find the secrets to your novel in your beginning

Accomplished writer and teacher (and all-around interesting dude) Les Edgerton tells of some advice he gave to a student who didn't know how to end her story. "Go back to the beginning," he said (I'm paraphrasing), because often the beginning of your story holds the clue to the ending.

The opening of your story establishes your contract with the reader. You set the tone, you establish the storyworld, you succeed or fail to initially prove yourself as a writer (as in: you have the...