Story Beginnings: 12 Tips to Help You

[Music] hey there everybody it's Mark Crilley I'm back with another video this is number 33 in my ongoing series of videos on storytelling creating comics inventing characters all that good stuff I've put it together in a single playlist and there is a link to it in the description of this video but let's get on with this one I'm working on a drawing here today of Moana and it will come up as an example later on as we get into the topic today which is story beginnings I did a video a few months back on story endings and for some reasons I did the endings one first and I'm doing the beginning one today just shows you how good I am at planning these things out but I've got 12 different pieces of advice on creating the the beginning of your story and let's go ahead and crack on with the first one here number one most stories begin by showing the reader two things one here's what ordinary life has been like for a long time two today something different happened and I do believe that the vast majority of stories follow that pattern you know people don't write a story about the day that nothing happened I suppose some do but mostly we want to write about an event that's interesting and or exciting or dramatic in some way and that means that we kind of have to set the stage by showing you what life was like before the unusual thing happened if we just throw you right into the unusual thing we don't have the contrast we don't understand what makes this unusual we kind of have to see what ordinary life was like first and as you look back through lots of different movies and stories you've read I think you'll find that the vast majority of them followed that pattern so think of those two things showing ordinary life and then the real meat of the story begins when we start getting into the day that something different happens number two here the opening scenes are often about giving the reader all the info they need to understand slash Android the real story this is uh this is something where we start to get into the aspect of exposition you're giving information to the readers they can't really follow along sometimes you can't really get into the meat of the story until you've just sort of got people up to speed with certain key facts that make your story comprehensible and I put in quotations here the real story of course the beginning of your story is also part of the real story but there there's this sort of feeling that we get when the real adventure begins and it usually is somewhere in that point where today something different happened and you see the person the main character if you have one getting pulled into some unusual circumstance so that's something to think about the the fact that you've you've got to devote some time to getting information to the reader and that means you need to think as a as a writer as a storyteller what do they need to know before we get going you know a simple straightforward story requires very little exposition but a more complex story may have a whole series of bits of information that you need to get across and that can get you into a tricky place where you're like boy I need my reader to know so much stuff but I don't want to just sit here doing scene after scene that's explaining stuff to the reader and we're gonna get get to that in the very next piece of advice here number three all this info can be supplied by way of genuine storytelling scenes or through direct exposition prolonged exposition is generally less fun for the reader than real storytelling now I don't want to sumit everyone knows what the word exposition means but it basically is where you are styling something directly to the viewer the reader and I think a good example is maybe at the beginning of ratatouille I hope everyone has seen that movie it's a great one if you haven't and in ratatouille at the very beginning you'll remember that there's this freeze frame as Remi is crashing through a window with a cookbook on top of his head the little rat main character and freeze frames and he says this is me now that whole thing where he starts saying this is me that's exposition there's no getting around it Remi is speaking to us the people in the movie theater basically and I think that even Brad Bird you know who directed that movie might say well it's sort of a necessary evil we've got a we've got an unusual concept here a rat who who is able to cook you know or has fascinated with cooking we need to set that up and he could have done it in scenes if it was a three or four hour movie he could have done a bunch of scenes in which we come to understand how Remi first discovered that he has this amazing talent you know but clearly they thought now we don't have time for that we need to just sorta get this info you might even call it like an info dump you know we just have to get some of this info into the brains of the audience the people watching so that we can move on to the good stuff the real story so as I said you've got a choice there between telling it by way of scenes or showing it by way of scenes and doing it that way or direct exposition prolonged exposition is frowned upon and when you go on and on and on telling people stuff instead of showing it to them you know it's like I said it's less fun and it also sort of doesn't allow the viewer to engage in the process sometimes it's better to let them figure it out they don't want to be told everything they want to be shown things that allow them to figure it out on their own there are a lot of exceptions to this though sorry that I'm going on for such a