It’s been a while since I’ve written about how to start a novel but since I’m working with a new coaching client who is going through this right now, I thought it couldn’t hurt to share what I’m doing with her.
How you begin a novel very much depends on whether you’re a plotter (who plans out the whole book before they write a word) or a pantser (who writes by simply sitting down at a computer and writes with no knowledge of where their story is going to go—as Stephen King says, you write until you get to the end).
Beginning a book for a pantser is easy. You have an idea—sometimes called a Kernal idea—about a person (the protagonist) and a problem or a “what if.” You sit down and write. That’s it. You write a sentence, which turns into a paragraph, which becomes a scene. You decide on what the consequences of that scene is, and go on from there. The key is not to write the next scene as a “and then” something else happened but the following scene is “because of” what happened in the previous.
For a plotter, on the other hand, there is a lot of work that goes into your book before you even begin Chapter 1. There are characters to develop, a world and its rules to build, and a story to plot out.
I always start with the characters—what do they want (externally) and what do they need (internally). How are they going to grow and change? What is their ultimate goal?
Once you know that, you can begin to build your plot. Start with the major turning points—the inciting event, the first major turning point, the point of no return, the all-is-lost or black moment, and then the resolution. Once these key points are known, the rest—how your characters get from point to point is easy to fill in. There are some authors who prefer to leave those spaces blank to fill in as they write (a bit of pantsing for the plotter).
Once the plot is complete, you already have a good idea of the world, but just in case if it is a fantasy or scifi world, you should write down the rules just to make sure you don’t accidentally break them as you write.
From there you are all set to begin Chapter 1. Enjoy!