3 places you can start writing

Whether you’re writing a blog or a best-seller, you need to know where to make a start. Should it be at the beginning? Not necessarily. There are good arguments for starting in the middle, or even at the end.

The beginning

Lewis Carroll outlines this method quite neatly in Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen advises Alice to:

“Start at the beginning, go through to the end and then stop.”

The beginning is indeed the obvious place to start for any form of writing. This method has the advantage there will probably be less editing and reworking needed later on (though this is by no means certain). For copywriting adverts, sales letters and blogs posts, there is definitely something to be said for getting the headline and the first paragraph absolutely right first and then letting the rest flow from there.

But I rarely start writing anything at the beginning.

The middle

Starting in the middle is a time-honoured narrative technique, and one used by many classical authors, including Homer and Virgil. The Roman poet Horace, in his Ars Poetica (the Art of Poetry), says the ideal for an epic poem is to start ‘in media res‘ - in the middle of things.

The reader is plunged into the thick of the action, and the events that came before are narrated in various ways, such as flashbacks and characters talking.

The reader is plunged into the thick of the action.

Actually, this technique is used for just about every type of story telling. Where does a detective novel start? Or an episode of Colombo for that matter? They start with the murder, a dead body. Is that the beginning of the story? No, of course not. It’s where our hero, the detective, enters the tale. But it’s his job to uncover the first half of the story, which really begins (probably) where the victim and the murderer first meet. The detective has to find out how and why the murder happened, and who did it, of course.

Or take the Harry Potter novels. Book one starts with Harry as a baby being delivered to his Aunt and Uncle’s house. It seems like a beginning. But it’s really a mid-point of the story. Harry spends the next seven books finding out about the past, learning about story events that took place before he was born. If JK Rowling has started at the beginning, she might have begun With Dumbledore as a young man and worked through, relating events in strict chronological order. The books would not have been nearly as gripping, or successful.

The technique is not confined to novels and movie scripts however. Story telling is one of the most important techniques of copywriting. Even blog posts can be a form of story telling. Remember the ‘in media res’ technique, and see if you can use to create a more interesting structure for your posts.

The end

There’s a lot to be said for starting at the end and working back towards the beginning. Novelists often create the ending first, at least in their imaginations, so that they always know where they are headed. JK Rowling famously had the end of book seven of the Harry Potter series written before the first book had been published.

An effective way to jump-start the writing process.

When writing a business report, an article, or crafting a piece of copy, such as a company brochure or product leaflet, starting at the end often makes sense. Sometimes it’s a way of dealing with some of the more boring details and factual information. Writing it, sorting it, tidying it up is a chore that has to be done.

It’s a good way to learn about the subject in hand and get the main arguments clear in your mind. By working back towards the beginning, you are still crafting the argument, you’re simply doing it in reverse.

One of the great advantages of this technique is that it is often a lot less intimidating to start at the end. You can tell yourself that you’re not really starting the main writing part of the assignment. You’re just tidying things up and shaping them.

At times when you find yourself prevaricating and doing anything rather than writing, this technique is an effective way to jump-start the writing process and get some valuable work done.

There’s something further to say about starting at the end, of course, and that involves the conclusion.

An academic essay might leave the conclusion to the end. But for many forms of writing, you’re better off putting it at the start, to act as a summary.

This is how news stories are written - with the whole story encapsulated in the first paragraph.

It’s easier for your reader to follow your thoughts if they already know where the argument is headed.

Starting with the conclusion gives a stronger opening. It gives weight and punch to your opening section and should help to grab attention and draw your reader in.

It is also good manners to give your reader an idea of the main thrust of the article, so that they can easily choose whether or not this is something they want to read. Most people don’t want to read a whole business report before being told the main idea, for example. Give them the main facts up front so they can decide if they want to read the rest or not.

Mix them up

So where should you start? Clearly a lot depends on what you are writing. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. I’ll often jump around and use all three methods when writing something.

For example, when I came to write this blog post, I started with the title. Then I jumped to the third section (’the end’) and wrote most of that. Then I did the ‘beginning’ section. Then I wrote the ‘middle’ section. And finally I wrote the intro paragraph last of all. Then I went through it all a few times adding things and tidying up.

But perhaps that’s just me - disorganised and jumping all over the place… What works best for you?

Stumble it!