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amairawrites · 6 years

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Writing your opening scene

A functional first scene in any story needs to accomplish a few things.

Introduce your protagonist and their current situation

Kick off the plot, create the major conflict, and/or introduce the antagonist

End on a note that makes the reader want to keep reading

Behind the cut, I’ll go into more detail, using To Be Vulnerable as my primary example, along with Splanky by @ladymac111 and for the things you tame by @decidedlysarah (many thanks to both of them for allowing me to use their stories as examples), and explaining why a light touch often works the best. Heads up, this will be really long. And, in keeping with my usual style, it’s just a bunch of barely-organized rambling.

Introducing your protagonist and their current situation

The goal here is not to describe your protagonist so well that the reader knows everything about them, or to bombard your reader with every facet of your protagonist’s inner struggle. Rather, you want the reader to care about the protagonist. Superficial detail, like hair color or parents’ names or favorite food, bog down the flow of the scene and distract from the reader’s focus on the protagonist. These things can be left out entirely until they are directly relevant.

Here’s how I approached Keith’s introduction in TBV:

Hands in his pockets, Keith shuffled down the nameless streets of the run-down city he reluctantly called home. The sky was dark with an evening sun obscured by clouds, threatening a cold winter rain, but business had been slow the past few weeks and, well, he needed to eat eventually. He had $20 in his pocket, though, from a quiet customer who only wanted a handjob.

Obviously, as the writer, I knew everything about Keith’s life and character at this point. I had to select the detail that was the most appropriate and made the most sense. Keith “needed to eat eventually,” so he was food insecure, and occasionally prostituted himself when he got desperate enough. He had no real attachment to where he was living. He walked in a way meant to draw as little attention to himself as possible.

As the scene unfolded, I dropped a few more details about Keith when they became relevant. He didn’t own much of anything. Despite being an occasional prostitute, he was uncomfortable with doing anything beyond oral sex.

Shiro’s introduction in for the things you tame was much more violent and bleak.

This was probably the day he died, Shiro reflected. If he was lucky. If he was unlucky, he would die sometime in the next week after several more days of torture. Sure, he could draw it out—feed the Don's goons some bad information, stall for time. The force might—might—negotiate a deal for his release. If they were smart, they'd wash their hands of him. He wasn't worth it; just a low level cop who got caught undercover. He'd fought for time for his partner, Matt, to get out, and that was worth it. He could die silent and with his honor: no regrets.

We got a few clear details about him, chief among them that he expected to die. His characterization there, as someone who was at peace with that because he believed he was doing the right thing, made him a very sympathetic character right off the bat.

@decidedlysarah then jumped straight into making the reader’s heart hurt even more for Shiro: he’d been whipped, he was in intense pain, and he was so close to blacking out that he could barely hear.

One of the advantages of fanfiction is that the reader base already knows who the characters are. @ladymac111 used this to her advantage in Splanky, with a short and heavily dialogue-driven opening scene that introduced everything via text messages and friendly snarking between siblings. There, the focus in introducing Pidge as main character was on setting up what we didn’t already know about her from the show.

Pidge's phone whistled in her pocket, a familiar riff that never failed to make her smile every time one of her dancing friends texted her.

"Ugh." Matt flopped over dramatically and put his feet in her lap. "There's nothing interesting in your life since you broke up with Kate."

"Good riddance to her."

We could glean just from this that the main characters from VLD were recast in a group of friends who all danced together. Also that Pidge had dated women in the past – that becomes relevant later in the story.

In all of these stories, the protagonist’s introduction is short, simple, and effective. Details appeared as they become relevant: Keith’s clothing in TBV when he changed his jacket and Shiro’s clothing when he noted the suit sticking to his wounds. Pidge’s religious beliefs when she and Hunk were shown playfully respecting each other’s.

But none of these stories are plotless character studies, so the authors all need to do something with them.

Kicking off the plot, creating the major conflict, and/or introducing the antagonist

This is often referred to as creating the significant situation. Something has to happen to make the story move; that is what you want to trigger here. Again, simpler is better. If there’s a political intrigue, lay out just enough to shake up the protagonist’s corner of the world; after all, they won’t necessarily know everything else that’s going on. If there’s a romance, introduce it without delving into the love interest’s life story – or even consider the Pride and Prejudice approach, where Mr. Bingley is mentioned only in name and rumor long before he meets Jane, but his possible influence is undeniable.

TBV has multiple aspects to it, and the opening scene is quite long compared to the other two examples.

Keith was immediately thrust into a sense of upheaval when he discovered his hideout was no longer private.

Another pile of rags indicated that another vagrant had taken up residence against the opposite wall.

Keith sighed. He’d have to move again. He’d need even more money to tide him over until he could build up a new customer base.

Back on the street, then.

With the loss of that stability, he went back out to work the streets again, where he came across the antagonist. The antagonist was the second character introduced, though Keith already knew him and his status as antagonist (rather than throwaway character) wouldn’t become clear until much later. He was pushy with Keith about sexual acts –

“Been a while, Pretty Boy,” the driver said, blue eyes narrowed. “What’s on offer tonight?”

Keith scowled. “Same as always. Handjobs for twenty and blowjobs for fifty.”

[...]

“And for, say, three hundred?”

“A lot of blowjobs or handjobs,” Keith answered flatly.

