Beginnings

Here's the question I get from about 75% of the aspiring writers I hear from: "I have lots of good ideas for beginnings, but I hardly ever finish anything. How do I solve this problem?" I say: Terrific! You're on the right track. This happens to all writers. I probably have hundreds of beginnings that never went anywhere. They were really good beginnings, too. But after I finished writing that excellent starting scene, I sort of petered out. What should come next? What would be in the middle? How would it all end? I didn't know. So I'd put my great beginning aside and wait until I got an idea for another great beginning.

This is fine. Stack up those beginnings—that's my advice. And sooner or later, if you're really meant to be a writer (not everyone is), you'll write a beginning so powerfully intriguing that it will draw you on into the rest of the story. You'll write the next scene, and the next. Maybe you'll even get a glimpse of the ending way up ahead. The novelist E. L. Doctorow puts it like this: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Jeanne DuPrau
Author of Car Trouble