[00:13] Emily: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:19] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:21] Rachel: And today we want to talk about starting your story. Where to start it. So this episode comes from a question we got from a listener. I'm going to read the question after you've already made your character backgrounds and major plot points, how do you know where to start your story? Is there such a thing as starting the story too early or too late? This question came from Amber. So I love this question. Before we dive into it, I want to say if you have a question like Amber's or any other craft or process or writing mindset questions, please email them to us. You can email your questions at [email protected] and put podcast question in the subject line. That's exactly what Amber did. And now we're tackling her question today. So love this question. Where do we start? Where do we start talking about where to start your story?
[01:20] Emily: Well, I think I'm just now in rereading her question. I love that the end part of is there such a thing as starting your story too early or too late? And I think yes and no, right? If you think about it, if you think about the experience of reading a story, if the story starts too early, it's going to feel a certain way, right. And if the story starts too late, it's going to feel a certain way. And that's because we need enough context. We need enough context to understand why your character is going to do what they're going to do in the face of the plot's major problems. But you also don't want too much context because you don't want it to drag on to the point where you're like, okay, what is the story about? And so really great question, Amber, and we're really excited to dive into it today. So, Amber, you're saying that you have your major plot points, which is huge. And so that probably means that you have an understanding of what your story is about, what the main plot problems are facing your characters, which is amazing. And so when I start to think about this question, I always start from what we call the catalyst, which is just that scene in your story when the plot problem comes onto the page in a huge way and upends your character's whole life. So, for instance, in The Hunger Games, it's Katniss's sister being picked for the reaping and Katniss doll and tearing in her place. And so it's basically what your story is about is what your character is going to do in the face of this massive plot problem. So what I generally will start from is that moment. So if you know what your story is about and you know when that plot problem starts, that is your catalystine, and you can't start there because we need to understand who your character is enough to understand why they're going to react to that problem the way that they do. And so you're going to want to go from that scene backwards, a couple of scenes, just enough scenes to establish what your character wants, why they want it, and what they believe and why they believe it. And once you've established those things on the page, like, in just as many scenes as you need to establish that, then that plot problem will have major gut impact because we'll understand why it's an important plot problem for that person.
[03:51] Rachel: Yeah. And this can be tough conceptually if you think in linear terms. So for me, when I hear start at the Catalyst and work backwards, it brings up a little bit of like, but I don't know how I get to the Catalyst yet because I haven't done that linear work. That's okay, because when we're thinking of how do we plan the beginning of our story by using the events of the Catalyst, we're not necessarily asking you to go backwards sequentially, to go backwards fully chronologically. So what I mean by that is, like, if you have your Catalyst plot event happens on day three, we're not necessarily asking you to go back through the 72 hours prior to that and give us a full sequential event happening leading up to that Catalyst. But we do want you to think about and consider these questions of, okay, if this thing happens in the Catalyst, beat, it's. The thing that upends my character's life, it's the thing that kicks off this story's plot problem, and it's the thing that changes my character's life so that they cannot go back to the way they were before. How do I show them the before? What is the before for this character? The before are those questions Emily was asking. What do they want? Okay, how could I show a scene that shows what they want? Why do they want it? Okay, if they're looking for something in this scene, why how am I going to show why they want this thing? And then what they believe that's going back to those internal obstacle beliefs that we've talked about on the podcast multiple times, and then why they believe it, how did that belief happen? So you could do this in three scenes. You could do this in one scene. There's no right answer to how long that takes, but that is the place where you start your story, is introducing those four things in a way that's going to lead into this massive thing that changes your character's life, that they can't go back to the before. So show us that before and why it matters to this character. Because when we feel that Catalyst plot event, we will then understand how this is changing their life.
[06:10] Emily: Yeah. And I think this is a tool that's I mean, all tools are applicable at any stage of the process, but this is a tool that can be really effective in revisions, because there is something that is really useful and powerful about writing too much before and exploring your character too much before, and sometimes that can bleed into backstory. I have a one on one client who just discovered that her last backstory scenes that we wrote together are actually her book's. First opening scene happened to me before, and that's really common because you're kind of discovering your character's life up until the story is about to start, and then you figure out, oh, this is the plot problem of the story, and you've already written the scenes before that that establish what they want and why they want it. And so if you are struggling with this question and you're on your first draft, there will be some useful information in this podcast. But I also don't want you to feel like you have to. Choosing where to start your draft is like the end all, be all of the success of your story. You can play around, and you will probably play around with those opening scenes and exactly where you want to start your story with every draft. And so don't have that pressure of, like, I have to start it in the exact right place. Pick a place that feels right after listening to this episode and just go with it. And if it ends up being too soon, that's fine. You've gathered important information about your character's life that you had to explore to get where you got.
