Writing: Beginnings and Endings

One of the most difficult decisions an author must make while writing a novel involves where a particular story actually starts. I’m not sure even now whether Song of the Silk Weaver (my work in progress) really begins in the right place, although I’ve questioned it often enough to feel reasonably certain that it does. But I will keep the possibilities open until the last minute, just in case the novel goes somewhere I don’t expect—well, somewhere else I don’t expect, as it has already veered off-course more than once, with one character absolutely refusing to perform the role assigned to him.

The beginning, you see, determines the endpoint, and vice versa. The middle has some wiggle room, if only because readers like to be kept guessing for a while. Who wants to be able to predict exactly how a character gets from A to Z? How boring a reading experience that would be!

But despite the desire to maintain suspense and keep things lively, novels need structure. Surprises—yes, a few of those heighten the sense of discovery. An ending that comes out of left field and a beginning that offers no clue as to what might happen, or even drags on for half a dozen chapters before establishing the main character’s goal—no. Readers want to be diverted and entertained, not left scratching their heads.

So where does a story start? Most commonly, it begins with what is often called the “inciting incident”—the event that propels the story’s hero(ine) along the road to change. More accurately, the story begins right before the inciting incident, in the main character’s ordinary world, which in some important way fails to satisfy that person. We have to know what the character needs but does not have—and often does not even know she needs, sensing only a vague discontent—in the world that to her represents normality.

Only then can we appreciate (because in a well-crafted novel the main character will certainly not appreciate, any more than most of us like being forced to confront change in real life) the opportunity for self-fulfillment that the inciting incident offers. The hero, thrust onto a new path not of his choosing, fights to get back to the former world, which seems so much more comfortable and familiar than the new course demanded of him. We’re usually midway through the book before not just the need to change but also the benefits of giving up old habits become obvious to the person at the center of the story.

This is why the beginning determines the endpoint. When the heroine stops fighting the inevitable and embraces the benefits of entering a new stage, she receives her reward and this particular stage of her story has nowhere else to go. Life continues offstage, in fiction as in reality, and may in time give rise to new stories with their own inciting incidents, but those tales will exist in their own, linked universe with their own developmental arcs.

Let’s give an example or two, to make the process clearer.

In the first of my Russian novels, The Golden Lynx, the heroine is Nasan, a Tatar khan’s daughter who yearns to become like the legendary heroines of old (yes, the Turks and Tatars had female champions as well as male ones). Alas, because it’s the sixteenth century, her parents plan to marry her off to a khan or other high-ranking male, so that she can cement their political contacts and bear sons for her husband. This is Nasan’s normal world, which pleases her in some ways but feels profoundly constricting in others. Her inciting incident is the murder of her younger brother, Girei, during an unauthorized foray into the nearby forest. Nasan’s parents blame her for her brother’s death, and she blames herself—although the real culprit is, of course, the murderer, a Russian nobleman determined to carry on a vendetta with Nasan’s father.

But Nasan’s guilt serves another purpose in the story. After her father avenges her brother’s death, the two sides agree to a political marriage between Nasan and Daniil, the cousin of the Russian who killed Girei. Nasan’s father uses her guilt to coerce her agreement to the match, and thus pushes her farther along the path to change. Now she not only has to fight harder to achieve her dream but she also has to confront the reality of her parents’ expectations and find a way to balance their demands against her own. When she finally cobbles together a compromise, that story ends. Although Nasan is a perfect example of how one tale can spark another—we return to her developing relationship with Daniil and her ongoing attempts to achieve her ultimate goal throughout the next four books.

In Song of the Steadfast—my most recently published novel, now three months out in the world—the story begins with Anna feeling sorry for herself at her best friend’s wedding. As far as Anna knows, her own love, Yuri, has been sent to a northern monastery at the tsar’s command, and they may never be reunited. So although the people around her are happy, she hovers on the brink of despair.

Enter the inciting incident. Yuri, Anna discovers in chapter 1, has escaped from the monastery and wants her to elope with him. Being sixteen and desperately in love, Anna agrees, even though for a young noblewoman in the 1540s such behavior is scandalous. But behaving rashly has its costs—external, as in fighting off another suitor determined to win Anna for himself, whether she wants him or not, but more importantly internal, because Anna has always prided herself on behaving like a good, obedient daughter and now she is doing nothing of the sort. Only when she fully confronts the expectations placed on her, her own need to achieve something different for herself, and the obstacles placed in her way can she attain her goal: a safe and socially accepted future with Yuri.

Song of the Silk Weaver has a quite different cast and setting. Yet despite the differences, the basic structure of Silk Weaver is the same. The novel opens in the house of a Muslim merchant who has three wives. My heroine, Kiraz, is the second in this trio, so she has neither the prestige of the chief wife nor the sex appeal of the youngest, who’s still in her teens. Kiraz likes her comfortable home and she enjoys weaving silk, but she’s unhappy about being out of favor and deeply distressed about the chief wife’s takeover of the son that Kiraz gave birth to and nurtured for two years. If she leaves, though, she will lose even the limited contact with her son that she currently has, and that, even more than her desire for economic stability, keeps her stuck.

The first sign of change is the arrival of two young, handsome Italian merchants, one of whom is clearly attracted to Kiraz. She at first resists his attempts at flirtation, but then her life undergoes a sudden, unwanted shift (the inciting incident). Kiraz has no choice but to respond, and her first instinct is to return to the nomadic camp where she grew up and, in doing so, to reconnect with the person she used to be before her marriage. And it just so happens that those Italian merchants are heading north, passing by the place where Kiraz spent her first fourteen years …

During the journey, Kiraz’s decisions set off a chain of events—involving herself and others—that eventually lead her to the place she needed to reach all along but couldn’t imagine when she was stuck in that house with two other wives. While fighting the need to change, she also makes various mistakes, and the consequences of those will play out in future books. But this story concludes at the moment when Kiraz understands what she’s done and what she wants, accepts the need for change, and in doing so, frees herself to enjoy the rewards of having made the right decision.

I can’t say more than that about this particular book without giving away too many plot points, but I can say that if you know what to look for, you can identify the inciting incident in almost any novel. It will be the event that splits the heroine’s normal world into a before and an after. That incident sets up the character arc (and by extension the arc of the plot, which intertwines with and drives the main character’s development). However long and winding the road, that journey pushes the hero to a new stage of development—not perfection, because perfection doesn’t exist in this world—but a place where the old need is met and the character can rest, at least for a while. And when he, she, they, or it gets there, the story ends.