You've made sure that your writing environment is
comfortable, you have done some brainstorming and come up with an idea that
you want to make into a story, you have written the synopsis, made character
sketches and drafted your outline. You are ready to actually get down to the
business of writing the story.
For some writers this is the most difficult part; facing the blank page.
There it is staring at you, no words written or a blinking cursor on a blank
page of a computer screen. The beginning of any story is the most important
isn't it? So how do you start? What should be the first word?
I have written many first sentences to start a story, re-read the sentence
and scratched it out, or deleted it. Again, and again I would write a
sentence only to deem it not good enough. I would end up with an entire
page of scratched out entries and still not have a beginning to my story.
How do we avoid this?
- Do some writing prompts. When we exercise, it is
always best to do some warm up activities before starting the actual
exercise itself. Stretches are recommended to limber up the muscles and
get the blood flowing to all of the right parts of your body. Writing
prompts are just like those exercises for the writing side of your brain.
By starting with writing something that has absolutely nothing to do with
your story gets your creative juices flowing and gets you ready to focus
on your main task, which is writing your story.
What is a writing prompt? A writing prompt is an idea jogger or brain
starter. Simply put, it is a question or an idea that you write a response
to.
- Where can you find writing prompts? If you have
access to a computer, you can use Google, or Yahoo, or any other search
engine and do a search for writing prompts. Writers Digest has some good
ones. There are also books that you can buy which are designed to help
you stimulate ideas. Some good examples of those types of books are The
Writer's Book of Matches and Writer's Little Instruction Book.
- A few sample writing prompts would be:
- Create a character that has an unusual phobia.
Write a scene that causes that character to face his fear.
- You bump into a genie and she offers to grant
you three wishes. What are your wishes and why?
- Write a 26-word story where every word begins
with a different letter of the alphabet.
- Relax. If you get too worked up over writing a
sensational beginning, your work will suffer for it. By putting too much
stress on yourself to write a fantastic beginning, what happens is that
your creativity is stifled and is not being allowed to flow. By relaxing
and realizing that you don't have to write the perfect beginning the
first time out, your ideas will flow much more readily and your story
will improve.
- Don't sweat it if you get stuck. Get up, walk
around. Sometimes a change in environment for even a few minutes is all
you need to do to get the creativity flowing again. Walking tends to
clear your mind.
- Don't edit what you are writing while you are
writing it. A first draft is always very rough, and trust me, you'll
have plenty of other opportunities to go back and edit your work. Your
purpose at this point in the writing game is to simply get the ideas
down on paper. You're not aiming for perfection or anything even close
to it. It's time for the critical part of your brain to pipe down, go to
sleep, or if necessary, send it on vacation. When you can block out the
critical part of your brain, your ideas will flow onto the page and give
you plenty of good stuff to edit later.
- Start off generally. You don't want to start you
story in the middle of your plot, so take some time to do some
introductions first. Set the scene.
- If you are still having trouble getting started,
then opt for a classic style beginning. Start with a description of your
characters or the surrounding scenery.
Once you get started, you'll notice that the writing
becomes easier.
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