User blog:Zathronas/Author's Advice: Beginning and Ending a Story

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Hello and welcome to author's advice. Today's advice: How to begin and end a story.

Several poster have told me that they have difficulties starting and ending a story properly. They've told me that once they have it started, it gets easier and they get into the flow of writing. I remember when I began writing and had the same problem. How did I get over it?

The 2 best advices I have used on how to start and end a story comes from the greats Ray Bradbury and Anton Chekov.

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”

“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”

As I said before, writers see the story as actual scenes in their head. So I start thinking about the story and write the first scene in my head. In the novel I'm writing, the first scene I saw was the hero as if facing me and taking. So that's what I did. I have my hero breaking the fourth wall and explaining that even if you had a hard life, it couldn't compare to him. So the story is him relating his hard life to us.

The ending usually is easier for me. If you've read my blog on basic story structure, you know about the denouement. I'm a big fan of trying to show them later in life. Of course, not all stories can finish this way. But showing consequences is a great way to finish.

Sometimes, you've finished writing your story and find out that your beginning doesn't fit all that well with the rest of it. My advice then is to scrap it. It gets much easier to write a beginning if the rest of the story is already written.

I've talked in previous comments about the prologue and epilogue but let me put this is a blog. I've seen the prologue and epilogue used where it shouldn't way too much. You use them only when your beginning or ending isn't included in the overall story.

In Harry Potter for example. The prologue is from the perspective of Uncle Vernon at the first defeat of Voldemort and when baby Potter left on his front door. It is the only time we have that perspective, everything else is from Potter's point of vue, so a prologue is appropriate.

Same thing with the epilogue. if you use the epilogue to show what happened to your cast several year later. Or you have a cliffhanger and your showing it from a different point of vue. Great! That's what an epilogue is for. But if it is just the continuation of your story then leave it in the chapters.

Next on Author's advice: Writing Dialogue.