Four Approaches to Beginnings

In my model of story structure, the beginning is all about demonstrating the Flawed Status Quo.

Everyone agrees that you have to hook the reader right away.  But what does that mean?   Does it mean you always have to open on an explosion or a gun shot?  Of course not.   There are as many possible hooks as there are people.  You've got some options, and these options can be grouped into four main categories.   Here they are from strongest to weakest.

Action Scene

This is the James Bond beginning.  Open on the hero already in the middle of doing something interesting.  It doesn't literally have to be action, but it does have to be something that tells you a lot about the hero.

One often-referred-to example of this technique is Raiders of the Lost Ark, where we open on Indiana Jones cleverly maneuvering his way through a booby-trapped temple.  By the end of that famous sequence, we know quite a lot about Indy: he's an archaeologist/treasure hunter, he's handy with a whip, he's fond of his hat, and he fears nothing—except snakes.  We even know who his main antagonist is, after Dr. Belloq shows up and steals Indy's prize.  Raiders is an example of a Flat Character Arc, so this beginning doesn't show us Indy's flawed status quo, but it does demonstrate the flaw in the world around Indy, namely that people have no respect for history.  And that's what the story is all about.

A more subtle "non-action" example of the Action Scene beginning would be Mrs. Doubtfire. In that film, we open on Daniel Hillard doing voice-over work for a cartoon.  When the cartoon bird begins smoking a cigarette, Hillard objects, and quits when the director refuses to acknowledge his objection.  Not only is the scene hilarious (partially owing to the fact that Hillard is played by the inimitable Robin Williams), but it tells us almost everything about the character; he's funny, principled to a fault, and cares deeply for children—especially his own.  It demonstrates his flawed status quo as well: he is too idealistic to cope with adult life, and therefore is not an ideal father to his children.

You can see how wildly different these two examples are, and yet how they achieve the same purpose.  The stories open on the character doing something both interesting for its own sake, and telling.  Not only will this technique quickly get your readers on you're character's side, but it also easily demonstrates the flawed status quo your character needs to escape.

In Media Res

In Media Res is a Latin phrase that translates "In the middle of things".  This term has been applied to story beginnings like those mentioned above, but in current terminology it signifies beginnings where the story shows some moment from the middle, or even the end of the story proper, and then hits the rewind button.  This is the story form that shows you a man teetering on the edge of a cliff, then cuts to black and says "One month ago..."

One popular example of In Media Res would be David Fincher's adaptation of Fightclub.  There, we open on Tyler Durden holding a gun in the mouth of our nameless protagonist.  The pair exchange some witty banter, and soon the film rewinds to the time before our protagonist met Tyler.   The entire movie is a flashback of sorts, as we don't return to the moment with the gun until near the very end. By the time we do, we know a lot more about what's going on, and the scene is twice as interesting the second time around.  This scene demonstrates the character's flawed status quo in two ways: the most obvious way is that he lives a chaotic and unbalanced life, of which he has no control.  The more subtle way (SPOILER ALERT) is that he has suffered a psychotic break that differentiates the two sides of his personality: the chaotic-but-assertive Tyler Durden, and the passive follower that he actually is.  In the end, he brings the two together, overcoming his passivity while regaining control of his life.

Batman Begins would be another example, where the In Media Res scene is closer to the beginning of the story.  We open on Bruce Wayne in prison, then the film back up to show us how he got there, then resumes forward momentum, showing us how he becomes Batman.  This beginning demonstrates Bruce's flawed status quo quite handily: he is so broken and unbalanced by his parents' death that he subjects himself to all sorts of danger.

This technique is as powerful as it is popular.  It has the same strength as the Action Scene opening, which is to begin with something interesting already in progress.  The biggest strength of In Media Res is that once the audience sees that opening moment, they're hooked, and dying to see how the characters were led to that point.

The main strength, however, is also the main weakness.  By showing us a moment of the story further down the line, you tell your audience that the character or characters will overcome whatever obstacles stand between them and that moment.

