In an article for Writer’s Digest, Abigail Owen shares four tips for writing great beginnings. They are:
- Start at the right place. “Starting too soon in the story you’re confusing the reader and not ground them,” Owen says. “Starting too late and you’re giving large info dumps and backstory.” The challenge here is to introduce the status quo without being boring. Show your MC in action and try to launch with something surprising or out of the ordinary.
- Connect to the main character. Readers want to like – or at least be intrigued by – your main character. Give her a compelling voice and complex motivation. Show his flaws and give the reader reason to empathize.
- Make the scene dynamic. Many openings focus on one element – action, dialogue, or exposition – while ignoring others. Instead, move between exposition, interiority, dialogue, and action. Avoid backstory in your opening scenes and ensure that every scene has more than one purpose, such as establishing character, plot, conflict, tone, theme, and setting. Try to have each scene explore at least three of those elements, if not more.
- Make the inciting incident hurt. The incident that pushes your MC out of the status quo should not merely be life-changing. It should hurt, Owen says. Make the development the worst possible thing that could happen to your protagonist. Have it challenge their future, security, and sense of self. Then make it worse.
