Okay. So, we’ve covered the first two things that a good beginning gives us: a sense of who the main character is (and how they handle things, normally), and a sense of the problem they will need to solve.

The third thing a good beginning gives is related to the first thing. It’s a picture of where the character started from so that when we see where they get to by the end of the book, we can tell how far they’ve come and how far they’ve grown.

Compare Merida at the beginning of her story to how she is at the end.

Or Elsa.

Or Anne Shirley. Definitely Anne Shirley.

Or the main character in Fish in a Tree.

What were they all like at the beginning of their stories?

Remember that we said earlier that stories that have characters who grow are often more interesting than other ones?

The way we can tell how much they’ve grown is by having a sense of where they started from. And when we compare that to who they are at the end of the story, we have a clearer sense of how far they’ve come.

Think about our story about the kid dropping the money down the sewer and asking the store guy for help (if you’re not familiar with it, start here!).

Do you have a sense of how she is likely to react?

Not really. Our brains might be tempted to fill in how we might react in that situation, though. And that, again, is because we are trying to find the first “2” of the 2+2 equation. We’ve got the second “2”, the problem. But as a reader, we don’t have enough to guess what will happen next.

And that is because that story really didn’t have a beginning.

But what if it did?

What if we gave the reader something like:

She was the shyest kid in town. Or,

She was the sneakiest kid in town. In fact, two days earlier, she stole her brother’s pacifier. Or,

She was terrified of germs. She tried her best to avoid anything that could possibly be dirty.

Each of these gives the reader a chance to anticipate what will come next. And so each of these is a possible beginning. (I mean, we would want to write more about whichever one we choose, to give a better sense of what it means to be ‘the shyest kid in town’, or whatever. But you get the idea.)

So. The beginning of a story lays out what is normal for that character. And it might not be your normal or my normal. Normal for the kid in the book Bubble was having a disease that meant he couldn’t leave his room. Ever. That isn’t anything like normal for you or I.

But it tells us what is normal for that character.

Giving us that ‘normal’ helps the reader do a 2+2 when problems come along.

And it helps the reader understand how far that character has come when we get to the end of the story. Which is really satisfying.

And that’s why a story really does need to have the beginning part of beginning, middle, and end.

Happy writing, young writer.