The guy waved a dismissive hand at him. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Blowjob. Get in.”

– eventually to the point of attempted assault to get what he wanted.

He yanked Keith off of him and nearly threw him against the passenger seat. A hand clamped down on Keith’s neck, sending his heart racing. His limbs ached with the panic flooding through them.

“I’ve been patient, and I’ve been generous. Now, Pretty Boy, you’re going to give me what I really want.”

Keith trembled. “No.”

A meaty hand pawed at his jeans, then unzipped them. “Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated fairly.”

These traits will hold true later, even as his character develops into something more complex.

The attack left Keith scared and unsure, another layer of upheaval. He retreated to the only place he considered safe (Vinny’s), and there he saw an advertisement for the Garrison and came to a decision about what he wanted to do.

Keith looked up from his gyros, staring at the commercial in confusion. Uniformed teenagers and adults alike stood in the desert, leaned over airplane cockpits, sat in classrooms filled with all manner of technical charts. A shuttle launched. A team of fighter jets wove complicated patterns through the sky.

“Go to one of those military schools. They’ll straighten your shit out.” He turned up the volume enough for Keith to hear the tail end of it.

“– at the Galaxy Garrison in Garrison, Arizona. Together, working for a brighter future.”

Strips of meat slid out of the pita and onto the plate, but Keith barely noticed that his next bite was all bread and onion. Arizona was only one state over; he could jump on one of those long-haul buses and be there the next day, if he wanted to.

An odd, heavy feeling that had nothing to do with the gyros settled in his gut.

Working for a brighter future.

He could use a brighter future.

That choice, that decision, kicked off the rest of the story.

The opening scene in for the things you tame is much shorter, as it is a short story (22k words, rather than my estimate of 150k for TBV when it’s eventually finished).

Shiro’s situation was already examined in the previous section. He expected to die; he didn’t expect to be saved from that death by someone dangerous.

But he recognized the voice, didn't he? He tried to focus. That one, just now, was the Don's son. Lotor? But he was talking to... Kay. Shit.

Kay was standing next to him now. He had a knife and he used the tip to force Shiro's chin up. Kay's lips curled in a dark smile.

“Can I keep him?” he asked. This to Lotor.

Shiro couldn't hear what Lotor said, but he definitely caught Kay's response: “He won't turn me down this time.”

And thus the plot burst into being: Shiro was afraid of Kay (implied by the internal reaction of ‘shit’ when he recognized the voice), and Kay wanted to keep him.

It’s not all dark, depressing, and violent. Splanky is an adorable story of friendship growing into love. There’s little in the way of direct conflict, and no one is an antagonist. So in the first scene, @ladymac111 had to drop just enough detail about the coming relationship growth for the reader to pick up on it. As Hunk texted Pidge:

Question for you. So you know I'm teaching the beginner drag blues class at Lindyfest this year like I always do, but I need a partner.

Pidge's heart thumped weirdly in her chest. Shay isn't doing it??

And, after getting a few more details, Pidge responded and then worried about her word choice:

"You're weirdly quiet," Matt said.

"Shut up." She stared at the phone for a little too long before she could will her thumbs to move. That sounds good. I'd love to teach the class with you. Shit, shouldn't have said love.

Between the racing heart, staring at the phone, and the immediate concern about using the word ‘love,’ it was clear that love was something Pidge tended to overthink in relation to Hunk. And, more specifically, the idea that she would love slotting herself into the role usually occupied by Hunk’s girlfriend. At no point is any of that openly stated; it was implied, simply and cleanly, by the minimal details around their text messages.

@ladymac111 even dropped a hint of the secondary plot arc, the different religious beliefs characters held (all treated incredibly respectfully throughout the story, so major props for that), as Hunk wished Pidge a happy Hanukkah.

But these stories are all more than just their first scenes, and now that they’ve drawn the reader in, they all need something to keep them.

Ending on a note that makes the reader want to keep reading

By the end of your first scene, your protagonist should have changed from who they were at the start, and the world should be just a little different to them. If they’re exactly the same, you wrote a character study and not the beginning of a story. If there is no remaining conflict, if the antagonist is already defeated, or if the plot has no direction by the time the first scene is over, you just wrote a one-shot and not the opening of a larger work. Readers only want to keep reading if there is something still at stake, something still on the horizon.

All three opening scenes built up some kind of dramatic tension: in TBV, it’s the huge and ambitious change that Keith was faced with; in for the things you tame, it’s Shiro’s expected death sentence being commuted into some unclear servitude to Kay; in Splanky, it’s Pidge taking on a role in Hunk’s class that she hadn’t before.

And all three had an open ending, where the choices and changes were left unexplored, and the reader would want to keep reading to see what happens next.

Keith considered leaving for the Garrison, but the scene ended before he actually did so.

Shiro blacked out before he could hear any more, and before his internal perspective could process Kay’s comment of “He won't turn me down this time.”

Pidge distracted herself from her internal conflict by snarking with Matt, thus avoiding thinking on the feelings long enough to make sense of them.

And in all of those, there’s something new at stake, something the reader wants to know more about.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I definitely recommend you take a look at the fics I referenced here!

To Be Vulnerable – by yours truly

for the things you tame – by @decidedlysarah

Splanky – by @ladymac111

#ramblings #to be vulnerable #story development #fanfic #splanky #for the things you tame #writing tips

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