Maria von Trapp was Wrong

I don’t care what Maria says to the von Trapp children…

in The Sound of Music during the first line of Do-Re-mi.

The very beginning is not a very good place to start. Not for a writer. I’ve read the answers on-line to a writer who realized the starting point of the work in progress chosen was not the place to start the story. The author apparently had written quite bit past that starting point and did not want to lose all the effort expended.

My response was: Congratulations. Good self-critiquing is one sign of an accomplished writer. Now start where you should have and go at it. I would make a copy of what you’ve written because that’s raw material, which might be useful in some form or another later on. If not, you have the wrong beginning out of your system and you don’t need to make that mistake again. You can go on to make the next mistake. I call that progress. If you were to plot your course, it might look like a drunkard’s path quilt but writing a story is not like plowing a furrow unless you’re writing a manual for something like tying your shoes.

For the upcoming Guppy anthology I reviewed a story that had a clever premise and likeable heroine but the opening was so far removed in time and emotion from the powerful event that set things in emotion that the author had to put sections of back story repeatedly interrupting the flow of storytelling. The present time was spent telling the reader what had already happened until the last few paragraphs. My grandmother talked a lot about what had happened in the past and I found it interesting but this heroine was not my grandmother.

I remember one story I reviewed that began the day after the protagonist got shot. He remembered his experiences, which left this reader distanced and disinterested. Othello does not open the play by remembering that he murdered Desdemona yesterday.

Some time ago another writer asked when to start a story. Helpful responders gave a variety of answers mostly suggesting in one way or another that the story should start in the middle of the action. To each reply the writer protested that readers would lack information they needed to understand. Finally someone (I wish I could claim credit but it was not me) answered if readers needed that much back story, the story should start with the birth of the protagonist’s grandparents and proceed from there.

I have written stories from the point of view of the wrong character, from the wrong spot in the story arc, from the wrong “person” and even started with the wrong murder. But you, dear reader, did not know because I re-wrote them.

What do you do when you realize you started at the wrong point?