Four Ways to Start Your Novel When You Don’t Know How to Start
Don’t let the white page scare you!
Yes. The moment before we dive in is the scariest. It’s full of doubts, and sometimes those doubts will halt us. Sometimes we are so doubtful that we end up never starting.
It’s no secret that a lot of people want to write a story, but a lot less are writing a story.
Often, taking the first step is what separates the one from the other.
But it doesn’t need to be scary or doubtful. At any moment, we can turn that scary starting point into an opportunity.
Here are a few ways to do it.
Start on a scene you’re excited about
It is quite intuitive to start a story from its beginning. But beginnings are tricky. On first drafts, we might even be uncertain where exactly the story begins until we write it.
Beginnings are tricky. We might not know where a story begins until we write it.
The story doesn’t necessarily start on the first sentence we write. It starts with the inciting incident. And while this doesn’t need to happen in sentence one, it is generally a bad idea to delay it too much.
