By David E. Sharp
Lewis Carroll’s advice for storytelling is, “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
It’s simple, but it isn’t easy. I can usually identify the end of a story, but where does it begin? The morning of the inciting incident? The day the protagonist is born? The birth of the universe? Or somewhere in the vague setting of “Once upon a time…”
You’ve read enough books and seen enough movies to know plenty of other options. Any point in the story is a viable option for page one. But just because we can start anywhere doesn’t mean we should.
I’m tapping a familiar source to determine the best place to start the story. You know it well. The crimson-cowelled courier from the cottage, it’s Little Red Riding Hood.
You know her story, but here’s a recap: Little Red’s mother (Big Red Riding Hood) receives word that her grandma (Old Red Riding Hood) is sick. She tasks Little Red with delivering a basket of goodies to Grannie’s house in the woods.
Sugary snacks are how they treat illness in Once Upon A Time because it was before breakthroughs in medical science like rest and clear fluids. A lot of people died back then.
“But!” warns Little Red’s mother, “whatever you do, don’t stray from the path, or a wild animal may devour you.”
Little Red swears she will obey her mother’s instructions. To the letter. Nothing shall divert her from the path, not rain, blizzards, or earthquakes. Not even if the path should lead her through the very depths of hell.
She will never veer from—oh hey, some flowers.
Enter the Big Bad Wolf. Spying a girl in a red hood who has abandoned the safety of the path, he licks his lips. This is his lucky day. He strikes up a conversation, learns Little Red is heading to her grandma’s house, and develops a plan.
He races to Grandma’s house ahead of Little Red, devours Granny in one swallow (ignoring conventional wisdom to chew first), dresses in Grandma’s nightgown, climbs into her bed, and waits.
Little Red arrives. “Grandma, what big eyes you have—big ears—big hairy nose…” You get the idea. Once she gets to “Grandma, what big teeth you have,” the wolf pounces and swallows her whole. Stomach bulging, the wolf takes a nap.
Out of nowhere, a woodcutter arrives in the story and enters Grandma’s cottage because . . . I don’t know. I guess he’s smitten by her elderly charms.
Discovering the wolf with a fragment of red fabric hanging from his mouth, the woodcutter springs into action. He surgically removes the wolf’s victims.
It’s a good thing he minored in gastroenterology in woodcutting school! And that’s it! Everyone lives happily ever after—except for the wolf. They fill his stomach with rocks, and he drowns.
Where is this story’s ideal beginning? Let’s start with where it isn’t.
The False Start – Exposition Dump
People need to know these characters, right? And the setting. All the backstory. You know, the groundwork. Chapter one is our big chance to tell our readers everything. Except it isn’t.
Instead of preparing readers for the exciting story ahead, you risk boring them into finding another book. Here’s how it goes down:
It isn’t that Little Red loved red more than any other color. But, against all odds, everything she loved shared a common quality of being red. Strawberries, roses, ladybugs, lobsters, cherries, cardinals, paprika, and movie scenes with gratuitous violence.
It was a curious list of favorite things for anyone, and the common thread between them all was their color palette. So, it was no surprise when Little Red’s Grandma took Little Red to the Cape & Cowell outlet in the village. Little Red chose a hood of deepest red.
And on it goes. Let’s talk about Red’s early years, follow Red and Grandma to lunch, and visit Red and her mother during an awkward parent-teacher conference. The trouble here is there is no story.
We know a little about our protagonist, but none of it has any context. We have yet to introduce any conflict, we haven’t encountered a plot, and all we have is facts about someone we don’t know. If any of this is essential, we can sprinkle it in later.
Some great advice about first chapters is, if your story works without them, get rid of them. Start with something the story can’t do without. It never pays to frontload exposition.
The First Plot Point – The Starting Gun
An obvious and logical choice is to take each of the plot points in chronological order. This follows Lewis Carrol’s advice. First, this happened, the next thing happened, and then the thing after that. How could we go wrong? Let’s see how it looks.
“Little Red,” said her mother, shoving a basket of sweetbreads into Little Red’s lap, “stop watching Kill Bill for the umpteenth time and deliver these to your grandmother! You are way too young for that movie!”
Little Red shoved the basket aside and rolled her eyes. “Not too young to run errands into the scary woods, though, apparently.” She snagged a sweet roll from the basket and ripped a corner off with her teeth.
