Everyday Canvas

The First Few Words

Prompt: "There is something delicious about writing the first few words of a story. You never quite know where they will take you." What are your thoughts on this quote?

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I think this is a pantser speaking.

I am of two minds on this. I love just to write anything and take it from there, but I consider such stories or other writing as free-flow, which I am guilty of doing quite often in a physical notebook. Free-flowing, in other words pantsing, is the ultimate, oxytocin-producing delight for me. When I am into this kind of off-the-cuff-production, it leads into the propagation of side stories, subplots, far-out ideas, and I have no way of figuring out the end or the length of the story. Still, unlike some writers, I have never worried about the so-many-pages-to-fill dilemma.

Yet, seeing the botched-up results of such delightful experiences, I learned to write with an outline especially when venturing into longer works. Still, in the case of the from-an-outline story, the first few words and the first paragraph usually become torturous because I begin mulling over the entire novel and try to foreshadow the conflict without giving it away.

I think the best way might be, if writing from an outline, to put down the beginning without thinking too much, then coming back and fixing it once I get into the story and the characters lead me into their ways. This is due to the fact that, even with a detailed outline, I find that things change mostly because characters speak up and push their own agendas into the story, even to the point of altering the setting or adding to it.

This characters’ taking-over-action happens when we are good with characterization. That is when our characters gain individuality, a way of life, a bit of humor and a strong sense of drama with a knowledge and the acceptance or sometimes the rejection of other characters’ idiosyncrasies, motives, passions, and hooplas.

With pantsing, the fun is discovering our story along the way, but without any thought or even at least a premise, one can get lost so easily. On the other hand, if you wait until you are really familiar with every aspect of the story and you have completely figured out what you’ll write, you’ll never be able to start. I know some writers who plan for years to write one short novella. I even suspect some never start putting down the first word.

After all, writing itself is a catch-22 situation, isn’t it!