Starting Right

It’s been a while since I’ve written about how to start a novel but since I’m working with a new coaching client who is going through this right now, I thought it couldn’t hurt to share what I’m doing with her.

How you begin a novel very much depends on whether you’re a plotter (who plans out the whole book before they write a word) or a pantser (who writes by simply sitting down at a computer and writes with no knowledge of where their story is going to go — as Stephen King says, you write until you get to the end).

Beginning a book for a pantser is easy. You have an idea — sometimes called a Kernal idea — about a person (the protagonist) and a problem or a “what if.” You sit down and write. That’s it. You write a sentence, which turns into a paragraph, which becomes a scene. You decide on what the consequences of that scene is, and go on from there. The key is not to write the next scene as a “and then” something else happened but the following scene is “because of” what happened in the previous.

For a plotter, on the other hand, there is a lot of work that goes into your book before you even begin Chapter 1. There are characters to develop, a world and its rules to build, and a story to plot out.

I always start with the characters — what do they want (externally) and what do they need (internally). How are they going to grow and change…