This post is so helpful, thanks! I’ve rewritten the opening of my WIP 17,000 times, trying to find that perfect starting point. What trips me up is striking the right balance between establishing the main character’s life before the big change with enough to get the reader invested, but not so much that they get bored before stuff really happens.
In a dual POV (alternating chapters but in the same time frame), how do you handle the inciting incident? Can one occur early on and the other perhaps not occur until the end of Act I?
Thank you for this great post! Do you think a *reveal* can work in a short story, instead of a reversal/change/upheaval, either in a beginning or an ending?
This is really helpful. I recently finished a short story and I chose to combine the inciting incident and reversal into the opening scene, where my lead protagonist (a track and field athlete) gets injured during a race (the inciting incident) and is then plunged into fear and anxiety about the future, which affects her relationships (reversal). I understand that it's important to give the reader a glimpse of the pre-reversal status quo. All I have for this are a few sentences on the first page mentioning that she's a star athlete and is used to winning every race. That's as much as I feel is necessary for the story. In my case, if I opened my story before the inciting incident, I'm afraid the reader would get bored and not want to continue.
That sounds like it would work really well. And the shorter the piece overall, definitely the shorter the amount of time you'd want to spend on normalcy!
In my first memoir, I started with me in 4th grade realizing for the first time that my mother had an accent, (French), because, like her, I pronounced geography, "gee-oh-graphy"" instead of "gee-AH-graphy" and the whole class corrected me. That sets up the secondary revelation, when I discovered that my brother was actually my half-brother, and my mother had him out of wedlock before she married my father. So I isolated my first loss of innocence moment, that is to say, when I realized my mother was a person who was not just my mother, but a) perceived by others through the filter of her accent; b) someone who had an entire life before being my mother. She had quite the past, it turned out.
I think I would call this opening "a linchpin scene", as it allows for a flashback (about my mother's life) and also prefigures my own journey ahead, just as dramatic as my mother's was, and full of even more secrets and lies.
I think this fits somewhere into your envelopes and braids.
Earlier this week, as she tends to do, my sister hit me up for a title for a memoir she is formatting for a fascinating 95-year old Greek lady who has traveled every corner of the world. I looked up "Adventure" in Greek, and what came up but "Peripéteia" and that's what I suggested (with an appropriate subtitle.) Imagine my surprise at confronting this word twice in one week. It feels more like fate than coincidence, and something I should pay attention to. (I think Aristotle, via Rebecca Makkai and a woman named Vasiliki, is trying to send me a message.)
This post is so helpful, thanks! I’ve rewritten the opening of my WIP 17,000 times, trying to find that perfect starting point. What trips me up is striking the right balance between establishing the main character’s life before the big change with enough to get the reader invested, but not so much that they get bored before stuff really happens.
In a dual POV (alternating chapters but in the same time frame), how do you handle the inciting incident? Can one occur early on and the other perhaps not occur until the end of Act I?
This post is so helpful. Thank you!
Thank you for this great post! Do you think a *reveal* can work in a short story, instead of a reversal/change/upheaval, either in a beginning or an ending?
This is really helpful. I recently finished a short story and I chose to combine the inciting incident and reversal into the opening scene, where my lead protagonist (a track and field athlete) gets injured during a race (the inciting incident) and is then plunged into fear and anxiety about the future, which affects her relationships (reversal). I understand that it's important to give the reader a glimpse of the pre-reversal status quo. All I have for this are a few sentences on the first page mentioning that she's a star athlete and is used to winning every race. That's as much as I feel is necessary for the story. In my case, if I opened my story before the inciting incident, I'm afraid the reader would get bored and not want to continue.
That sounds like it would work really well. And the shorter the piece overall, definitely the shorter the amount of time you'd want to spend on normalcy!
Soooooo helpful! Also loved your reading Jhumpa Lahiri on NYKer podcast! Double pleasures!
In my first memoir, I started with me in 4th grade realizing for the first time that my mother had an accent, (French), because, like her, I pronounced geography, "gee-oh-graphy"" instead of "gee-AH-graphy" and the whole class corrected me. That sets up the secondary revelation, when I discovered that my brother was actually my half-brother, and my mother had him out of wedlock before she married my father. So I isolated my first loss of innocence moment, that is to say, when I realized my mother was a person who was not just my mother, but a) perceived by others through the filter of her accent; b) someone who had an entire life before being my mother. She had quite the past, it turned out.
I think I would call this opening "a linchpin scene", as it allows for a flashback (about my mother's life) and also prefigures my own journey ahead, just as dramatic as my mother's was, and full of even more secrets and lies.
I think this fits somewhere into your envelopes and braids.
Earlier this week, as she tends to do, my sister hit me up for a title for a memoir she is formatting for a fascinating 95-year old Greek lady who has traveled every corner of the world. I looked up "Adventure" in Greek, and what came up but "Peripéteia" and that's what I suggested (with an appropriate subtitle.) Imagine my surprise at confronting this word twice in one week. It feels more like fate than coincidence, and something I should pay attention to. (I think Aristotle, via Rebecca Makkai and a woman named Vasiliki, is trying to send me a message.)
Woahhhh yeah if you see it a third time you need to quit everything and move to Greece
Uh-oh, I saw "peripatetic" in an email this morning, does that count? [insert wink emoji]