Summarize Your Story in the Beginning

The opening scene must grab our attention but more importantly, it must summarize what the whole story is about even if we don’t quite understand it at the time. In “Star Wars”, the opening scene shows Darth Vader’s massive starship chasing and eventually catching Princess Leia’s much smaller starship. This minor space battle foreshadows the much larger space battle that will occur in the end.

The opening sene must also introduce the story’s genre so we know what type of story we’re getting. In “Ready Or Not”, a woman marries into a rich family, completely unaware that this family is only rich because an ancestor made a pact with the devil. Anyone new introduced into the family must play a game and survive. In the hero’s case, she picks hide and seek where she must hide from all her in-laws for an entire night while they hunt and try to kill her.

Since the entire story is about the hero trying to survive in a mansion while being hunted down, the opening scene teases us by showing the fate of another person who lost at hide and seek and was killed. Even though we don’t quite know what’s going on, this opening scene grabs our attention by creating a mystery, and this mystery only makes sense in hindsight when we realize what the hero must overcome to survive the night. Watch this opening scene from “Ready Or Not” to see how it neatly summarizes the entire story.

In “Little Miss Sunshine”, the opening scene shows the hero, a little girl, intently studying a beauty pageant on TV so she can mimic the gestures of the contestants. This foreshadows the hero’s eventual goal of competing in a beauty pageant.

The opening scene also introduces the hero’s father who defines his philosophy that the world consists of either winners or losers and if you’re not a winner, you’re a loser. That philosophy is what the hero must battle throughout the entire story. Watch this opening scene to see how this works in “Little Miss Sunshine”.

In “Prey”, the opening scene shows a mysterious light descending from a stormy sky. Although the hero watches this, she has no idea what’s to come but we do. In “Prey”, the Predator arrives during the time when Native Americans ruled the land and “Prey” is all about this Native American woman eventually fighting the Predator. The opening scene hints at this upcoming battle as shown below:

When writing your own story, focus on crafting an opening scene that sets the stage for the entire story. Most likely we won’t quite know what’s going on in the beginning, but you as the writer must know. That way you can drop plenty of hints and summarize the story in the opening. Only in hindsight will the opening scene truly make sense but as the writer, you must create enough mystery in that opening scene to grab our attention and summarize the story at the same time.

Write an opening that fails to summarize your story and you’ll create a weak opening. Write an opening that summarizes your story, which means you must know what your story is about before you start writing your opening scene. So make sure you know what your story is about because if you don’t know what your story is about, writing too soon will simply waste time and increase your frustration when you have no idea where your story needs to go next.

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