long time but there certain people can get away with with exposition when it's really interesting exposition or it's a sort of a stylistic choice but it they know that they're doing it it's not a weak thing that they're doing there making a deliberate choice and you know I wonder if like there are like Wes Anderson films and I think the series of unfortunate events is one where the narrator is like right there telling you stuff but the narrator is almost like a character in the story and anyway that is the exception to the rule I don't want people to think that all exit position is wrong and you must never do that but if you are engaging in prolonged exposition you really need to be good at you need to know what you're doing let's move on now to number four you can avoid prolonged exposition at the beginning by shifting it to a point later on in the form of a backstory dialogue scene now a Moana here kind of comes into play there's there's a point where the grandmother leads her into this cave and she starts to have these visions of what the you know the people on the island what they used to be like in the past I would argue that that is all exposition and that they thought you know let's not just put this at the beginning in a sort of a once upon a time sequence but let's shift it a little later on to this part where the you know the grandma and the sort of ghosts of the island past can bring us a little more you know there's a lot again with Moana there's a lot of info that we got to get to the viewer before the story gets underway and you can see them sort of struggling to get that info in there speaking of exposition one movie that really does it well is wreck-it Ralph I think wreckit-ralph begins with Ralph is seemingly talking to us the people in the audience telling us about you know about his game and who he is and all this stuff and then eventually we come to realize that he's at this sort of Alcoholics Anonymous except it's for bad guys Anonymous a support group for bad guys in video games and I thought that was you know pretty clever how they did that they take all this stuff that seems like exposition and then they sort of pull the camera back and they're like oh okay he's sort of introducing him self to the other guys and so I think a pretty elegant way of getting that stuff in there so you may want to explore possibilities like that where instead of just talking directly to the reader maybe you get it in in some more elegant way as they did in wreck-it ralph let's move on now to number five if your story focus is on a single main character you probably need at least one early scene that helps readers know who they are what they want etc this is certainly true of Moana we get a sense of how she really would love to get out on the boats and have an adventure out on the open sea they give us really plenty of scenes at the beginning to help us understand that character to help us care about them because that we can't really care about them no matter how exciting all the action sequences are later on we can't really care about them unless we know who they are we have some sense of who they are and I guess I can use as a quick example my own story Brody's ghost hang on a second I'll show you a bit of explaining who Brody is so here's Brody's ghost it begins with actually a scene that has no exposition at all where he wakes up in the morning it's all visual storytelling we get some sense of how Massie he is but we don't really know who he is we don't know much of his backstory at all and basically what I did is I shifted as I talked about here I I shifted it to later on in the story when Brody sits down and talks to his friend Gabe and during this conversation we get to the a pretty crucial piece of information about how Brody split up with his girlfriend Nicole and that's what this is all about we want the reader to know who Brody is what he has suffered through in terms of this breakup with his girlfriend and how you know this makes you feel connected to him and you feel bad for him pretty much a requirement I would say in any story that focuses on a main character we need at least one scene where we get to know that character a little bit better so if you're you know if you've got a main character that you've got all these incredible adventures planned take a moment at the beginning to help us care about them and indeed it sort of weaves in to what I was saying earlier about ordinary life you know these two things go together we got to see what ordinary life was like before the extraordinary events began to take place even just briefly like Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars movie we just see a little bit of him and how bored he is me and me we got that one conversation with the aunt Beru and uncle Owen that's all we need we just need to get some sense who's this guy was he want then we can care when all the incredible adventures begins now let's move on to number six here if your story involves a lot of world building your early scenes should help readers understand what it feels like to live in this world what its rules are etc don't get carried away though eventually the reader needs you to get on with the real story and so yeah there's the in I would say especially in a world building where you've you've invented this whole new world that people are experiencing and being brought into you are you have this responsibility to help readers understand what this world is like and but you got to be careful because it can be tempting to go on and on about introducing the rules of the world and how amazing this world is