Begun.
(Transcript)
Hello there everyone. We have received another question. Uh, I am, I just finished writing a thing and I'm about to tomorrow start writing a thing and editing a thing at the same time. It's gonna be very busy, and so I figured I would take this time. To do one of these again, uh, because we have a question and that's fun.
Okay, so the question is this. I've been collecting thoughts and ideas for a project I want to make for maybe two or three years now, and I want to finally begin work on it. My problem is I don't know how. I don't know how to make an interesting introduction scene for the protagonist or world I want to show off, or how it can capture an audience's attention before they scroll to the next thing.
I've written three starts to the same story, and I'm not content with any of them fully, and I can't seem to figure out why it's leaving a sour taste in my mouth. So I suppose my question is this. How do you start? Okay. Starting something, beginning something.
I've got a, uh, quote here. Uh, from EB White. Okay. EB White said a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me, more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope. There is all fears. I can remember really quite distinctly looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, this is where I belong.
This is it. This kind of makes you wanna punch Eby White right in their face, right? Because beginnings are hard. It's hard because it's. You are imagining the thing that's ahead of you and it can be quite daunting. And so actually getting started is one of those things.
It's maybe the hardest part about the whole process, right? So let's talk about beginnings. how you start your story depends to a large degree on what your story contains, what's in your story.
Um, different stories should start different ways depending on how your story goes. There are stock ways to start a story. Uh, you see this as a meme sometimes, right? Record scratch. How did I get here? I bet you're wondering how I got here, right? Um, that's sort of a way to start a story. You'll see a lot of stories that will begin by showing you a scene from way deep in. Right, and you're sort of making a promise, like this is where we're headed everyone.
So I'm showing you this scene first so that you watch the next scene, you watch the quote, unquote beginning of the story with this extra amount of weight that I've just put on you. I'm not a big fan of that, maybe because it's been done so much, but, uh, there's always a interesting way to do a thing that's been used up a little bit.
Um. You know, it's, it's an idea that can be expanded on, right? So like, let's say you're writing a story about Gilgamesh and you don't begin with Gilgamesh. What you begin the story with is like some sort of. Professor in front of a class describing the story of Gilgamesh, and then you fade into the actual story of Gilgamesh, right?
You're sort of saying like, record scratch. I, I bet you're wondering how I got here in this history class. That sounds, that sounds really terrible. That's a bad example. But you understand the idea.
If you're dealing with a story that has, uh, a very complicated world, uh, there's a, there's a great world to explore. You might try starting on the fringes of that world. Like let's say you are making a story. You're making the, making the movie of the Legend of Zelda. Okay. And, uh, so what you do is, because Zelda contains a lot of mythos and a lot of adventures, and there's a whole lot in this kingdom, right?
And so what you do is you begin in the provinces, you begin on the fringes. You begin in the quiet parts of the world that you're going into, and then you slowly make inroads into this world, right?
So you begin with some sort of farmer and their kid. On the edge of the kingdom of high rule, and, uh, you know, they're attacked by an ORC or whatever, and Link saves them and turns out he's the guy we're gonna be following throughout the story, stuff like that. You start small and then you slowly expand the world, right?
Because giving them the entire world right up front can be a little too much. I mean, legend De Zelda does not do that. Legend de Zelda starts with, Hey link, you've gotta save the princess. Which, you know, you could try starting there too if you wanted to, but that's just one way to get into a very big world is starting incredibly small and working your way in, and then the story gets bigger and bigger.
The deeper and deeper you go into the world. There's also, you know, the mundane to the fantastical, which is another sort of version of starting small, right? So you have a kid named Harry Potter who lives under. The stairs, and then he gets a letter one day and he's whisked away to this magical world.
You could begin your story with a sort of collision course, right? So if you think about like the dark night, uh, you know that Batman is out there as this force of nature, and in the beginning of the movie you introduce this. Other force of nature, right? The joker. And you know that these two forces of nature are eventually going to collide.
Uh, so you're setting up these two opposing stories and they're slowly making their way to each other, like two freight trains headed directly at each other, and you're just anticipating that moment when they finally collide, right?
There's a billion ways to start a story, which is why. Starting a story might be kind of hard. You know, there's, there's infinite ways you can go. Uh, a cheap and dirty thing to do is like, you watch a movie and you think to yourself, how did this movie start? What is that kind of beginning for my story?
What would that be? Right?
when you're beginning a story, you're giving the audience three sets of things. You're giving them a group of questions, a group of answers, and a group of promises.
It's not unlike throwing a party, okay? So you get an invitation in the mail and the invitation says, please be here at this time to do this. Okay, what's gonna be happening there? And in the invitation says there will be an open bar. There's gonna be karaoke. We will be playing this particular game. We will be honoring this particular person.
We're gonna be doing the, these sets of things at this party. Okay? So you know where you're going and you know what you're gonna be doing, right? And then the questions come up. What am I gonna sing at karaoke? Who is gonna be there? Is this particular person gonna be there? Do I want to see them? Does that change how I feel about this party?
If this particular person is going to be there, right? So you want to, with the beginning of your story, give your audience those three groups of things. They need answers, they need questions, and they need promises, right? You're making a series of promises at the beginning of your story. We're gonna go here, we're gonna get to here, we're gonna explore this,
And there's all sorts of ways that you can do that. Sometimes the questions and the promises are the same thing. You're making a promise to answer this question, but also sometimes the promise can be, here's these two people. They're gonna be spending a lot of time together. or here's this one character you like. You are going to see them interacting with a lot of different people in a lot of different ways throughout this story, right?
A set of questions, a set of answers, a set of promises.
