Young Writers Society

Man guys I have THE worst time trying to start a story, i have detailed chars, good plot laid out, but that first 1 or 2 sentences REALLY get to me.


Any advice? anyone else have this problem?


Thanks

All you need is a vague idea where to start and go from there. It doesn't matter if it's horrible, you'll fix it in the second draft. The important thing now is to just write.

You can begin with an interesting desciption or dialogue. Fast moving desciption is fun to read and gets the reader hooked so that they want to read more. I'm not exactly sure why people begin stories with dialogue but I've seen it done many times and have done it myself. Maybe you just want to start with a simple sentence like "The girl shivered as she walked up the hill." and elaborate from there.

As W said, this is only a first draft so don't get too worked up if you can't think of a good beginning.

Anyway, I hope I helped and PM me for anything.

-alwayswriter

I know exactly how you feel, I have the same problem.

But actually what I've started doing is just writing down the image I have in my head. Like with my current project, I had a particular scene in my head that I just had to write down. So I did, not even knowing exactly what was going on, or who the characters were, and I ended up leaving it alone for a couple of weeks, but I keep thinking about it. Fifty pages late I'm almost to that original scene and now I have more then I bargained for. I never thought that a story which is all so complicated in my head would form, and that it would come together so beautifully onto paper-or rather on Microsoft Word, but you get the picture.

Give it a try, you never know what might happen.

I have the same problem, and you know what I do? I don't worry about it. I write what I know I am ready to write. If I have ideas, I write them as they come. You can't force them. I have come to learn that doing so can help you develop new ideas. In choosing an end to a story, you might develop the beginning. Don't worry about it. I've written ten thousand words ( thats no exaggeration) before a beginning popped into my scattered brain.

It's typical go-with-the-flow-advice.

you can only work as fast as your mind will let you and as fast as your hands can type ( or write for you old-fashion folks out there.)


Shadow Box