that you've created at some point the reader wants you to just get on with the story so it's sort of like yeah you don't want to have too little or too much when it comes to the world world building and stuff and in a lot of ways I think you could just sort of toss somebody in and they will begin to figure out the world of your story as you go along so you don't necessarily have to have back-to-back a whole bunch of sequences right at the beginning that are introducing the world what I did and Brodie's goes sorry to bring this back again is but I put in a lot of things that sort of visual introduced us to this world starting with this big opening spread and then I put in a lot of pages that are just helping us have a sense of what it feels like to be in this futuristic decaying cityscape so that was my strategy in terms of world building maybe just visual world building before we start to get on with the quote-unquote real story so we I guess I've said enough about that let's move on to number seven some stories have a beginning before the beginning that should as it said the beginning sorry that beginning a beginning before the beginning a scene or brief sequence that is separate in time or space from the main story it's very common to have these sort of book ending sequences in the movie Titanic if you ever saw that we begin with that well I've forgotten surname Rose that main care she's very old at the beginning of the movie and then everything's told in flashback that's quite a common way of sort of you begin in the in the present but for the rest of the story you're in the past I do sort of feel like a lot of film critics and stuff will criticize a movie for having an unnecessary bookended flashback sequences so you got to sort of think about this this really brings something to this story but I think very often there there is this as I said the sort of beginning before the beginning sometimes you just have you want to drop something on the reader that gives them a little foreshadowing of what this story is going to be like maybe we get a glimpse at the bad guy before we meet the good guy maybe there's some seemingly disconnected scene that you're you like deliberately let the reader feel like what why are we even looking at this and then later on okay so that's what was happening during that first scene it's sort of just a you know it's an artistic choice that you can make your beginning can be preceded by sort of an earlier thing and it's something worth considering and now for number eight if your goal is to grab the reader from the very first page you can start at a peak of drama then slow things down later on for the real beginning and definitely I have a good example of this in the form of Mickey Falls can be just a second here Mickey Falls my series of four different books the very first page she's crashing through a window I definitely chose to do this mainly to grab the attention of the reader and pull them in because the story begins quite quietly and I thought wow boy I don't want to risk losing someone on the first couple of pages let's grab them with something super dramatic so I basically found the very most dramatic part of the story began with that and then sort of did as I was saying this sort of flashback and you tell the whole rest of the story not the whole rest of the story but quite a lot of the rest of the story in flashback it's worth considering especially like I said if that's if your goal is to grab them right from the start but you know it's not it's I having done that with Mickey Falls I actually have not ever done it again and I would be hesitant to do it again because it could become a kind of a crutch you know as my method of this always works if I begin at the very most dramatic part of the story and then I think you can get away with it a few times but you don't definitely it's not right for every single story that you tell let's move on now to number 9 it can be helpful to know your ending before you write the beginning but some writers just jump in and start writing making everything up as they go this method may result in big changes being needed in the second draft to incorporate ideas that came to you later in the writing process so in my video about writing endings I think I did mention about you know sometimes you write the ending first you figure out your ending you don't necessarily write it but you figure out your ending before you write anything else in the story so that you don't paint yourself into a corner but then I also wanted to point out that that's certainly not true of all writers some writers do indeed just start on page one they start writing they discover the story as they go and as I suggested I think in almost invariably means that they are having to rewrite things or change things in a second draft because they didn't know where they were going they just sort of let it fly me you know spontaneity is a great thing and so I just wanted to put in a word here for those of you who are like boy do I really have to plan and think about this stuff you know for some of you hearing me talk about all these things might be like wow man this is so analytical and you know what happened to the fun of storytelling so I just wanted to sort of reassure you that yeah you don't you don't necessarily have to take such a planned out approach as I'm talking about here and figuring out and thinking everything through sometimes you just sit down start writing you know that might be the best form for you just be prepared that you are gonna get ideas later on through the writing process that maybe need to be