Beginning

When stories begin, they usually establish some kind of 'normal' situation first.

For example, how would you summarise the situation in the beginning of The Old, Dead Nusiance?

Each week, the True Spook team went to a different haunted place: a house; a cemetery; a dark, rusty factory; or even an old railroad bridge. They investigated the haunting. They filmed interviews of people who described what they’d seen.

Paul didn’t believe a word of it. He thought it was suspicious that so many of the haunted places were inns that needed some publicity and restaurants where the rugs smelled weird.

The Old, Dead Nuisance(2011)

The main elements here are:

A normal situation: in this case, a reality TV show about haunted locations.
A character with an attitude towards the routine: in this case, Paul, who doesn't believe in ghosts or psychics or anything else on the show.

Nothing changes in this snippet, although there is an implied cause and effect: Paul doesn't believe in the hauntings because they always seem to take place at struggling businesses that need publicity.

Here are some examples applying the same pattern:

After high school, Nidhi went to university to do something-something science.

Elena didn't really know, or care.

Autumn was soccer training season. The coaches came out of hiding; the FB groups started up again; kids tapped balls up the steps and dribbled them down the halls.

Tom loved soccer so much that for him the season never really ended, and he was happy because now he had more people to play with.

If you've been developing the same characters and world in this lesson, you should already have a few ideas about them.

Take a step back and think of what an ordinary experience or day might look like for them.

You can see from the examples that your variation doesn't need to be complicated.

Tip: It can help if you have some idea of where you want them to end up, and then make the beginning the opposite of that.

If you want them to end happy, start sad.
If you want them to end defeated, start with them triumphant.

(With that last point in mind, look over the snippets above. How do you think each character will end up?)

Set up the beginning of a story by describing a normal situation, and a character's attitude towards it.

Next, let's have the character experience something in the middle of the story that will change them or their circumstances.

Change, cause & effect