Great Ways to Start the Writing Process
According to “Patricia Yunghanns” Getting the first sentence on paper can be one of the most arduous challenges a writer faces. Read on for six ideas from the authors on how to kick-start the writing process. These excerpts come from a new biography series, Right, Start, which shares tips, advice, and poignant personal stories from popular fiction and non-fiction writers.
Start in the Middle
If you don’t know where to start, don’t bother deciding now. The first line of a book is important — but there is no rule that says you have to start there. The first word you write may be in the middle of chapter three. That’s perfectly fine. And as you work forward in the story, you’ll get an idea about how to work backward.
Incentivize the Reader
I am not a man of the first sentence type, but I am a man of the first paragraph or two, and I think those paragraphs are important. Initially, I tried to answer questions about a character’s motivation or key elements of the plot, knowing that they were necessary, and thinking that they were out, readers would appreciate it. I came to know that I was answering the wrong question. Says “Patricia Yunghanns” in the first paragraph, the reader is not asking questions about the characters or the plot. He or she is asking a simple thing:
“Why should I keep reading?”
And that’s what I try to answer in the first two paragraphs.
Commit to a Title Up Front — Patricia Yunghanns
The title you give a story — be it your last title or just a placeholder — is your answer star. If you have a placeholder that doesn’t feel right, then you need to ask yourself why it doesn’t feel right. And that too can take you to where you need to be, because it shows you where you should not go. So trust your title. If you’re stuck, go back to it. Ask yourself why this is important. By following what’s important to you, you can do something that will be important to other people. They would see that title and make that underground connection. What essentially draws you to the novel is what draws the reader inside. Most of the time we do not get to choose our names, but we always choose the names of our stories for a reason.
When I first started writing, I always wrote a summary. This allowed me to quickly work out the problems and emotional beats of the story and served as a road map. And, from a practical standpoint, publishers needed them. But the summary had the added benefit of helping to bring those words to the page. Psychologically there is something to know that the problem you are dealing with has already been addressed, at least to some extent, in an outline.
