And so the story begins

One of my fellow students in the fiction workshop I’m taking posed an interesting question this week. It was one that I don’t think everyone understood the same way, hence why none of the answers were particularly satisfying (to me, anyway).

He wanted to know, quite simply, Where do you begin?

My interpretation was that he wanted to know where successful authors begin crafting their stories. Not the point at which the story begins, but the point at which you begin writing your story. Do you start with characters, a plot, a setting, a scene… what?

I never know where to begin. I usually start with a scene – a random interaction that fits nowhere except for in my head but just won’t go away. A look between two strangers against a backdrop of night. A line spoken aloud, hanging in the air until I conjure up another character to answer it. A childhood memory told so many times, so many different ways, I’m not even sure what’s true anymore. Scenes so moving they’re just begging to be part of a story.

But without fail, a scene that feels beautiful in my mind dies the moment I touch pen to paper. I end up never discovering the meat of the story, but rather dancing around it with clever conversations and vivid scenes that, when put together as a whole, amount to nothing. My writing stays in the shallow end of the pool, trying so hard to swim across to the deep end that it ends up treading water until it’s too tired to keep on.

I listened closely to the answers of others in my class who have read some of their work aloud, and who have impressed me. One said she starts with characters whose specific personalities dictate where the story goes. Another said she begins with a plot in mind and may or may not deviate from her plan once she gets started.

The story I submitted for workshop this week literally has a big blank spot about three pages in, with the label I don’t know what goes here. Sorry.

Maybe I also should have added, Help, please?