting, the reader is more likely to be distracted, wondering what dragon-taming is like, why and how one gets fired there, and how one even looks for a new job in that setting.
> So I’m defining “the beginning of the story” as “the point of disruption”—the event or moment after which the protagonist’s life is inevitably going to change (even if it isn’t obvious until later).
I tend to think of this moment as being the one when it begins becoming apparent to the protagonist(s), readers, or both, what the central problem/conflict is. If that helps anyone get a handle on the concept…
In your stories, it may be, but it doesn’t have to be. There are quite a lot of space operas, for instance, that begin with a new captain arriving to assume command of a new ship. That’s the point without which the rest of the story couldn’t happen, but neither the protagonist nor the reader can tell (yet) whether the central conflict is going to be making a crew of misfits work together, surveying a dangerous new planet, making first contact with aliens, or taking part in a bunch of space battles.
> …it may be, but it doesn’t have to be.
Certainly. That’s why I send “I tend to think…”
Which is to say, thank you for clarifying that for people! I wasn’t trying to make anything so variable as ironclad.
Let me just add, yes, I am very conflict-driven in my writing. I do write some spooky stuff, where there is nothing to overcome, no one to confront.
But at the same time…maybe if my father hadn’t died when I was a kid. Maybe if I hadn’t had a younger loved one come crying to me about being bullied and humiliated, and been unable then to do a damned thing about it. Maybe if I hadn’t had an incompetent idiot put in place above me when I was already working myself to death, who then made everything a magnitude worse.
Maybe if I didn’t have all that rage and frustration in my background I’d write peaceful slices of life. Maybe I’d write character explorations in idyllic circumstances. Or something.
My stories aren’t usually filled with anger. They don’t usually have a lot of violence.
But writing about conflicts that *are* overcome, about confrontations that come out on the right side, doing that satisfies my readers, and eases my soul.
If that *tends* to color my thoughts on writing…why wouldn’t it?
Well, to use Wrede’s latest book for an example: the central conflict doesn’t become clear until after the characters are whisked off through the portal, so I think her point is less that this is a difference between conflict-driven fiction and slice of life and more that the point of disruption and the point of revelation may or may not coincide.
I know my more conflict-driven stories tend to separate them and my more slice-of-life tend to conflate them, but even for me, it’s variable.
Getting “fired” from a dragon-taming job could have an interesting double meaning…
Well, yes. 🙂
My 2 main WIPs, one starts after the disruption (protag told his assignment in response to a military threat) and one starts before (character-internal subtle disruption definitely occurs later, esp. since he’s reluctant to be disrupted).
Oddly enough, I actually went for after with the big bad in wip1 because I got freebie exposition to intro a very sff threat, then showed a 1st attack to kickstart a secondary main character and wanted to avoid unrewarding repetition.
How does this apply to static, iconic protagonists like Sherlock Holmes?
One could say that the “moment of disruption” is when a client arrives at 221B Baker Street, or when Holmes receives a telegraph message. But this feels like a force-fit to me.
Well, the moment of client/Holmes intersection is when story begins and the client’s life is going to change, so I think it works. Holmes is a steady character but the story itself is a “disruption” for the purposes of terminology I would think.
Yes, exactly.
That’s it. Before that, anything could happen, and when that happens, the story is set on a certain track.
“A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it. An end is that which is naturally after something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent, and with nothing else after it. And a middle, that which is by nature after one thing and has also another after it.” Aristotle
The key word in Aristotle’s definition of a beginning is “necessarily”–unless the writer is starting with the Big Bang, something happened before the beginning. Characters had to be born and grow up and have lives. It’s just that what has happened before the story starts isn’t directly (or “naturally,” for Aristotle) connected to the flow of the story. I’m also not sure that works for the sort of story where the protagonist is revealed as the True Heir to the Throne, given that the True Heir was usually born to the king and queen quite a while before the story started.
On the other hand, many a True Heir has grown up, married, had an heir, and died without ever reclaiming the throne.
I think you’re taking “disruption” as too large a thing. Without the client’s arrival or the telegraph, Holmes would never be involved at all, so yes, that’s the point where his life (or at least, his activities for the next week or so) changes. The “disruption” doesn’t need to be a huge, life-changing, character-altering event; it’s just the first step on the road. That’s what makes it so hard to see in some stories, especially ones involving people just doing their jobs (Holmes, doctors, lawyers…) or gradual changes in the protagonist’s character. The high school student’s impulsive decision to try out for the school play may, technically, be what leads them to a career in theater, which leads them (years later) to audition for the play that’s at the center of the author’s story. But it’s getting the part that is usually the point where the author’s story starts, not that initial decision back in high school.
After reading the replies, I don’t think it’s “disruption” that I was taking as too large a thing, but “the protagonist’s life is inevitably going to change” as being too large a thing.
So if “disruption” can mean “Holmes changes his activities for the next week or so” rather than “The start of ‘Nine-Fingered Sherlock and the Case of Doom'” then yeah, I can see that now.
Hello Ms. Wrede!
I read your books growing up and I can’t tell you how elated I am that I found your website! Whenever someone asks me who is one of my favorite authors, I always say your name. I will always remember being introduced to sci-fi/ fantasy when I opened up “Talking With Dragons.”
Thank you very much.
Haha sorry I didn’t finish that last reply…
Anyway… I never felt that kind of curiosity and excitement before when reading. You literally changed my world. To be an author like yourself is literally a dream of mine.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your work with this world. Thank you for writing books that allowed a little girl to escape her own world, where she had to move across the country to a place where the kids bullied her and where her parents fought often. I’m getting tearful just thinking about it… But you gave me a world where the women protagonists were strong and they didn’t shy away from what was scary or what could be considered too difficult. Whether it be dragons or black magic, they overcame. I really feel like you planted that seed that I could overcome as well. You truly helped me do so.
Happy New Year! Thank you so very, very much. Sending you so much love!