2 months ago
13
Photo by cottonbro studioToday’s guest post is by author and book coach Miranda Keskes.
I’m a fiction book coach, and one of my current clients is writing a novel set primarily in the 1980s (still boggles my brain this is technically historical fiction). She is writing from the POV of two female characters. She has a first draft, but she’s still working through where she wants the novel to start. She’s trying to decide if the novel should start with just her protagonist, Grace, or if the first scene should have both Grace and Lily.
A great question, to which I responded with another question: “What’s the point of your story?”
If you’re writing a story about female friendship, it might make sense to start with the two female characters together.
If you’re writing a story about self-love and actualization, it might make sense to start and end with Grace alone.
Through this thinking process, my client realized she didn’t want to write a story about female friendship. This story was really about Grace, what she learned about herself, and the power to stand proudly on her own. This realization helped her see what the ending image needs to be as well.
Deciding how to start and end your novel is not as simple as picking a starting point and an end point at will. The decision needs to make story sense, and story sense is intrinsically connected to the protagonist’s emotional journey. Who is your protagonist at the beginning of the story? Who are they at the end?
Decide on the emotional experience you want your readers to have
Another client is pondering a different question. She has a general sense of what her story point is, but she’s not sure how she wants it to unfold on the page. She’s writing women’s fiction, and we’re working through her ideas and early drafting. She is considering dual timelines and in a recent session, she wondered if she should start her story with her protagonist, Sarah, already broken up with her boyfriend, and then flash back to show the steps leading to the break up. Or, she wondered, should she write chronologically and leave the break-up for the novel’s end?
An excellent question, and one I answered with another question, “What emotional experience do you want your reader to have?”
If you write chronologically, readers are emotionally invested in finding out if Sarah’s relationship with her boyfriend will last. The story is tracking the emotional arc of Sarah’s relationship with her boyfriend, with readers learning alongside her.
If you write with flashbacks and start with the breakup, readers are emotionally invested in retracing the steps that led Sarah to this breakup. The story is still tracking the emotional arc of Sarah’s relationship with her boyfriend, but now readers have a hindsight view of a tumultuous relationship they know will ultimately fail. Totally different reader experience.
Again, the question that truly needs to be answered is, “What’s the point of my story?” Getting clearer on this makes it easier to see what the reader’s emotional experience needs to be.
However, answering the question, “What is the point of my story?” is not easy. It requires deep thinking into your purpose for writing, what wisdom you want to impart to your readers. It requires thinking about the emotional journey your protagonist must experience and, in turn, what the reader’s emotional experience needs to be. Focusing on the beginning and ending first helps reveal what the point of your story is.
Try this exercise
Grab five novels you’ve already read (unless spoilers don’t bother you). Read the first scene and the last scene. Then, answer the following questions for each book:
- Who is the protagonist at the beginning of the novel?
- Who is the protagonist at the end of the novel?
- What has changed in their thinking?
- What has changed in their world or circumstances?
Next, brainstorm at least five potential beginning and ending pairings for your manuscript. These can be brief descriptions. Most importantly, push your thinking. Start obvious and then get strange. Explore any and all possibilities. Which one resonates most for you?
Pick your favorite pairing and answer the same questions you did for the novels you grabbed. You’ll be amazed by how much you need to know about your protagonist in order to answer these seemingly straightforward questions.
Finally, write the scenes! Don’t overthink it. Set a timer if you need to. See what comes up organically from writing quickly. You may realize you love this pairing. You may realize the ending isn’t quite right. You may realize you want a different pairing altogether. The act of drafting these scenes is essential. Through drafting, you find your style and your voice.
Bookends keep your manuscript from falling apart
Deciding where to start and where to end your novel is a way to ensure that your protagonist’s emotional arc is complete. Stories are about change; readers need to see how your protagonist is changed from beginning to end. Writing the bookends also forces you to think about your story’s point and the emotional experience you want your readers to have.
I know some writers use drafting as a way to discover the ending. There’s value in this technique; it lends itself to creative play and exploration of the protagonist’s inner journey. At some point though, you need to know what happens to your protagonist so you know how to write the middle. Otherwise, you run the risk of writing hundreds of meandering pages with no clear throughline. This is where many writers throw in the towel, leaving the manuscript unfinished, collecting dust in their Google Drive.
Write the bookends of your manuscript to help avoid (or at least diminish) the spiral of self-doubt.
