How and When to Start a Story

Have you seen or read Hamlet? There have been many, many versions of it over the last 400 years.

No?

How about Baahubali?

No?

How about The Lion King?

There is a strong possibility that you have seen one of the above three stories.

If you have seen all of them, then you will know that they are all the same story, i.e., The Lion King and Baahubali are adaptations of the Hamlet story. What is the Hamlet story? Quick version? A King’s brother kills the King so he can be King, and then the King’s son (the Prince) avenges his father’s death.

All three stories, while the same story, start quite different from each other.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the King is already dead and the Prince is a grown up who returns to the Kingdom when his father dies.

In The Lion King, the movie starts with the birth of the Prince (Simba), then shows us how the King dies, and then Simba grows up etc etc.

In Baahubali, the movie starts with the grown up Prince having no idea he is a Prince, and slowly discover a much larger story about his father and his uncle over two films.

Baahubali is the most twisted version. It starts off with us knowing as little of the story as possible, so that we get to see all the storytelling and twists and turns at the same time as the protagonist.

All three stories open differently because of one person’s journey: yours.

Yes, you, the audience, need to be told a story. You like being told stories, but you’ve seen or read or heard many, many stories. So how that story is told to you, and how that story starts, and even more importantly - when that story starts… becomes quite integral to the story’s purpose and whether it deserves your attention.

Fans… I mean listeners!... of my podcast Storytalking with Lakshya know that I’m in the middle of putting together a story right now called Dual Stories (working title!). The last I spoke of it was on episode #72 (Dual Stories: The Vulnerability of Immortality). During that episode I briefly mentioned that it is very important for me to know how a story starts in order for me to dive deep into the writing process. So for this week’s guide, as I have begun to worry about how my Dual Stories will start, I figured I’d use this written medium to talk to you about how I think you should start a story. I’m going to give you a few thinking points and styles, along with examples from my story or popular stories that you may have seen or read.

How do you feel about the phrase ‘start from the beginning’?

However you feel, we’re going to start with that one first, just for namesake.

“From The Beginning”

Simply put, this is your safest and most ideal choice. Especially when you’re very early into the writing process. When do you want to start the story? From the beginning! Duh! Right?

Well, mostly.

See, the thing is, depending on your story’s genre, and the ‘rules’ of the world where the story exists, there can be multiple, possibly even infinite ‘beginnings’ to start from.

Let’s say you want to tell the story of a singer, from rags to riches. Do you open the story from the moment that person is born? Or from when they start to sing? Or from someplace in between?

Let’s take the example of the Lord of the Rings. Book and/or movie. Even though we know that the story of the “Ring” is really, really long, since it’s existed for thousands of years, the actual story of the book and the movie starts with how the ring ends up with Frodo, the hobbit who will be responsible for its destruction.

The Lion King doesn’t start with the King already dead, because it wants you to see Simba grow up with his father, and it wants you to see Simba feel the pain and guilt of believing that his father died because of him.

Look, in order for you to be able to tell a good story, you need to know everything. And in order to know everything, you need to start from the beginning.

So the next time you start working on a story idea, don’t worry to much about where to start the thinking from - always think linearly when it comes to your story’s timeline in your head. Once you know what happens and in what order it happens, then you can find a “beginning” that suits your story’s purpose.

How will you know when that is? That’s what the next couple sections deal with.

“From The Moment Of Change”

My favorite book of all time is Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (I think every person should read that story before they turn 20). It opens with a simple action: the entire planet Earth being blown up, and our protagonist, being the sole human survivor, hitchhiking his way across the galaxy, without having any clue about pretty much anything.

I call a beginning like that the ‘moment of change’. It starts from the moment that things will be changing for both the audience and the main character (who is technically your proxy on this storytelling journey).

So let’s say you want to tell the story of a singer. Instead of starting from that person’s birth, or even the first time they sang (which was probably very young) - try starting from the moment things “changed” for that person. From that one day that was was unlike any other before it. Or, let’s say you’re writing a science fiction story. Instead of starting with “these are the rules of this fictional universe” (which to be honest, I find to be quite boring), imagine that you’re a writer who lives in this fictional universe, and so does your audience. That way you can skip the parts where you have to explain everything to your reader (which takes them out of the story’s experience), and then just let the characters and plot reveal the rules of the fictional universe.

In January 2015 I wrote and published a story called One More Night With Isabel. The story opens with a guy showing up at his ex-girlfriend’s house, and then they talk about their past. The story has a twist ending, but I didn’t know that ending until I was halfway through the story. So when I started it, all I really wanted to show was how this night was going to be different for both these characters.

“From The Character”

Many, many times, stories start in my brain without any plot. Actually, most of my stories start plot-less (and even end plot-less). Why? Because I find the concept of plot to be quite… mechanical. Even unnatural. Life doesn’t really have a set plot, so why should my stories?

But one thing that almost every story, once I know what it’s about, has to have in the beginning is an interesting character. If I can create a personality, I know I can figure out an interesting story to put that person in.

Basically, I let my characters show me what the story is about, and then I create a starting point to trigger their journeys.

For example, my story The Wandering Lover, started from the idea of writing a story about a wandering lover. Then I created the character of Prem. Then I created Yamini to be a person who is quite opposite to him in all imaginable ways. And once I knew my characters, I figured out a beginning scene that would draw the audience into the story quickly.

“From The Moment Of Curiosity”

A few months after I published the Isabel story I mentioned earlier, I was sitting in a hotel room’s balcony, by myself, just as it started to rain. And in that moment a four word sentence hit me.

I Want A Divorce.

Don’t worry, no one said that to me in real life. It was just a thought. So I started thinking - what if a husband and a wife were on vacation, and it was raining, and they were fighting, and at one point into the fight, one of them says “I want a divorce.” What will the next 10 minutes of that conversation be?

So when it came to figuring out where the story would start from, I knew exactly what that point in the fight it would be. Those four words.

If you read the story, you’ll see that the story doesn’t really end as bad as it begins. In fact, I tried to show that this conversation wasn’t that serious or dire. It was just a fight, something this couple has probably had hundreds of after over a decade of being married to each other.

The plot didn’t matter to me, so I didn’t let it direct my story or how it started.

That curiosity to know what happens when something is said or something ‘new’ happens, that’s where a lot of my stories come from.

I did another one, in 2016 I think, called I Don’t Want To Sleep With You. That one happened more as a self-dare. I dared myself to write a story where a guy walks up to a girl at a bar and says that.

If you read that story, you’ll see that it too has a twist ending.

That’s the thing about being a good opening - it doesn’t have to do much with your ending or your actual purpose of telling that story.

It just has to draw you in, and it has to make logical sense. Beyond that, I’d say you’re welcome to do whatever you want to get your audience’s attention.

One more thing.

What you like or love about a scene or a dialogue or moment in your story - that you think truly deserves to be the opening of the story - may not be the best way for that story to begin.

Why? Because just because you love it, doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way that works better with the story.

Don’t start from the moment you care about.

Start from the one where you want me (your audience) to care about.

How you start the story, and when in your grand-er story’s timeline that moment exists, are two of the biggest decisions you will make during your writing process.

Sometimes, you’ll know that moment from the beginning, literally. But most of the time, it’ll come to you during the exploration or even the writing process.

Once you know your story well enough, and you become so connected to your characters that you can think like them, your story’s starting moment will find it’s way to you.

Just let it happen.

And when in doubt, just have one character say something unexpected to another character. That’s always worked for me.

Just remember, it doesn’t just have to be unexpected to the other character. It has to be unexpected for audience too.

Happy writing to you.