[07:43] Rachel: Yeah, I like to ask this question. Okay, if we're thinking of page one and the scene that happens in that very first page, what about this day for this character is going to be different than the day before? What about this day is so special that we would open the story here? That question can start to get your brain flowing because we do want to show what their life looks like, but we're also choosing a specific snapshot of their life as the very first scene. We don't start our stories the day that our characters are born. I think everybody knows that. But we start them on a day where things start to change, or we start to get a hint of how their life is going to change in the Catalyst, or we see something that's like, okay, I woke up today and then I got transported to another world. That is, okay, well, I'm not going to show the day before where she just went to work. I'm going to show the day where she gets transported to another world. So what's new about this day? What's difficult or interesting? It doesn't necessarily need to be like this day particularly their life falls apart because we might be aiming for that in the Catalyst. But there is something a little different about this day that can show us those things about the characters or that you can use to start weaving in. What plot problem is going to we've I know you and I, Emily, have talked about this multiple times. I can't remember if we've said it on the podcast before, but seriously, do not overthink where to start your story because that's usually the last place that you work in revisions. People think that revisions writing is very linear, chronological. Revisions are very linear and chronological. And maybe the last scene that you work on before you count a book is finished is like the very last scene. Not in my experience. It's like one of the first couple of scenes because usually you don't know exactly where to start the story until you have written the end of it. So if you are in revisions or if you are just starting out a draft, or if you're in the middle of the draft and you just don't love that beginning scene, don't worry about it, don't overthink it, because you will probably spend a lot of time asking that question once you know how the story ends. And that can give you much better insights into who your character needs to be to start the story.
[10:16] Emily: Yeah, absolutely. There's something that's just, like, I think inherently built into the process of the further you get in a draft, the more clarity you get. So if you write linearly and that you might not be somebody who writes linearly, some people that's, okay, write out of order, and that might be a slightly different experience. But when we write or draft or revise linearly, we generally get more clarity the further we get in the story, which means that the beginning is always the least clear. Yes. I'm doing my fourth major draft right now, and I just had to rip apart my Act One. And I don't think I'm really going to do much to the second half of my story, but I'm completely ripped apart Act One, and I'm mostly ripping apart the second quarter of the story, and then it gets clearer as I go, and there's less that I'll need to do, but that's really common. I have another client who's going through that same exact process right now. And so yeah, don't stress about the beginning. It's a really good point. If we've said it before, we'll say it again.
[11:23] Rachel: We'll say it again, we'll say it again. This is a cyclical process, and it doesn't matter. Wherever you are right now, you do not need the answers right now. You can lay something out on the page and see how it works and then decide whether or not you want to change it or tweak it, or maybe you do. Give yourself the challenge. Okay, I know my catalyst happens five scenes into my story. What would happen if I only wrote one opening scene before the Catalyst? What would a scene like that look like? And then on the flip side, if your catalyst happens one scene into the.
[11:55] Emily: Story, two scenes into the story.
[11:56] Rachel: You could ask yourself the flip side, what would it be like if I had two set up scenes? If I had two scenes before The Catalyst, what would I show there and how would I show it? That can also help you get your brain going of like, what are the possibilities that might be a good opening for my story, that are going to get readers hooked, that are going to feel like they establish who this character is and what they care about and why before we completely blow up their life. In the Catalyst beat.
[12:24] Emily: Yeah. And you can test the effectiveness of it right. With these questions of, am I establishing what they want? Am I establishing why they want it? And am I establishing what they believe? If I've done that in a scene right, do you need anymore? And you might say, yes, I do, because it's not clear why they're doing anything. So you add another scene, right. Or you might have five scenes and say, oh, I'm repeating myself, basically by establishing the same things in a couple of different scenes. I could condense this or I could speed it up. So, yeah, it's a question of effectiveness. We want to know who your character is before that plot problem upends their life. And so there's a lot of different ways you can do that a lot. Use that as your brainstorming guidepost.
[13:09] Rachel: Yeah. I am in revisions now, and I probably am not going to change the events of my opening scene, but because I already did that where when I first started this story about a year and a half ago, it's a portal fantasy. So what that means is that your character starts on Earth usually and then gets portaled to another world, and that's where the fantasy story happens. So in the first version of my story, I opened my book with my character having already been in that world for about six months.
[13:51] Emily: Oh, wow.
