Where to start?
I’m struggling with this right now, so I might as well consider my options.
Start with the inciting incident if your reader will be able to identify with the hero’s distress
If you have a spectacular inciting incident it may work well to begin with it. It has to be something that everyone understands—in Gone, I’m pretty sure all the adults disappear immediately. That works. We all understand that the adults are missing and we want to see where they went and how the kids will cope.
We can imagine what it would feel like to be eleven years old and to have your father go to jail, so The Year the Swallows Came Early works when it opens with the father in jail on the first page.
Start with an ordinary “day in the life” if you are in a strange world and need time to explain the inciting incident
If the inciting incident is something that we can’t understand—say…a galactic bantallager falls to earth one dark night, and a boy finds it and puts it in his pocket…. Who cares? What in the heck is a galactic bantallager? Why do we care that the boy has it in his pocket? There is no dread. There is no happy anticipation. We simply have no expectations since we don’t know what a galactic bantallager is.
The dwarfs don’t just show up and bang on Bilbo’s door. First we hear about hobbits, about their habits and their homes, and then we meet Bilbo, sitting on his porch smoking as he has done every other day for decades, and finally Gandalf shows up and sets things in motion.
Lucy doesn’t travel through the wardrobe on the first page. First we see the house and the professor and the housekeeper. We get to know the kids a bit so when Lucy goes through that wardrobe we believe it. She’s not making the whole thing up. We know that because we were with her all along the way and we discovered the wardrobe with her.
No matter where you start, you have to have conflict on the first page
I think, anyway. In Bilbo’s story you just know that something is going to happen to shake up his peaceful life. Same for those very ordinary Dursleys who live at number four Privet Lane. Harry doesn’t get his invitation to Hogwarts in the first chapter, but in meeting Mr. Dursley, we know he’s in for a bit of a stomach upset. Before Lucy goes through the wardrobe we see that the war is displacing the kids and their lives are about to turned upside down and this is affecting them all—particularly Edmund—by putting pressure on them in their everyday lives.
OK. What am I missing? How many ways are there to start a novel? And how many novels don’t follow the rules I’ve outlined above?
Great post.
I don’t know if there are other ways. You’ve explained these clearly and your examples are spot on. But how much time does an author take to show the day in the life of? Seems like all those stories you mentioned (the ones I’m familiar with at least) got to the inciting incident fairly quickly.
Becky
.-= Rebecca LuElla Miller´s last blog ..Writer’s Block Equals Writer’s Fear =-.
My guess is that you an author should take as much time as he needs to bring the reader to the place where he will understand the inciting incident, and not one minute more.
The story is about the trail that character travels after he’s come upon the inciting incident and taken up the call to adventure. So you want to get onto that trail—into that adventure—as soon as possible, I think.
And here I sit, having just pushed my inciting incident into chapter three! UGH.
.-= sally apokedak´s last blog ..Inciting Incidents =-.