In the Beginning

beginnings--places where story becomes dramatic; moments of narrative inertia; onsets of events that assume dramatic form.

The longer the story the greater the likelihood that it will have more than one optimal beginning point, thus the beginnings you see on stories that resonate for you have involved deliberation and choice on the part of their writer. The same choice and deliberation are owed your own beginnings. Ideally, beginnings are places where action is already in motion, where action is about to begin, where a choice has just been made, or where a character is confronted by discovery or event that knocks him or her from everyday routine.

Readers are less likely to care about a story that introduces itself with backstory or some other form of explanation or footnote. Example: You are at a gathering--a party, or, if you insist, a soiree--when, of a sudden, an individual you do not know by name approaches you, telling you with convincing sincerity and sobriety, "Please help me. I've got to get out of here. There are two people in the next room who are after me."

Your mind is already filled with such questions as Who are you? and Why me? Both these questions will and should be answered, but if this is to be the beginning of a story, now is not the moment for the details. We want more convincing details that force the issue, which happens to be the issue of the beset individual's actions, convincing you, perhaps even against your will, to become involved, caught up in an ever slippy slope of dramatic event.

The Scottish writer, Ali Smith, has it down perfectly in her story, "The Child," where a protagonist who is never named is using her lunch break to buy her "weekly stuff" in a supermarket. Shopping carts in Scotland and England are called trolleys. "I left my trolley by the vegetables and went to find bouquet garni for the soup. But when I came back to the vegetables again, I couldn't find my trolley. It seemed to have been moved." In its place was someone else's shopping cart, with a child sitting in the little child seat. This is all in the first paragraph.

By the second paragraph, the narrator realizes it is her shopping cart; events persist to the point where everyone in the market thinks the child is hers. So completely have we tumbled into the events of the story that we do not question the narrator's resolve to take the child to the nearest police department; much less do we question the fact that the child has now begun to speak, delivering in the manner of a second- or third-rate stand-up comic a stream of racist and sexist commentary.

Even though we do not know her name or where she works or what she does or if in fact she is in a romantic relationship, we share with Smith's narrator a sense of being caught up in a swirl of event that demands a solution.

Beginnings yank us into situations that need coping; they lead us onto the path where we search for some kind of conclusion or, at the very least, a settlement.

Roberts' Rules of Ardor

1. There is no right moment to begin a story or, if necessary, a novel. This goes beyond such propaganda as waiting or not waiting for inspiration. Beginning a story is the beginning of enthusiasm, even more it is the beginning of a friendship because by the time you've finished with the story or the novel, you will have come to share strengths and weaknesses with it, its and yours. There might be times in the process where neither of you is speaking to the other. Tempers flare. It may not care what you're doing for it; you may well not care what it is doing for you. Stories may be embarked upon at any time. One proof of this is a test that may be made by as simple a move as picking up at a time of only mild enthusiasm a story by an author you like.

2. You will undoubtedly have heard some rule of thumb about the amount of revision necessary to get the story or novel in shape, the particular rule of thumb being stuck in at the behest of an editor who likes numbers or because of your own sense of guilt that the story seemed to tell itself and was accordingly too easy. Revision is a structured process, its goal being to effect the most telling portrayal of the feelings set loose by the work at hand.

3. It is fun to seem contrary and bemoan how difficult writing is. It may have been difficult to learn the tools, and occasionally a story will require more thought, more trial and error. The fact is that you may have been sold a bill of goods by a used story salesperson, the bill of goods being that writing stories is difficult. You will then assume that writing is hard work, odious work, work that is no fun. If you began with the sentiment that writing was fun, you will begin to feel more justified in shifting your attitude when friends and teachers and professionals ask you when you're going to write something serious.

4. Writers who are perpetually miserable are likely to write stories about persons, places, and events where misery is a salient feature. Ask yourself if there is some embarrassment about having fun while you work. Be sure to change your ways if you ever catch yourself singing in the shower.

5. Does it make you some kind of creep if you enjoy writing stories about characters who are feeling miserable?

6. Revision is, as noted previously, a structured investigation to determine if you are telling the story at the correct pace, in the correct point of view, and whether significant emotions are being raised and discoveries being made.

7. Revision is making decisions about which of several alternatives you find most interesting and illustrative of your dramatic goal.

8. Ending a story or novel means not sticking around trying to tack on arguments or footnotes or, for that matter, introducing a digression that will result in anticlimax.

9. Ending a story is analogous to not being the last guest to leave a party. It is better to leave early than stay too late.

10. When readers tell you they want more details about your characters, they are confessing their interest in the characters.

11. When you revise, you carefully check each line and word of dialog to make sure it carries its weight and does not become talky or conversational.

12. One sure way of knowing you've completed your revision is the realization that only you will recognize the new things you're putting in or taking out.