How to Start: Assemble the Pieces of Your Story

It can be hard to start a story. Just how do you transform an idea into words, then transform those words into a plot? Participant Sam Ritz goes into detail about the magic of assembling the pieces of your story:

Taking in a deep breath, my hands slide comfortably across the keyboard.

The cursor is blinking at me, keeping rhythm with the seconds ticking against the clock. My blank Microsoft Word document is waiting for me to fill it.

You’d think staring at a blank page that’s supposed to be a 50,000 word novel in 30 days would be intimidating. But you know what I see when I look at that blank page?

Freedom, and endless possibilities.

Outlines make me feel constricted, but having a blank page gives me the freedom to have my story go wherever my feelings take me.

So how do I start? Easy. I call them “puzzle pieces.”

Putting together the pieces…

These puzzle pieces could be characters, the genre, a random scene, a type of conflict—anything really.

For example, for my first successful NaNoWriMo, I knew I wanted it to be YA (puzzle piece #1). I knew I wanted my main character to be a 13 or 14-year-old girl, still trying to find herself (puzzle piece #2), and I wanted her to have a slight love interest (puzzle piece #3). I wanted the story to take place during the zombie apocalypse (puzzle piece #4), and last but not least, I love historical fiction so I knew I wanted to incorporate some of that into the story, too (puzzle piece #5). 

I also had a vague question in the back of my head: did I want to create a reason why the zombie apocalypse started in the first place, or did I want that to remain a mystery and just focus on the problems at hand in this new world? I told myself I would keep this little nugget to the side, focus on my characters and see if it would emerge later (It did! Or at least a piece of it did; this story eventually became a series).

Putting all these puzzle pieces together on the fly, getting to choose how they all work together—this kind of writing I think, is wonderful. I feel like when I write like this, I’m essentially having a “reader’s experience,” because I don’t know what the beginning, middle, and end entail (which I love). I feel the story working inside me, and because I don’t have a strict outline, I have the freedom to choose how it all plays out.

Do I come up with these ideas and each scene on the spot? Yes, but don’t cheapen that phrase. What it really means is that you’re listening to your intuition.

Sam Ritz is an aspiring author who would love to be traditionally published one day. She writes adult and young adult fiction, both with supernatural themes. Sam also like to incorporate a little bit of historical fiction into her work. She has been writing stories her entire life, but she credits NaNoWriMo with helping her finish my first novel—Sam now has six completed manuscripts! When she’s not writing or revising, Sam works in marketing at a community college and at a library.

Top photo by eebeejay.