What do you think about beginnings?

[Bella_Artz]

Just any writers' thoughts of starting a story. I generally dislike first chapters and prologues no matter how excited I am to start.

It always feels awkward, like getting into a new relationship you don't know how to navigate yet.

Just wanted to know if I'm the only one in this boat?

[Lensing]

The opposite actually
I loved writing the prologue to my story and it touched me emotionally
when I wrote it (I had tears in my eyes) and the beginning felt like a movie beginning and zooming
in from far. It´s a great opportunity to be descriptive about little details without
boring the reader. I included things like smell and other little details in
the beginning which contribute to the mood. You have a lot of things you can only do
in the prologue and beginning which are hard to do in the rest of story

Read riveroflies | Tapas Web Novels

[cherrystark]

I honestly put too much pressure on myself when writing. Beginnings are tricky because you have to find the right balance of intrigue with setting the stage. I have also gotten into serial fiction over novel writing, so I have to start new stories a lot. I might have a good idea of the characters and the moment before, but the TIME FRAME always throws me for a loop. Have they been ignoring each other for a few days or weeks? I couldn't tell you.

[Katzalcoatl]

Each beginning has to be perfect. It has to bring the essence of your whole story. You have to hook your target audience. It takes me a lot of time to be satisfied with my chapter 1. Doing everything I want to do in just 1.2k words is super hard. I probably need 3k-5k words to be satisfied but I like the challenge tapas has brought me while writing.

I love working on beginnings due to that challenge. If I had to say they are probably the hardest chapters for me. I learned many things I shouldn't do thanks to chapter 1's.

[Bulalakaw]

I get what you mean. Coming from a fanfiction writing background, you pretty much have all the establishing details set up for you (That is, unless you're writing AUs and such). My chapter ones get to go right into the action because typically, people already know what's up. Now that I'm entering the realm of original content, I have to navigate that unknown territory.

Prologues and first chapters tend to be a balancing act between setting the tone, hooking people into reading, introducing them to your world and characters, and all sorts of stuff. It's like trying to sell someone why this unknown thing I made is worth their investment, except I have to do it in under a few minutes because there are even more people like me lined up to do the same.

But like others above have said, I enjoy this process! It's a lot of fun to figure out what the right balancing act is. When I was writing my prologue and chapter one, I underwent three to four revisions to get it to a point where I'm satisfied with it. I thought of it as a nice exercise of how much can I put in without overwhelming the readers. I also used this opportunity to set up little hints (that may not appear at hints at first read) and easter eggs for future chapters, so that was a lot of fun for me.

There's probably a lot I needed to improve on with my first chapters, but hey, you can only have them once in your series (LOL). I try not to be too harsh on myself.

[jr3indisputable]

Honestly same. I published my first chapter thinking it was quite enough... couple weeks later, I am unsatisfied. It didn't struck me like how my favorite novel did, so rewrote a whole new one and called it 'Chapter 0'. Since it's a fresh one, it wasn't too much of problem.

So yeah, beginnings can be quite tricky, I suppose.

[TheLemmaLlama]

I feel like my love for beginnings is inversely proportional to the amount of time the story has sat brewing in my head before I actually start making the story

Short story for creative writing class that's due in a few weeks? Hate writing the beginning. My fantasy story that I've been worldbuilding for forever but probably won't get around to actually making into a comic until years later? Already outlined the beginning and love its energy, can't wait to show it to the world and see how people react

I think it's because I tend to be drawn towards writing certain scenes whenever starting a new story idea; the most climactic/emotional scenes first, then occasional scatterings of more subtle character-building moments and 'ah-ha' moments where things fit together in ways I'm inordinately proud of The beginning/hook (as well as the ending) tends to lie somewhere within the scatterings of other-scenes-I'm-naturally-drawn-to-write, and if I'm forced to write my beginning before it naturally emerges (which the beginning is particular susceptible to for obvious reasons), I'll hate it But if I allow it to naturally emerge, I'll probably end up loving it XD

[abigaillmartin]

Writing the beginning is probably the hardest for me but I do my best to introduce the characters in the best way I possibly can.

[JaveCraze]

It's awful. Always the hardest part of writing, and anything that I write to 'begin' something feels too embarrassing to share. Either that, or far too boring and disinteresting for anyone to care. Eventually, not caring about the quality is the only way to produce a chapter 1 for me.

[Bella_Artz]

I feel you here. You don't want to come off as too cliche or too confusing so in the end just going with the flow is the best option.

[NickRowler]

The comic I am working on now is something I wanted to write but struggled because I didn't know how to start it. Like I would make draft after draft and just shelve it.

I think what I ended up doing was remember where the idea came from to begin with. I originally wanted to have a troubled boy who moves to a new place to attend a special school. I felt that after I established that, I could build off of the world and focus on other characters if needed. I feel like the reason I struggled is I wanted to focus on the other characters while not really creating a foundation to build off of.

[river121693]

It’s probably the hardest thing to write I think, knowing that it’s the thing that will grab the reader and whole story is usually based off of it. Once it’s published it’s gonna be hard to change.
Im like 3 chapters into my comic and I still wonder if I should change my whole intro into something that better grabs reader

[TheLemmaLlama]

I think what I ended up doing was remember where the idea came from to begin with.

Yeah, this is basically why the beginning always come to me after I've already written a few other scenes I need to spend some time with the work in order to get a sense of what the 'point' is and what it's really 'about' XD

[system]

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