Report Blog Entry
dude how do start a story? ive written a book before but its mildly cringe worthy.
I hate the waking up start to a story, like
"my alarm went off waking me up from my peaceful sleep, I got up and started changing for school"
or the ones where they look in the mirror and they basically introduce themselves?
and... last thing... does planning a story actually help with the writing?
Comments
Displaying 4 of 4 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
Arius
I guess it depends... what's your story about?!?
I plan out my stories, but then I never finish writing them, lol, so I might not be the best person to ask. I honestly think it's best to just sit down and write write write. Those are the stories I've made the most progress on. Start wherever and as it takes shape, you'll probably get an intuitive sense of how it should start. Generally the story is going to start out with the character in their normal world, then a problem happens and they go on an adventure to solve it, they fail a couple times, then they try some hail mary thing and solve it. The End. So maybe you can think of what's a quintessential thing my character would be doing. Also I like opening lines that open up as many questions as possible. This immediately hooks people; they will keep reading to find out the answer to literally any question no matter how dumb it is. Example:
It wasn't supposed to end like this. (Now your reader is thinking "What wasn't supposed to end like HOW?!?")
Or
If Danielle had known this would be xer last time seeing Otto alive, xe would have done things differently. ("What the f is going to happen to Otto? What would Danielle have done differently?")
But can also be something mundane, if you want to ease into it, like
Geoffrey dabbed purple polish on his nails.
Anyway... what is your story about? I'd love to read your super cringe finished thing. I'm impressed you finished something. I have like 10 different partially written novels in my past and ISTG I'm going to die having never finished one.
kzxuv_
Planning helps plenty, much better to have a general idea of the plot than throwing things and hoping it sticks. Try writing in different perspectives to see what you’re more comfortable with too.
Kim Karnage
planning for sure helps! Also it's different for everyone but watching movies and listening to music can give you some ideas for starts. Also try experimenting with povs! My writing used to be like that until I switched to writing in the 3rd perspective, but whatever helps with you is the way to go!
simonide
planning will 100% make your story better in the long run. it gives you an outline for what you want to happen throughout the whole thing, which will make your writing feel a lot smoother and less forced and erratic.