The Beginning

It is always hard in my opinion.

I started really slowly with a man watching the picture of his country's greatest hero while he waits to be attended by a chancellor, we only see him as a geeky, nervous man before discovering he is actually the president of that country

http://www.mallet.dircon.co.uk/nadvice1.html

I think this explains it well.

Sage is right, sometimes you just have to write something and move on. You can come back to it later.

rsriem said:

I'm in the process of writing, but I'm having trouble starting the beginning. It's like I can never find the right words to start it off. And if I do, and i reread it, it's not good enough and I end up back at phase 1. I was wondering is it common and how did you start your beginning?

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I wouldn't worry too much about it. I always hate the beginnings when I first write them. Chances are you'll change it so much in the end that it won't matter at all. I just wrote my perfect beginning last night, on a book I've been working on for years. It's days away from being polished enough for betas... 'bout time I was happy with the opener.

I hate beginnings. Of the five novels I'm actively working on, only two have decent beginnings and two have no beginnings at all (yet). I was 80,000 words into my main WIP before I finally wrote the first chapter (I outline, so I knew what needed to happen, I just didn't want to write it, LOL). Since beginnings are so hard and so tempting to just toss out all together when they don't turn out perfectly, I never write the beginning until I'm past the 'point of no return' (50,000 words or so), where I've put so much time and effort into the story that I have no choice but to finish it. That way I have to keep at the beginning no matter how frustrated I get. So I guess my advice would be to start with chapter two, and forget the beginning for now.

It's finishing the beginning I always have trouble with.

Start in the middle then. Come back to the beginning later.

The problem is,
when you write the beginning you are doing something very, very hard.
You're introducing the characters and the central conflict and the situation and you also have to be intense and gripping and intriguing.
This is technically difficult.

You're doing this very hard bit of work at a time when you barely know your characters and the conflict is a little mushy and everything's going to change before you get 2/3 through the story anyway.

Recognize how hard this is -- what you're doing in this first chapter.
Be gentle with yourself.
Sketch the scene and move on to a future scene you can really visualize.
Trust yourself to come back later and do a better job.

Actually I think it's a relief, later, to already have the opinion that your beginning is crap. If you work for two weeks on the beginning of your story, and then you write the whole book and someone says "You need to change your beginning," you're going to be too attached to it to want to alter ANYTHING. But if you start out with the notion that it'll eventually have to be rewritten (which it likely will no matter what), you won't be too dismayed when it comes time.

You're just getting started so just start writing. You can "perfect" the beginning, the middle and the end, later. Taking that first step gets you one step closer to the end.

rsriem said:

I'm in the process of writing, but I'm having trouble starting the beginning. It's like I can never find the right words to start it off. And if I do, and i reread it, it's not good enough and I end up back at phase 1. I was wondering is it common and how did you start your beginning?

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Even in articles and essays, the first paragraphs the writer types are seldom the true beginning. Just write. When you're done, you'll recognize a section near the start that's your real first line. The rest can come later, or be deleted.

Beginnings are hard.

Oh, and endings are hard too.

And that middle bit? Often hard as well.

I write it and don't look back until I'm done with the first draft.
The current MS I'm working on started with the first line (in Draft #1) as "The message light blinked."
In draft two re-write (from hard copy all typed back into a blank document and revised as I go) started "Mediocre becomes a mantra when you've lived it long enough."


Huge difference.
But I never would have come up with that line for second draft if I hadn't written through to the end of the story in first draft.

don't fix it until you know what you're fixing.

Write anything that will set you on the path and then write it again better later.