You’ve got a Blank Space, Baby by Mary Einfeldt

            You’ve always known you wanted to be a writer. You’ve scribbled down twiddles in notebooks and toyed with some bad poetry in your teens, but now it’s time to get serious and get the book that’s been floating around in your subconscious down on paper. Maybe it’s National Novel Writing Month and this is finally the excuse you’ve been looking for to get started. So you open your computer and stare at a Big. Blank. Screen. Now what?

            If you’re a smart writer, you’ve read enough books to know that the first page, the first sentence, is crucial. If the first page is brilliant, the reader will naturally continue on to page two and so forth. The first few lines can establish the whole tone and voice of the book. But that glaring white screen is intimidating. The pressure of putting your best self forward from the start can cause pressure on a writer that leads to frustration and ultimately self-doubt. If anything, a writer should approach a story with confidence.

            So how to begin? While starting at the beginning of the story is a good idea, this does not mean you have to start with that all-important first line. Focus instead on starting with the first third of the book. If you were to partition your story into three chunks of beginning middle and end, go ahead and start somewhere in the beginning. Work on introducing your characters and setting, hint at the conflict that is to come, and refine your unique voice. Rather than stressing out about a good first line, spend your first few days on fleshing out that beginning chunk. Chances are as you start writing, you will stumble across a line that demands to be front and center. And if you write and write for days and still nothing stands out to you as a solid opening? Remind yourself that writers have the luxury of going back and changing things that may not have worked the first time around. Lucky writers.

            If at any point you get a little stuck, try one, or all, of these go-to exercises that will help you craft a strong opening:

 

·         Grab a notebook, a pen, and your ten favorite books of all time. You don’t need to overthink this and look for the ten best or most critically acclaimed books of all time, just ten that you personally love. Read the first page of each book and jot down notes on phrases or other elements that stand out to you. Look for lines that set the tone for the whole story, or bring your favorite character to life. Taking the time to notice what you like is one of the best ways to help you create something you like. You’ll be tempted to look up famous first lines, like those from 1984 or Neuromancer, and see what smart people have to say about them. Don’t. Other people’s opinions on first lines are great but they won’t give you as much fresh insight as looking at something you love and figuring out why you like it will.

 

·         Put yourself in the shoes of your main character, then plop them into the first scene in your story. Write down the first thing they notice. Maybe it would be the first thing you as the author would notice, maybe not. If your character is particularly observant, perhaps they would notice something that was missing, rather than something present. Perhaps if they are perpetually hungry, they would notice the smell of roasting chicken and herbs in another inaccessible room. If he has put himself in a dangerous situation, would he focus on the obstacles? Or on the ultimate goal? If you don’t know your character well enough, take a break from this exercise and spend a few minutes writing just about your character on a deeper level than surface appearances and personality traits.

 

·         Write a few terrible openings. Sometimes the best way to get creative and find what works is by starting with what you know doesn’t work. Not only will this get some bad ideas out of your system to make room for the good ones, your brain may start firing in some unusual unfamiliar pathways that could potentially break you out of the deep ruts of well-travelled ideas.

 

            The most important thing to take away from this, is to just start writing. Focus more on getting that beginning chunk of story down than putting your best line down first. Keep filling up that blank space until you’ve got a mass of raw material to go and play with.