For example, if we begin a haunted house story with a scene of the heroine doing battle with a ghost, then rewind to show her getting into the house, being creeped out, discovering the house's history, seeing evidence of the ghost, etc., some of the tension is removed because we know she will survive until that climactic moment where she fights the ghost. 

In Fight Club, we knew that our nameless protagonist would overcome whatever obstacles were thrown at him until the scene with the gun in his mouth.   It doesn't necessarily take away our ability to enjoy a story, but if you're going to do this, you need to make sure to fill the bulk of your story with a lot more twists and turns.  In Media Res is a strong technique, but it comes with risks.

The Frame Story

A Frame Story is exactly what it sounds like; it's a story that "goes around" or "holds" the main story.   The Frame Story can either be the main character or characters at a different point in time than the main story, or it could be a story not even set in the same "story universe".  If you're going for an omniscient narrator, this can be one of the strongest techniques to give that narrator personality and credibility.

An good example of a Frame Story that centers on the same character as the main story but at a different time, is Forrest Gump.   In that film, the Frame Story is Forrest at the bus stop, telling his life's story to whoever happens to sit next to him.   The main story is, of course, Forrest's life.   The Forrest at the bus stop has already experienced all these things, and is therefore able to add little bits of perspective as he retells the events that make up the bulk of the movie.  Then near the end, the main story ends, and the Frame Story jumps to the forefront as Forrest reunites with his wayward love Jenny, and meets his son.  Forrest Gump is another example of a Flat Arc: Forrest incites wonder and kindness in the world around him by maintaining his attitude of quiet, low-minded dignity.  But the beginning highlights the flaw in the world around Forrest: the people who join him on the bench are unable to see the world with the child-like wonder Forrest does, and this is succinctly summed up when Forrest compliments the first woman's shoes, and she responds by saying her feet hurt.  Forrest sees the good in everything, but the world mostly sees the flaws.  Their awareness of the flaws is their flaw.

A perfect example of a Frame Story set in a separate story world would be The Princess Bride.  There, the Frame Story is the grandpa reading the book to his sick grandson, and the main story is the tale of Wesley and Buttercup.   The interplay between the two stories gives rise to a lot of great jokes, and even a few tender moments.  This Frame Story has a particularly interesting relationship with the flawed status quo.  The story of Wesley and Buttercup is a Flat Arc story if there ever was one: They both believe so unquestioningly in true love, and it lights up the world around them.  But the sick grandson's story is a Positive Arc.  The flaw in his status quo is demonstrated when he asks his grandpa "Is this a kissing book?"  The grandson has no interest in true love, but by the end of the story, when he allows the grandpa to read the final kissing scene, we see that he has come to appreciate the value of love and romance.

The strength of a Frame Story is that it taps into our primal "story time" state of mind.  As long as humans have existed, we've gathered around to hear each other tell stories, and everyone knows the personality of the storyteller is half the fun.  A witty narrator can make even a dull story seem more interesting.   In novels and movies, Frame Stories make us feel like we're gathered around the fire, listening to grandpa tell tales of a bygone age.

The risk here is that when you write a Frame Story, you're writing two stories, and one might end up being better than the other.  Furthermore, you have to be careful moderating how much of the Frame Story to inject into the main story—and where to inject it.  But carefully rendered, Frame Stories, and the beginnings they create, can be one of the best hooks out there.

Prologue

If you're an experienced writer, or if you regularly keep up with writing advice websites and periodicals, you'll know that there is something of a movement against Prologues these days.  Many agents and acquisitions editors see "Prologue" on the first page of a manuscript and never read another word.  This is because historically, Prologues tend to be long-winded, info-dumpy, and flat our boring.  But they don't have to be, and some stories really make a good case for including a Prologue.

A traditional Prologue is the "story before the story", a summation of all the background information that sets up the main story.  In this way, prologues can be the simplest method of demonstrating the flawed status quo.  Butf the author simply lays all this information at the reader's feet, telling it all, rather than showing it, Prologues can be dry indeed.   The problem with dumping a bunch of info right at the beginning is that a) it's just not that interesting to read, and b) by the time readers need to know the information, they will have forgotten most of it.

