A thread on story beginnings, since I'm procrastinating the start of my current story...

At the beginning, a story opens itself for the heroine, & she chooses how to respond. It's the start of a relationship between her & story. 1/8

#StrictlyWriting #WritingCommunity

Her choices may not be good ones, but after all that's what story is here for - to help her learn better choices, stronger ways of being her true self. 2/8

It's not really so helpful to talk about beginnings, though. Nothing is ever new. A heroine stands always in the residue of what has come before, and it never leaves her. Even in the deepest, darkest moment, when she's facing the dragon in its dreadful lair ... 3/8

... she brings with her childhood memories, and things her mother said, and scars from smaller dragons she's met along the way.

So a beginning is really just a reforming, often a deepening, of the long tale her soul is telling over and again. 4/8

How she steps over the threshold into story, the choice she makes & the beliefs underpinning it ... eg believing she's not good enough, or that the world is a dark place ... is for better or worse what she needs to resolve to get her HEA. 5/8

In romance, the hero helps her with this. He offers a truth she may not have ever known about herself. Eg, that she's smart, beautiful, capable, lovable. He helps her create a better story about herself & the world. (And she helps him the same.) 6/8

Her story may involve fighting dragons or running contraband or falling in love, but it's always at heart about her relationship with her world, & with the stories she believes about herself. 7/8

And the ending should bring us back to the beginning in some way, but everything essential has changed, and from the bones and seeds of the story she's just experienced she can go forth to create others that are beautiful and true.