[13:51] Rachel: Yeah. And so she was part of the world. She still missed her old world, which is Earth, but I was showing her as how much she kind of is trying to get back home. And then we were leading towards a Catalyst moment after that, and my writing group read it and I worked on it for a while, and just something felt really off about it as like, it doesn't feel as exciting as it really should. It doesn't feel, like as engaging as I really want it to. And I don't think that it's really giving my character enough time to shine. So one of the people in my writing group was like, why don't you just start the story on the day she gets portaled? And I was like, Duh. I wanted to show her life being unhappy and how hard she's trying to get home, but it was a much stronger opening to show the day that she got portled. So I changed my opening image to that day because that's the way that her life was different. That's the thing that really upended her life and changed her life was being portaled. So I reworked that beginning and it's a lot stronger now and I'm still going to tweak some things. But the reason that I started it that day was because I was much more able to show her goals on Earth, which is why she needed to get back to Earth and then also how she was going to process being Portal to another world.
[15:28] Emily: Yeah, I love that. And I think that goes back to a question that we got in Tanisha's writing recently about feeling like you have two inciting incidents. Because in that case, I'm assuming, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the portaling is not the Catalyst of the story.
[15:46] Rachel: That's correct. Not in the structure that I planned. It's a romance. So this is the meet cute where she gets portaled to meet the male main character. But I also think that depending on your POVs and how you lay the story out, if you have two POVs, they may have two different Catalyst moments. Yeah. So, like, portaling is my female main character's Catalyst? It could be there's another Catalyst moment that she's involved in, but is my male main character's Catalyst. And that's like the one that kicks off, really, the major conflict that they're about to go fight. Yeah.
[16:30] Emily: Got you. If you've had that question before feeling like you have multiple plot things happening, it's usually because something interesting happens on the first day of your story. Right. And then the plot problem kicks in in a massive major way. And so when the plot problem upends your character's life and sends them in a direction and they have to act and they have to put a plan into motion, that's your story's Catalyst. But that doesn't mean that something interesting can't happen before.
[17:02] Rachel: Exactly.
[17:04] Emily: So let's talk about this trick of using the question, what about this day is different? I know we touched on it before, but let's kind of come back to that because we have some examples.
[17:13] Rachel: Yeah. So what about this day is different? Why this day? I love the opening scene of Pride and Prejudice as an example because the book opens with an argument between Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Bennet where they are arguing about marrying their daughters off. A rich man has come to town. Mrs. Bingley is like, you have to introduce us to the rich man so that he can marry one of our daughters. And Mr. Bingley is basically like, leave me alone. I don't want to. Don't worry about funny. They're a funny married couple, but they have this argument and it sets us up for the conflicts that are going to happen in this scene. Like the major themes of these daughters are trying to be married off and Elizabeth Lizzie is one of them. And it also sets us up with kind of like Elizabeth's take on the ridiculousness of this conversation of like, a rich man has come to town, we must go meet him, so he must marry one of us. And you get a sense of kind of economically how important marriage is and would be to the Bennett family. But also, this is not necessarily something that Lizzie wants.
[18:39] Emily: Yeah.
[18:40] Rachel: Why do we start it with that argument versus when we learn Bingley arrived a week ago and Mr. Bennett has already met? Like, why don't we start it there? Why didn't we start the story like, Mr. Bingley already met or Mr. Bennett already met Mr. Bingley, like a week ago?
[19:00] Emily: Yeah, well, it's an interesting question because it's like, well, why didn't we show Mr. Bingley coming to town? And why didn't we show everybody's reactions when he got there? And the answer is that that's not the catalyst of the story. Yeah. The catalyst of the story is Lizzie meeting Mr. Darcy.
[19:16] Rachel: Right.
[19:16] Emily: And so if we back up to the first day that things started to change after starts, then we realize the Bingley stuff, bingley arriving into town is something that has changed things. But it's her family, it's her mother having a conversation with her father, initiating this kind of path of pursuing marriage for their daughters that actually kicks off the story that gives meaning really to her meeting Mr. Darcy at the Catalyst. And so we don't need anything more than that. We learn that Bingley's in town, we learn why it's important. We learn how her parents feel about it and their differing views about it, and we learn how Lizzie feels about it. And that's all we need to know to really understand why she's going to react the way she does at that Catalyst moment.
[20:09] Rachel: Yeah. And that conversation is very pointed and important, but it also gives us the direct connection to the ball where everybody meets Mr. Bingley because Mr. Bennett is like, oh, I think he's going to be at the ball. So then everyone's like, oh, we got to go to the.
[20:28] Emily: Catalyst.
[20:29] Rachel: That's the catalyst. So it's a very tight like, this conversation sets up everything that's about to happen and it directly leads into where we reach the Catalyst beat, where we reach that moment where Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth meet for the first time. Yeah.
[20:48] Emily: And you could argue that you could back up further and show Mr. Bingley or not Mr. Bingley, mr. Bennett learning that Mr. Bingley is having a ball.
[20:56] Rachel: Right.
[20:56] Emily: And that could be the opening image, but we don't need like yes, it would establish those same things, but then you'd have repetition with reestablishing that with this argument, and so you just don't need it.