But there is a modern approach to Prologues that still has some validity.   Modern Prologues are expressed as actual scenes instead of great thundering blocks of narrative.   They are still Prologues because they present a scene that takes place before the main plot arc.   Often, this scene will highlight a theme, or provide a key piece of information that helps draw the reader into the story proper.  Another modern approach to the Prologue is to show the hero in a "pre-heroic" state, I.E. as a child, or before they claimed whatever power made them heroic.

Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring has a rather obvious prologue, but Jackson wisely chose to present the prologue as an actual scene—an epic battle, in fact.   It establishes the story world, and provides a few key pieces of information that help orient us to the story world and the main conflict of the series.  It demonstrates the flaw in the status quo by showing us how powerful and insidious the evil in Middle Earth is.

Tolkien's novel, on the other hand, begins with the extremely long-winded and only marginally interesting chapter "Concerning Hobbits", where we learn pretty much everything about Hobbits and the places they live...and then that information goes on to mean very little to the main plot.   It does obliquely set up the flawed status quo by showing us what simple, unheroic creatures Hobbits are, and therefore makes us even more elated when Frodo finally manages to destroy the ring, but in the end it's a boring list of facts.  It's nice to know about these things, and world-building is certainly good fun, but the fact is, the few things we needed to know about Hobbits--that they are simple, unheroic creatures--we would have learned during the natural course of the story.

"Concerning Hobbits" is perhaps one of the best examples of why traditional, narrative-heavy Prologues have dropped out of favor in the world of 140-character attention-spans. People just don't have time, and frankly, you're a fool to ask it of them.  Remember, whether you like it or not, readers follow the path of least resistance through a story.  If you build a wall of information right at the beginning, they're going to do a quick about face.

A modern Prologue would take more the shape of Finding Nemo, where we see the protagonist Marlin and his wife Coral settling into their new home.   They are attacked by a predator, and all their eggs but one—Nemo—are eaten.  This miniature "story-before-the-story" sets up the world Marlin and Nemo live in, and it sets up Marlin's character arc.   It shows us the trauma Marlin lived through that made him such a nervous, overbearing parent.  It does not actually demonstrate Marlin's flawed status quo, but instead shows the origin point of that status quo.

In the Prologue, we see Marlin in his "pre-heroic" state.  He has yet to get into the situation that forces him to face his biggest problem: overcoming his fear.  The next scene, where Marlin reluctantly takes Nemo to his first day of school, does demonstrate his flawed status quo, and Nemo's abduction forces him to confront it.

Another good example modern Prologue is Independence Day.  The first scene takes place on the moon.  It is presented to the audience from an Omniscient POV; that is, there are no characters present whose view we can identify with.  In the first few moments of the film, we see a mysterious shadow roll over the surface of the moon, and then we pan back to see that it is, in fact, a giant spaceship bound for Earth.  The Prologue continues at SETI in New Mexico, where a handful of minor characters intercept the mysterious signal that drives the plot of the first third of the movie.  If the movie were adapted to a novel scene-for-scene, this prologue would be presented as scenes, not narrative, and that is why it works.

This Prologue presents an inciting event which sets the main conflict of the movie in motion, but because it does not happen to one of the film's protagonists it does not demonstrate their respective flawed status quos.  But the movie demonstrates that in scenes that follow soon after: Steve Hiller's is demonstrated when his friend tells him he'll never get to fly into space is he marries a stripper.  David Levinson's is demonstrated when his father admonishes him for still wearing the ring from his long-failed marriage.

From this example, one can clearly see how a scene-oriented Prologue can still do a good job of relaying back story  and setting up conflict without being presented as a dry, narrative-heavy info-dump.

The Prologue is a powerful tool, if used with restraint.  The only reason it ranks fourth in this list is because it has been so misused by hack writers that most agents and editors will throw a manuscript in the slush pile at the first mention of a Prologue.   Budding writers use this device at their own risk.

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As long as you figure out a way to hook your reader, any of the above methods can get your story rolling in style.  They each have their pros and cons, but once you get to know your story a little better, you can decide what risks are worth it, and what will provide you the most value overall.

Next: Act One