incorporated a little earlier in the writing process and a lot of people swear by this and for them the second draft that's when it's fun because they got all the working pieces in front of them you know they got all the everything they need to really tell the story for real this time so that's certainly a valid approach let's move on now to number 10 if your instinct is to start things in a bold or surprising way go for it at the beginning of a story readers are usually very open minded and ready to go on your journey and I just wanted to include this because I do believe that in a lot of ways you have you know the the the readers or the viewers if it's a movie they are ready to go with you you know and you have a chance at the beginning to do almost anything you want to so long as you do it well because they are open-minded at that stage I think by contrast when you get to the end of the story then they are maybe not so forgiving of an of things not ending the way they wanted it or they have a lot of expectations let's put it that way by the time you get to the end of a story then you really have the the the readers saying okay I need you to deliver this this and this and I think I remember reading an essay by the great novelist - II M Forster who said you know it's it's almost impossible to end the story well he felt you know it's so much easier to begin a story but trying to tie up all those loose ends at the end of a story invariably feels false and for him at least he felt it was it was a real struggle to end a story hang on a second I will take just a quick break here so I can get my black colored pencil my trusty black prismacolor and continue working on this drawing okay so let's get onto number eleven here the stories first scene doesn't have to be the first thing you write some writers like to start with a scene in the middle and come up with the beginning later on this was the process that I used when writing my latest graphic novel the drawing lesson I wanted to sort of throw myself into the middle of the story to familiarize my self with what it was going to be like in terms of these lessons that are taught in the book and so I jumped into chapter 5 this was actually the first chapter that I worked out in rough form and I proceeded to the end of this chapter and had chapter 5 completely written before going back and coming up with my beginning speaking of you know lack of exposition this book actually does begin with no exposition whatsoever we see this kid out in a park and everything sort of proceeds in a visual way without any exposition at all we're just sort of tossed into it maybe this idea that he only has $1.00 in 19 cents in his pocket that's the closest we get to exposition here because pretty soon were into the the meat of the story where he encounters the the teacher or the woman that he's going to turn into his teacher basically and it goes from there so it certainly is possible to begin a story with no exposition whatsoever all right I think we're coming up to the last oh I was going to say about the you know starting in the middle I almost got that idea from Brad Bird and when I was watching to go back to ratatouille and I remember him in his DVD commentary about the movie saying that he likes to you know instead of trying to begin at the very beginning he likes to start with a scene somewhere deeper into the story and I thought hey that's a good idea and it certainly worked and I may try it again for future stories that I write here we are this is the last one number 12 it's nice to have a great first sentence or an incredible opening shots but neither of these is as important as having several solid opening scenes I just wanted to get one final thing in here I think sometimes people do confuse the beginning of the story with the first sentence or the the very opening moment you know that there's the beginning of your story well technically yes that's the absolute beginning but that's not the real storytelling and I I think that some people might get sort of fixated on oh I got to have this dynamite first sentence I have to say that that has never been a big concern of mine I think this you know the story survives on whether it's a good story and and an amazing first sentence is not going to save it if it's a lousy story so if you come up with a great first sentence fantastic you know but don't feel like oh boy before I do anything else I better sit down and come up with this brilliant sentence that's as good as anything in the history of literature I think you're gonna freeze up if you get bogged down with that kind of stuff well as always I like to finish the drawing before I finish the video so I'm gonna bring in old man time-lapse oh I sure do love mallanna and he's gonna help me finish up this drawing before we wind down this video [Music] [Music] [Music] all right well there's my video on story beginnings I hope you found it helpful I'm not gonna pull out the books like I usually do at the end of the video just cuz I pulled them out several times throughout this video as examples but that doesn't mean I am NOT grateful to each and every one of you who have supported me by getting those books so let's go ahead though and wind this down by laying down the pencil I want to thank you all for watching this video I really hope you liked it and I'll be back with another one real soon you

Channel: markcrilley

Views: 152,429

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Keywords: Mark Crilley, manga, anime, how to, draw, drawing, tutorial

Id: FYZqhZp-YJI

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2017