the real truth: your novel itself begins “in the middle of the thing”—the “thing” being the story. What starts on page one is the second half of the story, when the plot kicks in. The second half—the novel itself—will contain large parts of the first in the form of flashbacks, dialogue, and snippets of memory as the protagonist struggles to make sense of what’s happening, and what to do about it. It bears repeating: nothing in this process goes to waste.
