How to begin a story and make the narrative coherent

In this post, I am going to share what I have already shared with my young writers: How to begin a story.

Referring to the Narrative Arc that was represented by the Witch's Hat, I shared two story starter approaches with my students:

(1) Introduction

(II) Climax

(I) Begin with Introduction

In this first traditional approach, I began with introducing the main characters. In this instance, the two main characters are a pair of twin sisters, namely, Mary and Martha. (Yes, I was alluding to the conflict between the two sisters in the Book of Luke, Chapter 10, in the Holy Bible).

The first paragraph is as followed:

I would stress to my students, "Now, to make your entire story coherent and credible, you may embed some clues or drop some bread crumbs (alluding to the story of 'Hansel and Gretel' ) in the first paragraph for the readers to look back and figure things out as they continue reading your story."

"So, to help the readers understand why the twin sisters could be so volatile in their behaviour during their physical conflict, you may drop some hints here. You may describe them as "vivacious" and "opinionated". There is nothing bad about these personality traits. However, as each sister has a very strong opinion of her own, it's natural for them not to see eye to eye, and not give in to each other easily."

(II) Begin with the climax

In this second approach, which is a little more challenging, I guided the students to start their stories right away from the physical conflict between the twin sisters. The first paragraph is as followed:

In such instance, Dialogue is the way to make it fly.

This is followed by character descriptions and their conflict point:

So, there you have it: two very different yet "do-able" approaches to begin your story.

I also stress to the students,

"Do not, do not , do not, major in the minor. If the physical appearances of the characters do not have any direct impact on your narrative arc, then don't waste time trying to come up with nice adjectives to describe their eyes, hair colours or complexions. Focus only on what's relevant to your narrative arc."

For more of this, read the next post!

Happy Writing!

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