How To Start A Story The Stephen King Way

Carrying on from my last post, (Chaper One: 11/22/63), I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s really important in those first few pages of a novel.

If you didn’t have to worry about what agents and publishers think are the vital elements to a first chapter (and let’s face it, more and more of us are finding other ways to get stories out there), what is it a reader is looking for?

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Chapter One: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Usually I use my Chapter One series to look at the opening of stories by debut novelists, with a view to working out how they caught the interest of readers who had never heard of them. This time I thought I would look at a big name author and use his most recent best-seller.

It’s all well and good impressing a readership who already have a good idea of what kind of story/writer they’re dealing with, but when you’re the new kid on the block you need to win people over, and the first chapter is where the battle is fought. Or so the conventional wisdom says. What I discovered with this book was quite eye-opening.

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Monotone Writing Is Monotonous Writing

Monotonous means boring, so as long as you have interesting stuff going on in your scene it won’t be monotonous, right?

But that’s not what monotonous means. It’s boredom brought on by repetition or lack of variety. Monotone. So even a scene that in itself is fairly interesting, when put in an environment of similar scenes, not only loses its impact, it actually becomes a negative force.

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Writers Show Things Worth Showing

The job of a writer is not to describe a story the way you would describe an object to a blind person. If the main character is wearing a blue cardigan and you describe the blue cardigan so the reader now knows exactly what kind of blue cardigan it is, so what? What difference does that make?

The task is not to make sure the reader can see what happens in the story, it’s to make sure they can understand what happens in the story.

To some degree, in order to understand what’s going on you have to be able to see it, but not all things you see add to your unerstandung. Too much description will become overwhelming and be blinding rather than illuminating.

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A Near-Miss Is Not A Story

One of the main tenets of drama is conflict. In real life getting what you want without fuss or bother is seen as a win. In fiction, it’s a loss (for the reader).

A common approach in stories by aspiring writers is the near-miss. This is where a character is faced by a problem, one that they know is coming, so they take steps to be ready for it. The build-up is all there. And then the problem disappears. Either they were mistaken, or they weren’t discovered, or a distraction pulled the bad guys away.  Something enables the character to avoid conflict. 

Whatever the reason for doing this, the effect on the reader is pretty much always the same: disappointment.

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You Don't Put The Punchline First

 A joke consists of two parts: the set up and the punchline.

However, one part is all flash and laughs and attention grabbing, and the other does the more mundane, ordinary stuff.  So, if you want to grab the audience by the throat straight away, show them you mean business, you should start with the punchline, right?

Nonsensical as that is, it’s pretty much the standard advice most aspiring writers get. And it’s just as wrong in fiction as it is in joke-telling.

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Readers Love A Surprise

This isn’t about the big twist ending or amazing revelations (Wait, she’s a guy!), although people love those too. This is about keeping the reader from finding a story predictable and obvious.

Any story where characters do unexpected things, solve a problem in a way you never would have guessed, or make decisions that solve the unsolvable, will hook the reader. But at the same time they will lose interest if things get too random or unlikely.

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No Drama

At the heart of any dramatic story is someone who want something.

Makes no difference if it’s  a big action thriller, or a slice of life literary piece, somebody somewhere needs to be jonesing for what they haven’t got.

The actual thing they want doesn’t have to be of a particular size or type, but generally speaking, the more they want it, the better.

But wanting isn’t enough. You have to take into account why they want it, and what they’re prepared to do about it.

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Condition Of Your Transition

The simplest kind of story is where the goal of the main character is clear and all-encompassing. He has nothing else to distract him, at least not for very long. It’s all about the thing. 

This kind of story is usually a genre piece, a crime, a romance, a mystery, something like that is driving the MC, and their emotional state is pretty easy to work out.

However, not all stories are that single-minded. Often a character will switch moods, or have more than one thing to deal with. And when they switch, whether because of time passing, or having to deal with different people, the writer has to transition the reader from one mind-set to another.

This is a good thing, even the most engaging stories can become monotonous if there’s no variation in tone. But if you just go from one emotional state to another without due care, it can be very jarring for the reader.

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Story Arranging

A story is just a matter of revealing information to someone who doesn’t have that information. What can make the difference between a good story and a not so good one, is the order in which you reveal that information.

A bunch of information on the page will, by definition, be informative. But nobody wants to read an informative story, unless it’s in a newspaper. What people want from fiction is to read something that’s dramatic. 

That doesn’t mean you need to fill it with D-RAMA! It means you have to have an understanding of what turns information about events and characters into an engaging and arresting situation.

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