I watched the Oscars last night.  (Best. Oscars. Ever.  #OscarTwitterPic  #PizzaDelivery)

I’d only seen one of the movies in the Best Picture category – Gravity.  In fact, I saw it this weekend, in our home theater, where I think I only breathed twice in an hour.  Terrifying, in a non-horror-film, wow-I-never-want-to-be-there way.

The story, in a nutshell, is about a scientist who is working on the space shuttle – specifically OUTSIDE the shuttle in a spacewalk – when, due to a crazy set of circumstances — she gets untethered and thrown into space.  Her quest is to somehow get back to earth.

It’s an amazing movie – the special effects will blow your mind.

And, it’s a great example of starting a movie with just the right amount of PIPE.

Pipe is the distance between the first sentence and the Noble Quest. As an author, you’re opening the faucet of your story, and the pipe is how long it takes for it to start spilling out. The shorter the pipe, the sooner your reader receives the benefit of the story.

However, many authors suffer from Too Much Pipe Syndrome, or the belief that they must tell their reader everything about their main character before the story starts for the reader to enjoy the story.  Another way to put it is they start their story way too early.

Consider this:  when you meet someone, do you get to know who they are (and like them) by the information you know about them, or the events you experience with them?

Now, add this:  Would you rather be curious, even surprised by events in a story, willing to watch them unfold, or would you like to be told the significance of them before you start your story?

Let’s try it:

In Gravity, the story opens with the heroine outside the space shuttle, fixing equipment. We see that she is good at what she does, and from the dialogue, we know she’s had about 6 months of training before she started the mission. We don’t know what her mission specifically is, just that she is a competent scientist. We also know that she is tethered to the shuttle and not wearing a jet pack.

Suddenly, mission control aborts their mission, telling them that space debris is hurtling their direction. We sense the hurry, but don’t understand the significance until suddenly it begins buffeting them and one of their fellow astronauts is hit.  Then, the space station is bulleted, and she is suddenly hurtled into space.

The story starts there.

What do we know?  They’re in space. She’s competent enough to be in space, but isn’t a full-fledged astronaut.  And, she doesn’t have a jet pack.

But, what if we started the story with her in the shuttle, getting her orders to fix the shuttle, watch her suit up, maybe joke with the other astronauts, and then go out to fix the equipment?

Too much pipe. The story isn’t about her failed mission to fix her equipment. Nor is it about her relationships with the other astronauts. Or even, her ability to save the space station and or her job.

The story is about a woman floating in space who needs to get to earth.

When you’re considering where to start your story, factor in two elements:

1. Delicacy:  How much does your reader have to know about your character to care about them? In this case, we only need to know that she’s in space, she’s alone and that she doesn’t have a jet pack. That is global enough for us to worry about anyone.

1. Resonance: How difficult is it for us to understand the significance of the inciting incident?

For example, take a movie like Braveheart, which has a LONG pipe.  We have to understand the loss of his wife for us to understand what propels our hero into war against the English.

However, it is not difficult for us to understand the significance of getting launched out into space without a tether.  Yikes!

Another way to look at it is to ask:  How believable is my Inciting Incident, and my character’s subsequent Noble Quest?  Put in just enough home world for us to understand the motivation – then launch us into the story.

The key is to start the story with only the essential information, and as close to the Inciting Incident and start of the Noble Quest as possible.

Next well, we’ll talk about understanding the ending to craft the essential element of the First Act:  Your Character’s Greatest Fear.

Go! Write something Brilliant!

PS – Interested in getting feedback on your first chapter?  Try entering our Frasier Contest!  Details HERE!