How to start a story: The Opening Chapter
Starting a story can be a daunting task for writers, and it's understandable why. Your opening chapter sets up your story and provides readers with a taste of the type of tone they should expect. The opening chapter is like your pitch to the reader trying to convince them that your story is worth reading til the end. When you write your first chapter you help the reader decide whether or not your story is worth investing in.
There isn't just one concrete way to start a story and so we shall be looking at different methods, post by post, so you can decide for yourselves which method works best for you based on your story and what you are trying to achieve. The reason why there isn't one concrete way to start a book is because there are many different genres, different creative styles and techniques and each story has a different intent.
Rick Riordan uses the same structure to open each new modern fantasy series he writes, but he masks this structure in a different creative technique.
Example: in his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, the protagonist speaks directly to the reader from a first person point of view and narrates his past adventures and expresses all he felt or still feels about certain things. In the Kane Chronicles the first person view is still given from the protagonist, however, the style of writing Riordan chooses makes it seem as if the protagonist of his story recounted his adventures on a tape recorder and mailed it to the author with instructions to write everything he hears as he hears it. This helped give his readers a fresh new style to enjoy as they started eaxh series and keep them interested in Riordan's stories even with the repeated structures.
Anthony Horowitz uses the same structure and creative style to open his Alex Rider series and his Power of 5 series, but each series opens with a different feel and tone from the other due to each series being a different genre.
Both authors have been massively successful with each mentioned series, further proving that there isn't just one way to open and write a story.
One way to start a story is the mini Three-Act Structure. In writing, the Three-Act Structure splits the story into 3 parts to deal with the story:
Act 1. The Introduction of the story's problem
Act 2. The rising action to the climactic confrontation of the problem (this is where the stakes get higher)
Act 3. The resolution to the problem following the climax
Some popular authors start stories with a minature version of this structure in order to make the first chapter a bit more exciting and make the protagonists look more proactive. The mini Three-Act Structure can also help make the first chapter more exciting for the publisher to read instead of you having to send them the much later exciting stories of your manuscript.
I came across the mini Three-Act Structure myself in the first chapter of the first book that made me decide to be an author: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
In the first chapter Harry and his cousin are attacked by Dementors (the problem), Harry fights the Dementors to defend his cousin (the confrontation) and the Dementors flee (the resolution).
A tone for the book has been set in this confrontation and I got to see how Harry responds to problems. I have also gotten a taste of the kind of problems Harry will be facing and the way he will primarily be facing them (with magic).
RWBY chapter 1 introduces (Act1) the problem of Roman Torchwick and his gangsters robbing a dust shop and trying to rob Ruby Rose (the protagonist), (Act2) Ruby and her future teacher fighting off Torchwick and his gang in the confrontation, and (Act3) one of the main antagonists helping Torchwick get away in the battle's conclusion and Ruby being enrolled in Beacon Academy for her skills and heroics.
This established (1) some of the threats Ruby would face, (2) introduced a futuristic fantasy world where powerful and skilled Huntsmen and Huntresses defended people using a long range of weapons and powers, (3) showed Ruby to be an active protagonist quick to defend people and eager to become a huntress herself, and (4) let us know that the protagonist would be in a school environment where combat and high tech weapons were normal.
This structure works best when the problems introduced come from the world you have set your story in (whether the problems are physical, mental or emotional) and it helps you naturally build your world. There is more showing through action and less telling through long exposition when you start a story with a mini Three-Act Structure. By introducing a problem you also show a bit more of your character's traits, principals and personalities. People often show their true colours in a crisis and so this structure can be used as the building blocks of your protagonist's character development.
This isn't the only way to start every story. The genre and intent of your story is important to how you should start it. We will be looking at more examples to start a story through more posts
