I asked in my funky new Discord group for blog post ideas and got this beauty from Railla:

How do you decide where to start your story? Both overall in terms of where in a character’s life should the story plot begin, but also in terms of technical “what should the actual first sentence on the first page be?” I always get stuck on whether to just jump into dialogue, or start with some kind of description and hope to make it engaging enough.

An excellent question, particularly since it seems equally hard every time I start a book.

To address the easier question first:

At what point in the characters’ lives does the story start?

I have already written about the difficulties of knowing where a romance novel ends, but where you start is equally up in the air. It can be several chapters before the characters meet; in the middle of them having sex for the first or fiftieth time; years after they met, loved, and broke up. If you’re a Victorian novelist or a clogs and shawls saga writer, you have the option of starting with your character’s birth or, in extreme cases, your character’s ancestors’ birth. You might start in the middle of the war, or from a vantage point in orbit outside the planet 20,000 years ago.

You can start anywhere as long as you have a reason. However, if you’re super stucko and looking to this blog for actual answers, why not look for the specific inciting incident/change point that puts one character in motion? A change point/inciting incident is one that forces a character out of their accustomed ways and makes them need something (in a romance, probably the other MC).  You can start in the middle of that point (“You’re sacked!” my boss shouted) or a little before it to set the scene (a chapter of how much the heroine loves her job and is looking forward to boasting about it to her horrible cousin at the big party) or even a little after it, as the character staggers under the weight of the new circumstances that we’re about to learn.

My book The Duke at Hazard kicks off when the Duke has an illicit assignation and is robbed of his heirloom ring. His need to get it back pushes him into an incognito trip in the company of down-at-heel gentleman Daizell, and the romance follows from there. Starting with the assignation/robbery introduces the reader to the Duke, his world, and his problem; the reader is thus fully clued in and ready to go by the point we meet the love interest, plus the Duke has a reason to drag him into the quest.The Magpie Lord starts with a magically induced suicide attempt on the part of the main character. This is a fairly dramatic introduction to his immediate problem, and explains why he needs to hire a magician (who, needless to say, becomes the love interest.) The process of hiring the magician also allows a lot of the backstory to be conveyed in expository dialogue, which is easier to make zippy than straight-up exposition.In The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, we start with Joss and Gareth having anonymous sex in London. They have an argument and break up; only then do we get the change point, as Gareth unexpectedly inherits a baronetcy and a house on Romney Marsh. We then spend several chapters establishing his new situation before Joss and Gareth are reunited in an Oh Shit We Had Sex scene (classic romance trope thank you). I could have started with Gareth’s arrival on the Marsh, as his inciting incident. Or I could have started with the dramatic OSWHS scene and done a flashback. I chose to start with the sex scene because there was quite a lot of background to establish for this one, and I wanted to throw a bone (as it were) to the romance reader to keep them hooked in.  

It’s not a law; it’s not even a guideline. But if you really don’t know where to start, consider what *immediate* event kicks off the plot and try somewhere round there.

What should the first sentence be?

The one thing everyone tells you is never to open with the weather. “It was a dark and stormy night” is frequently mocked as a terrible opening for a book, to the point where a contest for terrible first lines was named after its author, Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I would submit this is a bit of a Jack Sparrow (“That’s the worst opening line I’ve ever heard of” / “Yes, but you have heard of it.”) Also, Bleak House. Also, 1984.

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. (1984, George Orwell)

This would not be more effective as “The clocks were striking thirteen as Winston Smith went to work.” It’s the banality of talking about the weather, plus the subtle transposed-epithet faintly unnerving effect of “bright cold”  that primes us to be fully unnerved by the not-here-ness of “thirteen”.

Also, just for the record:

Elmore Leonard said it’s bad style to open a novel with the weather. Well, fuck him—it was a blazing red-hot August morning.  (This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both Of Us, Edgar Cantero)

There are various things you can do with a first line, amongst them establishing mood, establishing character, establishing the setting, indicating the kind of book it’s going to be (see above the wonderful Cantero line), or simply hooking the reader. Many great first lines do a lot of things at once.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. (All Systems Red, Martha Wells)

A masterpiece of compact scene setting, telling us what the narrator is, what sort of world we’re in, and more. What are the two most important words here?

