Do you struggle with writing beginnings, like I do? Have a dozen would-be novel projects stuck at only a few paragraphs or pages? Never get stuck on page 1 again with this One Weird Trick.

Just Start Writing.

This is the kind of advice that’s trite and condescending and unhelpful…unless and until you decide that it’s not.

Now, I’m really bad at beginnings. I think one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer is starting my novels off with a scene that properly hooks the reader, which is a big reason why I think I’ve struggled to find agents and publishers for some of my older projects.

A novel’s beginning (at least for commercial fiction, which is what I try to write) has to immediately introduce a character (preferably, but not always, the protagonist) and give them some kind of, uh, characterization. It also needs to give the reader an immediate sense of your tone and style, which is especially tough for writers like me, whose prose is meant to “get out of the way” of the story more than be a feature in and of itself. The setting needs to be at least hinted at–you don’t need to know that we’re on a planet called Tella on a continent called Aora in a region called Arraldyn in a polity called Ofdelcer (to use my forthcoming Seed of the Black Oak as example), but you do need to pick up fairly quickly that it’s an Iron-Age fantasy setting (or whatever your setting is). Finally, you also have to have some kind of action–and I don’t mean “action” in the sense of a battle or a fight, but rather someone has to be doing something for a reason that is clear and/or intriguing.

And especially in today’s publishing and reading landscape, you have to do all of this in like, a few sentences.

So beginnings are hard. And this leads to writers (myself often included) agonizing over the beginning of the story. Where should we start it? Is this opening sentence right? Is the setting clear? Is this too many characters? Does the plot start quickly enough? What about in medias res?

Stop yourself right there. Just start writing.

I mean it. Start wherever you can most clearly see the action happening. “The beginning” of your novel is a second-draft problem, and you’ll never get to it until you get through the first draft.

The thing is, you’ll never write a perfect beginning until you know the ending. The beginning should connect in some way thematically, visually, emotionally, to the ending. A reader should be able to finish your book, flip back to the first page, and get an immediate sense of how much the protagonist(s) and/or their world have changed.

Whether you have a prologue or the plot starts on page 1 or you actually do an in medias res beginning, you won’t know how to make it right until you have a sense of the whole manuscript.

So don’t sweat it. Just start writing. If what you write first doesn’t end up being the actual beginning of the book, it’s fine. That’s how it works in most movies and video games.

Seed of the Black Oak begins with a minor antagonist lording over his domain. Within a few sentences you know he’s power-hungry, he has an obsession with crystal balls, and he is attended by some kind of monstrous homunculi servants.

Then the actual protagonist walks in, and you see her through his eyes. He becomes interested in her–if only for a few moments–so (hopefully, if I’ve written it well enough) the reader is interested in her. As soon as his interest in her wanes, the POV shifts over to her, since she’s the real protagonist.

I didn’t write this scene first. In fact, in the first draft, it wasn’t anywhere close to the beginning of the book. (More on that in another article.) It’s the kind of scene that, in a heavily-outlined book, probably wouldn’t have been written at all, because it doesn’t “connect” on a scene-to-scene level, and it doesn’t “develop the plot” much once it’s ongoing.

What it does do is immediately establish the world, my protagonists’ place in it, and what kind of person she is. “The plot” doesn’t start until a few scenes in, but by that time we know who Epi is, so when she answers the call to adventure we should be immediately on-board.

(And there are connections on a story level between the opening side-quest and the main narrative of the book: it hints at other important characters; it establishes how seeing stones work, which becomes important later; it shows what a glimpse of the Empire, which is an outside antagonistic force in the main narrative; etc.)

Many, many stories do this kind of thing, but it was first pointed out to me when reading about why exactly the movie Seven Samurai was so influential. That movie introduces one of its protagonists, Kambei, involved in a similar one-off confrontation that isn’t directly connected to the almighty “plot,” but which nonetheless is essential for getting the audience invested. Knowing how a character acts in a specific situation makes you eager to see how they respond to other situations.

By the time I had the first draft finished and knew my original “beginning” wasn’t working, I could step back and look at Epi’s entire journey from beginning to end. Her arc was about learning to let go of hatred and anger as her primary motivator. That scene very clearly depicted an instance of her hatred and anger leading her to commit reckless and disturbing actions. It was perfect.

It took a little rewriting to make it make sense at the beginning of the story, but this also allowed me to thread in some thematic callbacks and call-forwards throughout the book. It actually focused her character arc and helped me bring it out much more clearly in the second draft.

In your novel, you may not always have a scene that works perfectly as a beginning that you can cut-and-paste to the front of your manuscript. That’s okay. With the ending in place, you’ll probably find it easier to go back and rewrite whatever beginning you do have to make it thematically and stylistically cohere. Hell, you may even know exactly what new scene you need to write to start the novel off.

Writing beginnings is still one of my weaknesses as a writer, but not because I don’t know what to do. My weakness here stems from a stubborn reluctance to “murder my darlings” even when I know I need to. No, I don’t need to write a new beginning scene! I can fix this one! Another edit will do it! (No, it won’t.)

You may not think you need a whole new beginning scene. Finishing the first draft will let you know for certain.

So if you’re stuck, just write. Don’t take that as a shallow advice to “just do it.” Take it as permission to not worry about if you got the beginning right. You almost certainly didn’t. It’s okay.

I know it’s not always that easy. There’s a specific trick to just writing that I learned in college that I’ll share in my next article on this subject. But for now, if you’re stuck because your beginning isn’t where you want it to be…just move past it. Work on the middle so you can get to the end.