forum How to, uhhhh...start?

Started January 04, 2018 by @Athantos

tune

I always have problems with starting my books, I'm never happy with how I start them, I always end up rereading the start and hating it more and more, then changing it and preferring the original. Usually this cycle ends with me not writing for a considerable amount of time and just abandoning the project altogether.

I started just writing random scenes I thought of instead of writing chronologically, but I've exhausted the scenes I have in my head and now need to start from the beginning.

The story I'm working on is one that I've been working on for several years and it's undergone many major changes, it's graduated from "fluffy YA werewolf romance" to "werewolf murder mystery". The plot has changed, the main characters have changed, and the type of werewolf has changed.

The setting is a small mountain town in Colorado, the main character is a seventeen year old girl named Avery Johnson. Basically, people are being brutally murdered with their hearts missing when their bodies are found. The police rule the first death as an animal attack, but after another body is found killed in the same fashion, they begin thinking it's homicide.

I've started it third person omniscient to describe the first murder and then narrow it to third person limited (Avery's pov), I've started it with Avery's daily routine and she finds out about the murder at school, I've started it with Avery finding out because she's called in for questioning, I've started it with Avery stumbling upon the body herself.

I don't know which of these fits the book best. The plot, very generally, is that people be dying and Avery wants to know who be doing the killing, she conducts her own investigation, finds out its a big toothy boy, tries to tell sheriff, sheriff says nah, so she gotta kill it herself. That's it, that's the book.

Okay, so said you wrote down all the scenes you had in your head and then you were left without ideas, right? So maybe you should plan all the events that happen in the story before you start writing. Just like drawing: you can't start painting without having all the details made in the sketch first. This will make it (for me, at least, this works) kinda easier, without leaving a lot of things to improvisation,a method which may sound good and useful when you know exactly what you are writing, but it's hell when the concept is vague.
Also for the begging: a way I use to start writing is writing a phrase (or paragraph) that will leave the reader wanting to know more. Think like the start of a movie or a song, if it caught your attention at first you're probably going to like it. If you are confused about what i'm talking about, look at the beginnings of bestsellers, blockbuster movies, video-games…you will see that most of them they are catchy and intriguing.
Hope this helps! Keep it up with your story, seems good so far!

it's been said before but try to start as close to the action as possible, and start with a an attention-grabbing sentence. my first two novels came together pretty smoothly, but i struggled with starting the third one and eventually settled for the theme i had introduced in the first two (beginning with a sentence about the weather (snow, rain, and fog in the three novels respectively). though i did like one of the original sentences i had for the third novel ("when farmers cause a commotion, they tend to bring a smell with them"). maybe it might help to write a prologue (from the werewolf's/victim's point of view) before diving into avery's pov.

Big toothy boy. Best description ever. I'd probably walk backwards from the first scene you like. What happened before that scene? Do you need to describe it? Can it be inferred by the reader? Remember, you don't have to walk through every single step with your reader, and given what you're writing I'm thinking a bit of mystery as to how this started might help. Just think about what you'd want to know before your first likable scene.

Thanks for the advice guys, I'm going to apply it to my first chapter and once I have an idea or two, I'll put a link here if you guys are interested!