Setting a Platform for Change
Somehow (GULP!), I’ve started writing a new novel. You would think I might have learnt from my previous experience of writing a novel that novels aren’t things to be trifled with and I should leave them well alone. But apparently not. My brain has had an idea and a new novel has been started. So, naturally I’ve been doing a lot of pondering about the best way to do that. With any story of whatever length, how do we start things off? I’ve written about this before in terms of where to start, how we create intrigue and how long the opening to a story should be. I also teach a course where one of the topics delves into how we best anchor a reader in place, time, character and scenario. But what I’ve been thinking about just recently is how to use a story’s opening as a platform for change. With my novel, I know exactly what I want my endpoint to be (I’m very lucky in this as I know that lots of writers need to explore the journey on their first draft and only discover the endpoint when they get to it, whereas I tend to plot backwards from endpoint to start), and I have a good idea of the journey I want to travel to get there. Think of it like a trainline. I have the destination station in mind, I’ve laid down the train tracks towards that point. So, now all I have to do is decide on where I start. What is my origin station? How do I create an effective platform for change? That is the general train (geddit?) of thought I’m following in this month’s article.
The start-point / end-point connection
When it comes to creating a platform for change within a story, I would suggest that the key word is contrast. What is the difference between the origin station and the destination station? Sometimes, we want the difference to be as great as possible. So, if the destination station is in a sprawling urban metropolis then the origin station is somewhere quaint and rural. If the destination station is going to be bathed in a summer sunshine then maybe the origin station is overcast and damp. Lots of people in the destination station? Let’s have the origin station be almost abandoned? Or maybe it is the type of people who are different? Maybe it is the mood of the people which is different? Other times, we want the contrast to be much more subtle. It very much depends on the story, but I think it can be a key thing to bear in mind. When I’m editing work for other writers, I often find myself commenting whether they could create a stronger platform for change at the very start of their story and what I really mean by this is whether they could make the start more evidently contrasting to the end. Does doing this enhance the power of the story as a whole?
Identifying the emotional journey
Often, the key for creating a platform for change is in identifying the emotional journey. In “Monsters” (Sadia Quraeshi Shepard | AAWW), the opening sentence drops a reader straight onto the precipice of a change, the moment when the narrator’s wife starts drawing monsters. The destination station of this piece is all about fear – “I […] told them that they didn’t scare me even though it wasn’t true” and the journey is one that plays on the tension between hope and fear, so it makes sense that we have a note of hope as our starting point. A reader isn’t hit over the head with that feeling of hope, but it is there in the gaps between the words. The wife is hopeful (“they would no longer wake her up at night”) and the narrator seems cautiously hopeful by association.
Preparing for the climb
In real life, trainlines tend, as much as possible, to travel over terrain that is perfectly flat, but our narrative trainlines are generally most effective when the platform for change is at a much lower altitude than the emotional zenith that everything is building towards. In “McDonald’s” (Sarah Freligh | Bath Flash Fiction Award), that emotional zenith is the gut-punch revelation of the son’s death. This is a three-hundred-word micro so the starting point needs to reflect that – even a narrative trainline can’t travel up a cliff face. So, this piece doesn’t start with the son’s birth or the son as a toddler but with the son as a teenager when he is already “slow to grow, slow to do anything.” He is set as different from the boys who have just walked into McDonald’s and, as a reader, I immediately feel that sense of sympathy and worry but these are small emotions with plenty of room for upwards build.
A platform for revelation
The change within a story is often one of revelation. At the end, the reader hopefully knows what they need to know, but at the start, they know nothing about this narrative world. In terms of setting a platform for that sort of change, a writer generally has to tread a tightrope between giving a reader enough information to settle them into the story and not too much that the revelation loses its impact. In “Girl Locks” (Claudia Monpere | Split Lip), the revelations are multiple. We have the narrative revelation – the narrator, a fourteen-year old girl is pregnant and travelling across the border for an abortion – and we have the thematic revelation, the answer to that question “what is a girl?” For me, the first sentence sets a wonderful platform for both of those things. The mention of the policeman and the fact that the mother and daughter are travelling somewhere late at night gives the first hint that something “illegal” might be taking place, and the reference to the “girl” is without adjectival description, leaving the story plenty of space to try out different descriptions as we travel towards that destination station of “a girl is a thistle of light.”
Other considerations
As mentioned above, there are multiple things which might change within a story. Every story is different. So every origin station is different as well. In stories which are about character journeys then we generally want our opening to set us up for that (think about how Ebeneezer Scrooge is portrayed as the ultimate miser in “A Christmas Carol”). In stories which unspool over decades or centuries then perhaps it is a good idea to set a platform for how the world itself is different at the start of the story than it is at the end, shining a spotlight on place and the cultural specifics of the timeframe. In stories with a strong sense of theme or message, how might you set things up for that? The thematic message in my story “Yellow is the colour of make-believe” (Matt Kendrick | Ghost Parachute) is “don’t judge a book by its cover” and when I was writing it, I went through several variations of my opening sentence, thinking about how I might establish the theme as well as character, place and scenario. Not everything can fit right at the start, but hopefully that opening sentence paired with the title does enough to set the story on its course along its narrative train tracks.
And since that brings me neatly to the end of the line for this particular craft essay, perhaps I should reflect back on where I started and hope that the opening chapters I’ve written for my new novel are a strong platform that sets me firmly on my way through the rest of the (sometimes arduous) journey up ahead.
Choo-choo! (sorry, couldn’t resist!)
Taking things further
Want to ponder on all of this a bit more? Kathy Fish at
has some wonderful thoughts on openings in flash fiction which are equally as relevant to longer works.Want to delve into how best to anchor your reader at the start of a story and how to set a platform for flow? Why not spend two weeks writing with me in September on my Go With The Flow course? This course covers how we best set out reader in time and place, how we transition from one idea to the next, how we can vary our sentences for rhythmical flow, and how we create flow at the levels of theme, perspective and voice.
Recent publication
Maybe there is (Flash Fiction Magazine)
Recent interview
Galaxies as genres (New Flash Fiction Review)
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, could you do me a favour and share it with all your writing friends using the “share” button below? Word of mouth is so important to a freelancer like myself.
And if you’re able to spare a couple of pennies, I’m very grateful to those of you who choose to buy me a virtual coffee each month. It allows me to keep this newsletter free and accessible to all.
Always lovely to read your thoughts, Matt.