Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.
If you're gonna start a story, you start from the beginning, right?
I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there.
When you write the first book of a series, you do have to be careful what you put in because then you are stuck with it.
The beginning of a book is always the hardest part for me. I'm a Chapter 3 kind of writer, which means I naturally start at Chapter 3.
I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.
Occasionally, I hear grumbles about everything being a series or a trilogy, but apart from the question of them maybe selling more books, I think that there's a real problem in trying to introduce a new world or a new concept while also getting your reader to pay close attention to your characters and themes.
I did not know at first that it would be a series; I discovered after the first novel that I had more to say about it, so I did another. And another, and then the readers demanded yet more.
There is no 'right' way to begin a novel, but for me, plot has to wait. The character comes first.
There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.