[21:07] Rachel: Yeah, and I think that do I need this question is a revisions question. It's not a drafting question. Unless you feel very strongly one way or the other as you are drafting. I personally don't ask myself, do I need this? I put it on the page or I don't. And then when I get to revisions, I look at, do I need this scene? Or do I need something more? And as an aside, I need a lot more in my current draft, which is helpful, though, because I was very worried about adding too much. And then I wrote the beats that I have planned, and I could very clearly see what I was missing after I had written it. So ask this question, do I need this after the fact? That's where I ask it.
[21:55] Emily: I mean, I'm the opposite. Not the opposite in that sense, but I'm the kind of person who writes I think I cut, like, fifty k of my character's childhood because I was like, oh, I don't need this. But I still had to explore it. So, yes, 100%, that's a revisions question. But yeah, love it.
[22:16] Rachel: Yeah. Okay, now for The Hunger Games example, we kind of already touched on this, where The Hunger Games opens the day of the reaping. And the first scene is really Katniss's morning routine she's going through, how she wakes up, how she goes to hunt for food, how she takes care of and protects Prim. We have a lot of different pieces of this scene where she's going about her day. And you might ask, okay, but what's different about this day? Well, this day is the reaping. This day is the day where they pick who's going to be in The Hunger Games. And so on top of the regular morning routine that we get, which is Katniss's everyday morning routine, we get the layer of the pressure of the reaping. Everyone's a little bit different.
[23:04] Emily: First reaping, it's her sister's first reaping, which is really powerful because this is a big day for Katniss. She has spent her whole life protecting her sister, and this is a day in which protecting Prim is kind of out of her control and feels out of her control. So I love that example because just like you said, it feels like she's just going about her day, but the day is different. But it's also not really Katniss just going about her day. Katniss going about her day is very intentionally shaped like the way Katniss goes about her day is shaped around her internal goals and her internal obstacle belief. So Katniss's whole driving purpose in life is to protect her family because she believes that their survival is really the only reasonable thing she can try to achieve in her lifetime. And so that desire to protect her family and that belief that it's her responsibility and the only thing she can really be good at, shows up in her actions. We see her hunting for food for Prim. We see her basically bringing Prim, her sister, and her mother to a certain extent, food, comfort, and hope. She's trying to keep her healthy and hopeful in the face of this day in which neither of them have any control. And that's a plan. It's a specific plan of how Katniss is going about her daily routine in order to achieve what she wants deep inside and in line with the flawed beliefs that are going to lead her through the rest of the story, down the wrong path. And so when we're looking at those opening pages and again, revisions question here, this is a revisions topic, and if it's good inspiration for your drafting, go ahead and love it, but don't let it hold you back. But you're looking at both what's different about this day and also how can I give my character a very specific plan of action that's going to show what they want and what they believe.
[25:26] Rachel: Yeah, and then when you do that, when you do those two things, that's how the Catalyst changes their life. Because the Catalyst presents the upend that means they can't keep doing their life the exact same way. And that's how we feel. Why the Catalyst is so important, because we've already taken the time to show what they want. Okay, well, the Catalyst means they can't do that same thing anymore. They have to do something different and then why they want it. When the Catalyst happens, we're like, okay, now I understand why they would fight so hard to get what they want.
[26:04] Emily: Awesome.
[26:05] Rachel: So as a little recap in those opening scenes, establish that character's goals, and especially their internal goals, why they want the thing that they want, and then layer on top of those things their internal obstacle belief. What do they believe about the world right now and why do they believe that thing? We've done episodes on these things before. So episode seven is WTF's Agency, and that one talks about goals, internal and external goals. Episode 20 is internal characters give internal goals give characters dimension. And that one's all about internal goals. And then episode three is about the internal obstacle. It's about a character's flawed belief and how it influences their life. That one's called Flawed people are more interesting. So go listen to those. If you're feeling like, I probably need to refresher revisit what it is my character wants or what are their flaws that are influencing their worldview, we'll put.
[27:15] Emily: Those in the show notes for you if you're driving or can't otherwise write down exactly the episode numbers.
[27:22] Rachel: Yes, speaking of show notes, we also have a blog about this.
[27:26] Emily: Yes, we do.
[27:28] Rachel: We'll put the link, the blog link in the show notes as well. It's called start your story strong. And it's all about making sure that Catalyst moment is where you want it to be, that it's hitting the notes that it should hit, and really kicking off your story in a powerful and engaging way.
[27:48] Emily: Cool. Well, thank you so much, Amber. That was a really good question. And if anybody else wants to submit questions to us, send them to [email protected]. We'll also have that in the Show notes for you, and we would love to do an episode about your question.
[28:05] Rachel: Yay. Awesome. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
[28:11] Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[28:18] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[28:28] Emily: Link in the show notes.
[28:29] Rachel: We'll see you there. Bye.