No, not ‘mass murderer’. The two important words are ‘but then’. It’s an extraordinary conjunction. ‘But’ alone wouldn’t do it; ‘but then’ suggests there was a time between the killer construct hacking its governor module and becoming a soap addict in which everything could have gone very differently. Is that purely Murderbot sarcasm, or a dark truth? We don’t know, because the Murderbot speaking to us now is the result of a bot/human construct that has consumed this incredible amount of soap operas and developed its own morality—and everything in the multi book series to come is about this delicate, teetering balance between killing machine and person. It’s a brilliant bit of detail work in a wonderful establishing opening.

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me. (Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess)

There’s such a thing as trying too hard.

For the sake of laziness, I’m now going to grab a bunch of my own opening lines and explain my thinking. Fee free to critique.

Vernon Fortescue Cassian George de Vere Crosse, the fourth Duke of Severn, the Earl of Harmsford, Baron Crosse of Wotton, and Baron Vere walked into an inn. They were all the same man. (The Duke at Hazard)

This is a book about grotesque privilege, and that’s where we start. It’s also a book about choosing who you are and what defines you. The Duke is called by a lot of different names in the course of the book, by himself, others, and the narrative voice. Settling on the right one is a crucial part of his journey, so we start with the full array. Also, it’s got both the obvious gag and a vibe of a ‘a duck and a rabbi walked into a bar’ type joke, which sets the vibe for romcom.

How ought one dress to hire a thief? (Any Old Diamonds)

Pure character work, presenting us with several facets of our viewpoint character Alec. He’s posh (‘how ought one dress,’ which also sets the historical vibe), he’s doing something highly inappropriate for a posh person (hiring a thief), and he’s deeply uncertain about it (the entirely weird question).

Will Darling was outnumbered by books. (Slippery Creatures)

Plain and declarative, much as Will turns out to be. This puts us in a bookshop atmosphere with a hint of being at war and a sense of Will having a lot on his plate, all promises that are amply fulfilled. Take a moment to consider how the vibe would be different with some pretty close alternatives:

Will Darling was overwhelmed by books.

Will Darling had an abundance of books.

Will Darling had too many books.

Not necessarily bad, but definitely different.

“It was a terrible day even before Crispin blew up the study.” (Rag and Bone)

Shameless attention-grabbing in media res opening. Nothing wrong with that.

“It was a lovely day for an outing.” (Spectred Isle)

This is the literal opposite of attention-grabbing, very deliberately, since we’re about to witness our outing-having hero being plunged from normality into any amount of supernatural chaos. Effectively this is the narrative voice going LA LA TOTALLY NORMAL  EVERYTHING’S FINE so the knowing reader can say, “Yeah, right.”

It was a bleak, cold, miserable November day when they buried Matthew Lawes. (Unfit to Print)

I know authors who don’t open books with the weather and they’re all cowards.

These are all fairly snappy but there’s nothing wrong with a lengthier intro, including description. Just remember that description can do more than telling us what’s there: it can give us a sense of how the character (or we) feel (or should feel) about it. (More on that in this post.)  

The gates were beautifully wrought iron, elegantly monogrammed with interlocking Ws. The motor-car’s headlights illuminated the black paint, the curlicues and details gleaming gold. It was an elegant, sophisticated gate. It was also twelve feet high if you counted the spikes, and it stood in a very solid brick wall that matched its height. (All Of Us Murderers, coming Oct 25)

Do we think the hero should go inside? Answers on a postcard.

Of course you don’t actually need a single/snappy first line at all. You don’t have to put all your goods in the shop window. By all means make the reader wait, or work, or take your time to build to an effect over a paragraph or a page.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. (The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, gleefully analysed by Benjamin Dreyer here.)

The opening of your book might reflect its tone or diametrically oppose it for effect. It might hook, intrigue, tempt, appal, confuse. It might establish character, setting, or both. It might be lengthy or abrupt. But whatever it is, it’s the invitation to the reader to step inside, and it’s worth giving your doorstep that bit of extra polish accordingly.

Next book is Copper Script, coming 29th May this year! More on that shortly.