To tell this story, I must start at the beginning. But where does it begin? -Joe Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once

A frequent problem encountered when writing a new story is figuring out where to start. You might think this should be easy, but determining where and how to begin a story can be difficult. It also happens to have a strong impact on the direction a story will take and events it will cover. The first few paragraphs of a tale pass a tremendous amount of information to the reader from the author’s skill level, to the setting, to the ultimate tone the writing will use. An opening that doesn’t match the story it’s attached to can easily make your audience dislike what they’re reading.

Meanwhile, the opening of a story is your only chance to really grab a reader’s interest. I’ve heard it said that when starting a new book, you should read at least as many pages as your age before deciding if you will finish it or not. Don’t be fooled! People don’t read this way. The first impression your writing makes will tend to stick with your audience for however long they read. It’s difficult to overcome a bad impression and the argument that “it gets better later” doesn’t carry weight (nor should it). If there is good stuff later, why isn’t there good stuff now?

Keeping all this in mind, let’s dig into things.

Where a Story Begins To understand why it’s difficult to determine where to begin a story, let me ask you a question: Where does the Harry Potter series’s story begin?

There are a lot of answers someone might give to this. Page one, as this sets up Harry Potter’s miserable life living with his aunt and uncle just before the strange events that ultimately lead to the reveal that he is a wizard. Or maybe that is just the setup and the story kicks off when Haggard finally arrives to deliver the news. Or maybe the story only really starts when we get the first hints that something is going on at school.

All those answers identify where something starts, but they aren’t the beginning of the story. When I talk about the beginning of a story here, I mean the thing which happened first chronologically. To this, you might say “Ah, the first page.” Or perhaps “When Harry Potter’s parents were killed and he got the scar on his head.”

I have a different answer: the story of Harry Potter begins with Tom Riddle. And with that, we start to understand why this can be difficult. Even if we assume that my answer is no more correct than any of the others, there are a lot of places we could say are the beginning. More importantly, some of those events happen before the first book.

This isn’t unique to Harry Potter by any means, you will find the same is true in nearly any story. The Lord of the Rings arguably begins with the forging of the rings of power, long before even the events of The Hobbit. The Sword of Truth series probably begins with the various wars between wizards in the distant past that created magics which then play a role in the events to come. Every single book in Sanderson’s Cosmere setting ultimately begins in the very ancient past with the sundering of a God into shards of divinity.

Details happen before the story’s first page matter and should have a noticeable impact on the story, but there is no need to frontload this information onto the reader. It is impossible to do and will immediately put your readers off if you expect them to read a dissertation before they can begin to appreciate the world you’ve created for them.

If you’re doing things correctly, your readers will know less about the setting than the characters and will begin to learn about the world by watching your characters interact with it. By the time your story is done, your readers may well know more about the world than the characters that inhabit it.

Simply hinting and implying things pulls a surprising amount of weight. If your readers care, they’ll dig into the details and notice any hints you’ve dropped. You won’t have to explicitly say that Tom is Mary’s long-lost secret uncle because the readers will figure it out by themselves. Sometimes there is no other choice than to explicitly state the world’s history and backstory, but it’s best to keep this to the minimum necessary.

Having covered why this is difficult, it is time to move on to a common piece of writing advice.

In Medias Res Okay, let’s talk about in medias res. This is a Latin phrase that means “into the middle of things”; and being told to begin a story in medias res is among the most common pieces of advice given. It is also some of the best general advice a new writer will receive. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say beginning in medias res is necessary for every story, I do believe it’s a powerful tool that will significantly improve most stories when the author understands and uses it properly.

One common misunderstanding is that in medias res wants authors to start their stories with something exciting. Action! Drama! The hero is in the middle of a fight for their life. While this may work for particular stories, it isn’t really what in medias res is about. Instead, focus on starting the story either as or just before something interesting happens. Often times this will be tied to an event that brings change to the protagonist’s life.

Interesting does sometimes mean excitement, but that isn’t the only thing that will catch a reader’s interest. Intrigue. Wonder. Mystery. Humor. Worry. There are many ways to generate interest, and the one you ultimately chose will set the tone your audience expects going forward.

I am a fan of tension. My first book, In Honor’s Shadow, begins with Shiro standing on a bridge watching an army approach while wondering if it is friend or foe. They turns out to be allies. There is no battle—in fact, you learn this is the fallout of a lost battle. It’s the tension generated by this loss that I using to draw the reader into the narrative. By contrast, my second book (By Duty Bound) does begin with a battle. An unusual one where Shiro’s enemies aren’t engaging and he is trying to figure out what they have planned. The tension here is different from the previous book and hints to a theme that runs through the rest of the story. The enemy is right there, but they are behaving oddly and obviously have some trap in mind. How can it be avoided?

Poisonous Preludes To wrap things up, I’d like to briefly step back and address Preludes in writing. I’ve seen them used both well and poorly, and all of the poor usages have something in common: they attempt to invoke in medias res by starting off the book with something exciting and action-y. Usually, these preludes either cover an important event that happened in the past or one that will happen later in the book.

It always falls flat for me.

If you open with something from the past, I’m going to wonder why you aren’t telling that story instead. It doesn’t matter that it is just backstory or that you say something/someone even more amazing will appear later in the book. By starting your story this way you have already communicated that this event in the past is the most interesting thing in your book, then proceeded to leave it behind. If it wasn’t, and you have other ways to catch my attention, why didn’t you use them?

Worse, in my opinion, is grabbing an action scene from later in your book and placing it in the prelude. I realize this is an attempt to generate a feeling of “Look how exciting/shocking this is. Don’t you want to know what lead to this happening?” Instead, all I end up hearing is: “Literally everything you read before this point in my book is boring and not worth your attention.”

Both of these are poison. They say that you aren’t confident in your story and don’t trust in your readers. They’re a lazy way to avoid doing work.