Starting Your Story: Beginning in the Middle

The blank page stares back at you, mocking your very effort of telling the story that’s been haunting you for days, but where should you begin? You know that there is a masterpiece of character and plot just waiting to erupt into written form, though at times it can be a challenge to figure out exactly where the beginning really should be. The best place to start is in the middle.

In the middle of where, you ask? - The middle of the action. Throw your reader in head first right in the middle of something going on. It can be as dramatic as a high-speed car chase or as mundane as washing the dishes, but the point is to have your character actively living out their lives. Then you can spend the rest of the story catching the reader up to the important information they need to know about.

The Building Blocks of Plot

I recently became aware of a detrimental flaw to my works of fiction to find myself unable to complete many of my stories. I began to realize that my problem laid with my fundamental understanding of plot and so I decided to dive into research to try and find a way to fix this problem. During my journey that spanned over two months, I found a lot of helpful information and began taking notes- lots of them. I then decided that there may be others out there with my same problem and so began to write an article on plot, but there was a problem. There was way too much information to fit in a 500 to 700 word article, so I began a series of articles. Then a friend of my suggested putting the articles together to create an ebook, so here is the finished product of all that effort. I place it here for those who would like to read it. Hopefully you too will find some use for it. It certainly isn't a full comprehensive about plot, but it will at give you an idea of what good plot is and how to use it to get that story out from start to finish!

I have the free ebook posted on Google Docs. Check out the link at The Building Blocks of Plot.