— Mark Paxson
A few weeks ago, I saw a few writers on the Tweeter express that the beginning of a story is always the hardest part for them. I thought that was interesting because the beginning is the easiest part for me. By far.
I’m a pantser, so I don’t have an outline. I just have an idea that I think may make for a good story. I typically don’t have any idea about anything beyond the idea.
For instance, a guy has a consensual one-night stand and is accused of sexual assault. That’s the idea, but as I started to write it, I had no idea how it would end, or how I would get to the end. Or, a clerk at a store catches somebody shop lifting and offers him a deal to avoid the consequences. Same thing, an idea, but I had no idea where it would take me. As I started writing that story, I didn’t even know what the deal was.
Part of this is because my stories frequently begin with prompts that I find on the various writing websites. Prompts that spark something in me and I just start writing. If the idea seems like a long story, I can typically churn out 10,000 – 25,000 words relatively easy.
The way I describe this is at the beginning, the world is wide open for me. I can go anywhere, do anything. I am exploring the idea as I write and that is a freeing experience for me.
But once I get to a certain point, I start to see the rest of the story. I start to ponder an ending, and everything just suddenly stops. Those first 25,000 words may take a month or two. The next 25,000 words may take years as I struggle with a couple of things.
First, if I’ve figured out the rest of the story, won’t the reader also. And if that’s the case, what’s the point. I become bored with the idea because I now know how it is going to end and I’ve figured out most of the in between points that will get me there. The exploration ends and the slog begins.
Second, and contradictory, is this … what if I get it wrong? The piece I’m working on now could have many endings. I’ve considered a lot of different things and landed on one that may be too much for some readers. But, to me, it fits the whole feel of the story … which is weird and quirky and full of things that don’t really make sense. So, an ending that matches that is an ending worth pursuing.
But again … what if I get it wrong?
Everything slows down at this point. Putting words down slows to a crawl. I can sit in front of my laptop for an afternoon and be fortunate to pull 200-300 words out of my head. And I really start to let the distractions distract me because anything is better than sitting there and noodling over every single paragraph, every single bit of dialogue, every everything.
This doesn’t always happen. A couple of years ago, I published a novella. A domestic thriller of about 30,000 words. For some reason, I was able to write the thing completely within a couple of months. There was no stalling, no delay, it just all came out in an orderly fashion.
Oh sure, there was one point at which I decided I wanted to change the voice and started to go through that process and then changed my mind after going through the first 1/3 of the book. But beyond that, that novella just flowed out of me.
As near as I can tell the reason for this is that the story was a surprise story. One that I never knew was in me until it just showed up one day. I never really took that story too seriously. Not in the sense that I didn’t want to do a good job on it, but it was a bit of a lark to write it.
Here’s another thing, the more I write, the more complicated my story ideas become. That domestic thriller novella — a really simple, basic story. My first novel, the same. But the piece I’m working on now (may be a novella, may just barely reach the 50,000 word mark to be a novel) is more complicated. It is somewhat dystopian, a bit bizarre, in some respects it kind of creates a whole different world, and there are elements to it that I just need to make sure are consistent and complete and carry through the entire thing.
So, here are my questions for you…
What’s the hardest part of a story for you? What’s the easiest? When it comes to those hard parts, are there any strategies you follow to get over the hump, to get past the difficulty and ease into the better parts of the story?
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