Little Red’s mother huffed, snatched the remote from the coffee table, and turned off the TV. “I said, now, young lady.” Then, with viper reflexes, she snatched Little Red’s sweet roll from her hand and shook it at her. “And these are for your grandma. You’ve had plenty of sweets already. Your grandma needs saturated carbohydrates to recover from her fever.”
Little Red eyed the basketful of sweets and sighed. “If only that’s how it really worked.” She brought her gaze back up at her mother. “Do I have to do it? I hate the woods. It’s terrifying in there. And cold. And dark.”
Little Red’s mother plucked the basket up and dropped it once more in her lap. “Just stay on the path, and you’ll be fine. Promise me you won’t leave the path.”
And we’re off! The starting gun fired, and the plot is ready to commence. It works. But just because it’s functional doesn’t mean it’s interesting. You and I know this errand will not go according to plan, that a big bad wolf will come along and shake things up.
However, our readers are not privy to this information. As far as they are concerned, this story is about a girl going on an errand. About as exciting for them to read about as it is for Little Red to embark upon.
In Media Res – Start where the action is.
Industry advice is to drop readers into the thick of things on the first page. If that means moving forward on the story’s timeline, we can always fill in the gaps as we go.
The benefit to starting the story in the middle of the action is readers get a taste of what they’re in for. Rather than the slow burn of exposition, they get a promise of the conflict to come, even if you go backward later to fill in the gaps. How does this method play out?
Little Red froze, knee-high in a field of red poppies, a fresh-picked bouquet in her fist, and her eyes locked on the gaze of the massive wolf staring at her from the treeline. Stay on the path, echoed her mother’s words in her mind. Stay on the path, and you’ll be fine.
Little Red dropped her flowers and clutched her red cloak around herself. It would offer no protection against the teeth of a wolf, especially a wolf that size, but it was all she could do. Her heart pounded against her ribs. There was no escape. The wolf would catch her in moments if she ran.
It stood at the edge of the meadow, motionless, staring. What was the wolf thinking? What would it do? Little Red held her breath, praying it would just move on. Why did she leave the path? But the wolf did not move on. It kept its eyes locked on her and took a single slow step toward her.
Little Red took and instinctual step back, nearly tripping over the basked of sweetbreads behind her. That’s how it all started. A simple errand to deliver some goodies to her sick grandmother.
Now we go back, fill in the gaps, add in the scene with Little Red’s mother somewhere, and we’re all set. Readers are hooked because they have a taste of what’s coming, and they’re willing to forgive a little exposition (in small doses) now that you’ve incentivized them.
Are there more options? Of course! We could start the story with:
All Is Lost, a.k.a. The Belly of the Beast.
The inside of the wolf’s stomach was dark, wet, and smelly. Little Red hugged her knees in the cramped space, doing her best to make herself comfortable before stomach enzymes spelled her imminent doom. She tried to adjust her elbow, which was jabbing into her side, but she soon realized that it wasn’t her elbow.
“Don’t tell me,” said her grandma, in a low voice, “you didn’t stay on the path.”
How about looking back on the story from the end? I call this one:
You Say You Want a Resolution – The Bookend Approach
Flashbulbs flared from every direction as reporters swarmed Little Red Riding Hood. She winced as microphones zipped in front of her face. Their questions overwhelmed her like the buzzing from a hive of angry bees.
“What was it like in the belly of the wolf?”
“Can you tell us what you felt when the woodcutter freed you?”
“Is it true your grandmother sewed rocks into the wolf’s stomach and shoved him into the well?”
“How did the wolf swallow you in the first place?”
Little Red shoved the microphones away from her face and glared at the reporters. “You want to know? You want me to tell you everything? About the wolf, the flowers, the sweetbreads, and all of it? To relive that hell?”
She singled out a thin reporter in a bow tie and thick-rimmed glasses, pointing at him with her finger. “You. Do you want to know what it’s like to be swallowed by a wolf?”
The reporter looked uncertain.
“Well, I’ll tell you. It all started when…”
Then, the whole novel fills in the story, and we end where we started. Like bookends!
The truth is, there is no perfect correct answer. A story can start from anywhere. Each option creates a different experience for the reader. It is essential to use your opening page to give them a taste of what they’re in for.
The Writing Bug 