Now, odds are all of those things that I just described are probably not helping this person start their story. And there's a reason for that, and I go back to the question.
I don't know how to make an interesting introduction scene for the protagonist or the world I wanna show off, or how it can capture an audience's attention before they scroll to the next thing. I've written three starts to the same story, and I'm not content with any of them fully, and I can't seem to figure out why it's leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
Right at the start, you're thinking about way too many things. First of all, right at the start, you're thinking about the audience and you've gotta stop. Now. Listen, I know I just said that there's a lot of things that you have to give the audience at the beginning, and all of those things are true.
However, that's homework and you leave your homework at home. That list of things that I gave you about what should be at the beginning of your story, you shouldn't be thinking about any of those when you're starting your story. When you're starting your story, you shouldn't be thinking about anything.
Thinking too much is murder. It'll kill you every single time because if you really think about it, this is a ridiculous thing you're doing with your time. Right. You are taking a gigantic goofy risk with the free time that you have, and if you think about that too much, it's gonna scare you off of absolutely everything.
so the biggest problem with the start of your story is in your head. It's not in your story. Alright.
Part of the reason why you're not able to start your story is maybe because you don't know what it is yet, but you're not gonna figure it out by thinking about it because when you read this question, you're already in your head. You are already screwing yourself up and you've gotta stop that and you've got to write, and it's gotta be painful for a second.
And then you've gotta second guess yourself. But second guess yourself. While you are writing it. Write it thinking, this is bad, this is gonna be bad. But see, the thing is the more you write it, the easier it will get. And you know what happens sometimes is that when you write the story without thinking about the best way to do it, or the best way to roll this out, or the, or the reaction from the audience, or you're afraid of the audience, scrolling away.
If you can get those things out of your head and just write your story, you eventually may come to a point where you think, oh, right, that's how it should start. Which doesn't mean you throw away everything you've done, it just means you may have to rework some things. But sometimes the answer is in the writing.
In fact, most of the time it's so if you're not writing, you can't get to that answer. The best way to explore it is in the writing of it, and there's so many things that you're doing to your brain at the beginning that you're not gonna be able to start writing.
I would say that part of the reason why you're second guessing yourself is about the attitude that you're taking towards what you're writing. You know what I like thinking about when I think about beginnings and beginning a story, I like thinking about. The goofy ass shit that writers do before they begin something.
Okay. Ernest Hemingway would sharpen a shitload of pencils. I. August Wilson, August Wilson made his own ink. He would make a batch of ink that he was going to use for this story that he was about to write. apparently Maya Angelou would, uh, check into cheap hotels during the day. She would check into a cheap hotel with a bottle of Sherry and a deck of cards.
My favorite one, this may be apocryphal, but my favorite one is Victor. Hugo would have his servants hide his clothes. Like his going out clothes, like it's, it's time for me to begin, which means all of my clothes that I used to leave the house, you have to hide them. You have to force me to stay in the house so that I will write this.
There's goofy rituals. That writers do a lot before they begin something, and what it feels like initially is like, this is the most pretentious bullshit I've ever heard in my life. But there is something to it because what they're doing is they're regarding what they're about to do as important.
That's what Ritual does. Ritual highlights the thing that you're about to do. Now, I say all that. I don't do that. I don't have one of those things. I don't have some sort of ceremony that I go through before I start another script of Midnight Burger. Okay? What I do is I just, I go into the living room.
You know, I don't do it here. 'cause this is where all the editing bullshit happens. This is like the house of pain that I'm in right now. So what I do is I take my laptop, I go into the living room, and it's just me and my laptop and the cat and a cup of coffee. I make a cup of coffee. I guess that's one.
So it's not something that everyone does, but there's something to that idea because you are saying this is important. I am going to do this. And in this question, I can see you regarding what you're doing as not important because you're second guessing it. You are saying that it's stupid and it's not stupid.
It's important. Why else would you take this time to do it? We all have precious time on this planet. And we take the time to make things like this, to write things, to create stories. We take that time, which means that it's important and it should be regarded as such. So in the beginning, the very first step is not figuring out the best way to roll out the story or figuring out the best way to introduce the character.
The first thing you do is say, this is important, and I am doing this.
So I've told you what I think the beginning of a story should contain a group of questions, a group of answers, and a group of promises. Right now it's time to forget all of that. That idea of those three groups of things, that's an idea you come back to later, right?
After you've written, you look at those groups of things and then you go back to your beginning and you say, am I doing these things right?
right now. What you've got to do is regard what you do as important and then do it. I. It's not going to be what you want it to be, but it never is. And the hardest part about the beginning is not about figuring out the best way. To do it. The hardest part about the beginning is not giving up and continuing. Even though you have all these questions, even though you have all this doubt, even though you think that you're kind of foolish for doing it.
Writing is terrible. Writing is really miserable. It's really difficult and it's really crazy making it's anxiety inducing. It's all of, it's a long list of things, but I guarantee you. Yeah, there's nothing like the feeling of persevering in a writing project of getting to a point. It's not even at the end just getting to a point where you look back and you think, oh, okay, I made it to this point.
I now know this is good. I now know this is real and important. It's a very gratifying feeling and it makes all of that pain and suffering really worthwhile.
When you're writing a story, the real beginning you have to worry about is not about your story. It's not about your main character. It's about you. Believing in what you're doing.
When you begin, there's gonna be a million questions. There's gonna be a million doubts, there's gonna be a million distractions to keep you from doing it, and the true challenge of starting your story is in you ignoring all of those things and going forward anyway.
It is always a gut check. It's always a leap of faith, but I guarantee you, if you keep going, you'll have a moment where you look back and you say, okay, I've finally begun.
-j