The Tao of Inking

We are the gods of novels.  The world-building deities.  The creators of timeless characters. We are the architects of theme and plot from alpha to omega.  When it comes to attracting an agent, editor, publisher, or reader it has been said that the beginning is the most important part of a manuscript.  If the beginning is not outstanding, the ending will never be seen. While true, our focus as writers, way before we get our feet wet in the industry, is to produce breathtaking works of art, and I say such a tight lens on just the beginning is not where the focus should be.  Often, after the ending is written, it sparks the moment where the story should begin, and it’s imperative that the opening scene nails it. 

We want readers to pick up our novels and experience a rush from start to finish without hurling the book against the wall, setting it on fire, or worse, blacklisting our names to the do-not-read-ever pile. If a writer has not found that outstanding ending, the beginning is nothing. The beginning makes a promise that the ending has to deliver on and the ending breathes life into the story.  We have to be dynamic writers who connect the greater parts in a way that leaves the reader breathless.  

For the purposes of this blog, let’s identify roughly numbers one through three as the Beginning of a story and eleven through twelve as the Ending.  We’ll revisit this.  So what comes first, the chicken or the egg?  Here’s the easy answer:  the Title.  We’re all readers and we know outside of personal recommendations, we grab books off the shelf based on the title, but something more than that keeps us from putting the book down. We may glance at the back cover blurb or scan the inner flap for a summary, but ultimately before most of us checkout, we’re going to do one of two things:  read a bit of the beginning or read a bit of the ending.  I know some of us have a dysfunctional relationship with spoilers.   

I believe the logic behind this is to see if the book will be worth the time it takes to read the whole thing. Imagine being able to see the end of the relationship before it begins. If you know it’s going to end in break-up, you might not even waste your time. Or better yet, you might amend the way you approach the relationship in the beginning. The takeaway here is that both the beginning and the ending carry a great deal of weight and neither is allowed to disappoint.   

Let me know if you agree. In my next posts I’ll get to the bones of both beginnings and endings and we can see how they measure up.