How do you start a story? Do you begin with a sentence, an idea, or a theme? Do you see a scene in your head and weave a story around that? Or do you envision the end and work towards that?

How do you start a story?

Sometimes I begin a story with a sentence, but mostly I begin a story from an idea that floats around my head endlessly until I write something for it. Ideas grow bigger and become more developed the longer I leave them, and eventually they develop into a plot that begs to be written.

Generally I can come up with a beginning and a middle much easier than an ending, so aiming for the end is something I don't do very often because I'm not aware there is an end yet.

Often a line I read in a book, a subplot I see in a movie, or a scenic landscape can spark an idea, and depending how strong the inspiration is, often it can result in a story. That's how it works for me, anyway!

My story started with a dream. A dream that involved Frodo, the One Ring, and---pickup trucks. (I dreamed it shortly after reading the Trilogy for the first time.)
Anyway, some concept in the dream just stayed in my head. Not long after, I developed a main character. I quickly knew what she looked like. Then, I got more ideas while sitting in a hot car. Then I wove in an interesting but useless idea that I had gotten earlier.
The story started coming together in my head. Finally, I wrote a random scene, that takes place somewhere near the middle of the story. Weeks later, I wrote the beginning.
And that is how my story began.

My stories usually start with a developed idea. Typically, just something simple that jumps into my mind, I've never had to sit there and think about what story to write for something like a novel. All my story ideas usually just develop over a course of a few days...then I get to writing.

I do some developing, if it's just an image (like one I have right now about a WW2 commando yelling he's out of mana) or came from a dream then I start writing.

I have an idea, then I develope it in my head. Then I talk about it to others (which helps me come up with stuff). Then I go and write up a storm!

I couldn't have said my method (which is the same) any better.

Haha

My whole history began with a question ("what happened to the land where the Giant Time was after The Last Battle"), but individual stories usually start with me brainstorming how to begin a specific bit of the Outline of History I've come up with for that universe. Sometimes, especially in the third arc, I have a scene come to me that serves as the beginning of a new story and have to figure out where in the Outline it should fit. But I've never started anywhere but the beginning. (Except one story, sort of ... but that would be telling.)

What's odd is that almost invariably, however I start a story, what comes afterward is entirely different. For example, one draft-novel-in-progress, Sunshine Civil War begins with an emergency session of the Parliament that sets the stage for the war to come, but thereafter we're following our protagonist, the general who's to lead one side in the civil war, who has kept entirely out of politics (and has to be called home from Camelot, but that's another story). And my novelette "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" (written for a class assignment after reading the recently-discovered Mark Twain story of the same title; we each had to write a story, less than twenty pages, including those three elements) begins with a prologue describing an event, and then the first chapter begins:



(Which means that I should probably cut both the prologue and that bit. But I, as usual, digress.)

*shakes head* Haven't been around to read my own thread. Thanks for your answers guys!

I generally start with a question about what a character would do in a certain situation. After that, I stew over it until I've a basic plot, and quickly envision a probable ending.

Endings are important for me, even if they end up changing some, because I need to know where I'm going to build up everything. I like 'bang' endings, that tie everything up in the last page (hopefully) and hand the reader a neat little parcel as they're screaming 'no! more--more!' (also hopefully) yet leave the story complete (again, hopefully).

Well, my story grew out of one simple word. Diegose.

However, we all know how C.S. Lewis started writing the Chronicles of Narnia. He saw a picture of a fawn with parcels, and builds the Lion Witch and the Wardrobe off of it.

*looks up word*

Edit: *wails* Can't find it!

* chuckles * I don't think it's in the dictionary...

It's a word her....brother? Said.

Good job, Bethy.

It was a word my brother threw out one night when we were discussing that he felt I should be writing again *complex why I wasn't *, and it sparked my trilogy.

Ahhhh....

So what does it mean?

It is the name of my dragonish creatures.

Cool!

Yep.

Very cool.

Quite very cool!

Thanks, E.

AHH! *runs in fear*
I derailed a thread!!!!

For me, I tend to start a story with some concept or idea. Usually it has a character embedded in it somewhere, and I just start toying with the idea and character(s) in my head until I have a starting place. Middles and endings may or may not come along afterward.

Ooops!

Once a friend and I did an exercise in which we each started writing a story with the words 'One more thing before you go'. We had to just write, no stopping, plotting etc. It was awesome. And very effective.

Personally, when I begin a story, I come up with a story. Let me elaborate on that, because it sounds really silly. When I have an idea, it's almost always an event or some beginning tangle of a plot. Thus, the story comes to life, and then if I decide to keep the story idea, I'll flesh out the characters better and whatnot.

One very, very interesting book to read is 'What the Wind Picked Up: Proof that a Single Idea can Launch a Thousand Stories' - it's written by the members of ChiLibris, a Christian published authors group.

Basically, 22 of them wrote short stories with the following elements in them:

• First line of "The wind was picking up."
• Last line of "So that's exactly what she did."
• Included a case of mistaken identity
• Included a pursuit at a noted landmark
• Included an unusual form of transportation

You'd think that all the stories would be the same, but they were very different, and interesting (Anyways, that's sort of off-topic, but I thought I'd share anyways).

eru

I start most of my stories with the phase "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit." Then I write my story from there and then later on I'll come back and change it.

HAHA!

*chuckles * Do you only write Fantasy, Joe?

No I don't. I just write that to get me going.

*laughs * I want to see your first draft for a Sci-Fi story. That would be so cool.

That would be cool

eru

@Joe: Actually, Tolkien wrote that line years before he even began developing Middle Earth But that started every.thing.

eru

Joe's scifi story's first line;

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, not just any hole, but an intergalactic wormhole that sucked in all living beings that came within a lightyear of it... How did this hobbit survive? T'was not an ordanary hobbit... It was; Cyhobbit! The Cyborg hobbit man!

...
And;
scene!

That was funny.