Chapter 1 of Myths | Finding the Beginning
Uncovering the exact right spot to start this story evaded me for weeks. Even during the outlining process, I kept returning to the same scene, thinking it was the inciting incident, only to realize it wasn’t. It was actually just the beginning.
“On a day unlike any other”
Starting the reader at the midpoint of a climactic event was... a choice, to say the least. "In media res," as it's often called. As a reader, I love it when a story skips the backstory and finds ways to teach me along the way. Just treat me like a hitchhiker you picked up, and I'll figure it out.
But this wasn’t the start I had initially planned. I drafted several outlines, with the beginning placed anywhere from minutes to days before the moment I chose for this story. In this post, I'll explore some of those options and explain why they weren’t right. Then, I’ll explain why chapter one’s starting point is perfect (as well as I can without spoilers, that is).
Option 1: Packing the Bag.
I initially thought this would be the perfect place to start. We could explore our main character's well-organized life, with her carefully planned schedules and ideal Sunday afternoon routine. I imagined a peek into her life before it goes to hell might be the way to go. So many other novels begin this way, so why not this one?
The thing is, it wouldn't have been "a day unlike any other" because it was a day exactly like every other Sunday afternoon—until it wasn’t. If something truly insane happened to you, I doubt you'd start the story with, "Well, I clipped my water bottle to my carabiner, locked the door, and then stopped for my iced Americano before heading for my hike." Besides, I knew we’d be heading back to the apartment in the first chapter, so exploring it beforehand felt redundant.
Option 2: On the Ascent.
This is where “the day unlike any other” really begins to take shape. She would park her car at an unnamed trailhead an hour outside Boulder, Colorado. Then she’d turn on her romantasy audiobook, tighten her boot laces, and maybe spray on some sunscreen. Just for her world to forever change and set her on a new course in life. Something was appealing about the idea of beginning one journey and ending it with another.
But you see, all of that can be easily imagined by the reader. You can start a story at the top of a mountain, and you know how the character must have gotten there. Tell me they come here often, tell me they're wearing boots, and I know they hiked there.
Additionally, the goal is to start as close to the action as possible while still capturing a snapshot of who our main character is at the beginning of the story. There was nothing about the initial ascent that revealed more about her than the subsequent action would. So I moved closer to the action.
Option 3: Attack of the Nightmare.
Now, this was a tough one. The moment our main character realizes something deadly is following her on her usual Sunday hike felt like a perfect, thrilling start. I pictured an ear-piercing ring followed by red, glowing eyes and rows of sharp teeth, catching her and the reader off guard. This would throw the reader right into one of the scariest moments of her life.
But when I started writing it, something felt off. You can only care so much about a character running from something if you're not sure who the real villain is, right? What if she attacked this Nightmare first, and it was just defending its children? Explaining all of that in a frantic, fleeing mindset would have slowed down the action and kept the reader from immediately relating to her.
Not to mention, I don’t know many people who, if they saw an arachnid the size of a dog chasing them on a hike, wouldn’t run away. It doesn’t reveal any individual traits about her or the mythical world I’m creating. It felt like a cheap jump scare at the start of a horror movie. Besides, this wasn’t where things got real (or unreal).
So I pressed on and found the sweet spot I had been looking for.
The Start: Saved by the Dragon
If you're here, you're likely interested in the romantasy genre and probably relate to the desire to ride dragons, sit upon thrones, and wield swords of flames against your enemies. Maybe you even imagine watching as blood-soaked men kneel before you. You know the vibes. We love the vibes.
For my main character, the idea of riding dragons was a form of wish-fulfillment—a fantasy of ultimate control. Something she knew she’d never actually be able to do, so fantasizing about it was the closest she’d ever get. Or so she thought.
I needed this initial scene to achieve two things:
Show the mindset of the main character before the inciting incident. In short, she’s a logic-driven perfectionist who believes she’s better off alone.
Reveal the stakes and propel the plot forward into our actual inciting incident.
Our character begins on her hands and knees in front of a dragon who has just saved her life from the Nightmare that was chasing her. But the thing is, dragons don’t exist. Therefore, she must be losing it. We see her act on this belief beyond all other facts and evidence to the contrary. Now that a new, mythical world has been revealed, we’ve achieved our two goals.
We also receive all the same context that the above options provided. She’s on a hike, was attacked by a Nightmare, was listening to an audiobook, and lives in Colorado. Starting at this lull of action, between the Nightmare attack and how she decides to handle the dragon facing her down, is, in my mind, the most intriguing start to our main character's story.
Conclusion
Finding the best starting point for your story can be a difficult task, and maybe another author will read my explanations and think, “Nah, all wrong.” That’s perfectly okay! None of us would tell any story the same way, and that’s so exciting. To be in one universe where someone chose to tell the story the way we know it, and to imagine there’s another universe where the story started in a completely different place and altered the reader's perspective entirely, is a truly fascinating concept to me.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed this brief exploration into one of the aspects of writing and storytelling that I love so much.
Same time next week? XO
