Starting in the Middle

Writing narrative requires many decisions, one of which is where to start your story or scene. Do you start at the beginning, middle, or end? Do you give all the context up front or fill in as you go?

No one answer is correct, but the better choices will draw in the reader immediately, increase tension, and set up the climax and resolution. This general rule applies to how you weave together the plot points in a narrative as well as to how you develop setting and character.

Inherent History
A character will always have untold history and backstory, even if it’s her first day of existence, unless she has no lineage, no process of coming into being, and no cause. And our experience with characters (always with a backstory) and settings (always with a backstory) and plot (again, always with a backstory), gives us a clue to how we should  attack good narrative: we encounter the world always in the middle of things.

Often beginning writers will start in the middle of the action, then feel they need to give pages of backstory to explain what’s happening. Not only is this method boring, but it’s also unnecessary. The trick is to learn how to capture that “interrupted middle” moment so that the reader has all the context she needs. Have you ever walked into a room where a toddler has been up to some mischief? Broken jar and chocolate all over his mouth? Scribbles on walls and crayons sticking out of her pocket? I bet you used a few good detective skills and knew exactly what had happened. Those are the detective skills that will help you clue your reader in, too.

Dissecting an Example
Consider the following excerpt that begins a chapter near the middle of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude:
 

Sitting in the wicker rocking chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched Aureliano José, his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His blackheads bled and he cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz, and when it was all over he looked the same as before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that she had begun to grow old at that moment.
 

Now this passage is in the middle of Márquez’s story and so if we are reading the book, we have more information on both of these characters at this point. But you don’t need that information to understand and be drawn into what’s happening, do you? It might help you to know that a motif of the novel has to do with memory and the passage or nonpassage of time, but even that note is unnecessary for this well-crafted scene opener.

• “Sitting in the rocking chair”—We have a foundational setting.

• "With her interrupted work in her lap”—We have context for the time period and character, and a hint that we are in the middle of action.

• “Amaranta watched Aureliano José…”—Something important interrupted the perspective character’s work, and here’s what it is.

• “First shave,” “blackheads,” “blond fuzz”—We don’t have to be told Aureliano is Amaranta’s teenage son; We discover it right here.

• “When it was all over he looked the same as before”—This moment isn’t important for Aureliano; it’s important for Amaranta and tells us something about her.

• “She had begun to grow old at that moment”—Amaranta notices suddenly a jump in the passage of time, and we don’t have to be told that up till now she has felt young and full of future. But now we wonder, What will she do to try to stop the progression of time? The author has set up a trajectory and purpose for the chapter.

Inklings at Work (and Play)
Where do you start your narratives and even nonfiction illustrations? In the middle of things? Are you laying down the context with your word and detail choices, or are you going back and explaining the scene to your reader?
Try thinking of a scene between two family members where one suddenly realizes something about the other person or him/herself. Write a single paragraph that jumps into the middle of that moment, and see if you can create a scene as powerfully as Márquez. 

Márquez, Gabriel García. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1991