ʀᴏsᴇ ; wrote:яσттωєιlєя wrote:Well, I know what I want to write about and I also know about the conflict... it's just the first few paragraphs I'm struggling with. I'm writing it in diary format - it's kind of one girl's experience of the end of the world. But because I'm writing it like a diary, she doesn't actually know what will happen the next day, etc. So it's hard to make it interesting enough for the reader to want to keep reading, when it starts with just a normal day.
I want to make a point of the fact that it was just a normal day, like any other. But I can't think of how to actually start it. Darn, I can't do the first sentence of stories. Too hard.
Wow, I make that sound really confusing. Sorry. D:
And thanks for the advice. c:
I think this won't only help Rottweiler but others too :3
Though I disagree about the "you have to introduce the reader to a normal situation for your character before you throw them into the problem" part. I've read a few novels that started immediately with a big conflict. To name one, the character was tied up to a corpse and locked away, losing and regaining consciousness, but the introduction worked perfectly because everything was made clear - the stakes and the character's situation, although the description pretty much focussed on the character's thoughts (because she's obviously not well and, well, because she's tied to a friggin corpse) and on the corpse. It's a dead body, and she's tied to it. Which can only mean that she'll probably suffer the same fate if she doesn't find a way out of this mess.
But, please don't describe how the character isn't waking up, then goes brushing his/her teeth, then goes eating breakfast and all other insignificant stuff that doesn't matter at all. Even if you want to show that it's a normal day for her, the situation isn't quite normal, and you have to work it in subtly, or the story won't matter. Like Rose said - describe the small oddities that others maybe wouldn't notice. Foreshadow the end of the world.
And then, are you keeping a diary? Are you regularly writing one? I have one which I don't use too frequently (*cough*), but I know that I don't describe my usual day in the diary. In my understanding, that would be a waste of paper and ink, since that's what happens almost every day anyway. I only write down what is unusual, what is exciting, when I had an especially bad day, when my day was exceptionally good, why it was bad or good, my inner thoughts I share with no one. Stuff like that.
And for a diary story, stuff like that provides the ground for a better story than diaries that really only depict the routines of the day.
A diary story is still a story, so you should still only write the things that matter. If you know what happens later, you can hide hints at later events in the first entry - other characters that play a major role, places that are important, future events that may be important but will be influenced by the end of the world. If you're going to include how her relationships will change because of what will happen later, you can depict those relationships. Change is important.
For example, she could have a fight with her best friend, and her best friend later dies without her having resolved that conflict. Would be kinda tragic, but then again, end-of-the-world stories don't tend to be happy.
