There are lots of ways to begin a story, including lots of creative ways that have nothing to do with a character. If you open with setting, that setting has to have attitude, voice, opinion–in short, a life of its own. Which makes it a character. In fact, I recently read an excellent book in which the author did just that. He described a river, in a town, and the story is set in the town. It's about the town as much if not more than it's about the people.
Think about the difference between a story about a town and a story about the people in the town for a second. If you can work that out, then you can figure out a lot about how stories work. If you can figure out how stories work, then you won't have nearly so many problems figuring out how to start them, how to keep going, and how to finish them.
Anyway, back to characters.
Like I said, there are lots of ways to write and these are just a few of the things that I look at when I pick a character to open a book and how I depict them in that opening.
I need someone resilient. Not necessarily tough or strong physically or mentally, but someone that's going to hold up to all the pressure I put on them. If they're sobbing into their hands and don't know who they are, where they're going or what they're going to do by the end of the first chapter, they'll just end up being a sort of soupy substance I push around to the end. Not only is it no fun to do, it's no fun to read about.
I need someone who can change, even if it's only a little bit. Characters that can't ever change are a piece of setting more than they are a character. Think about that. Again, if you can figure out how a character can be a piece of setting, it's going to make things easier and more interesting … and more complicated and sometimes you'll feel like you're going crazy. But that's all good.
And I'm the sort of writer who wants the reader to root for my opening scene character. Which means s/he has to either be likable, or have a worthy cause that the reader can appreciate.
Then, it's just a matter of giving this character a problem.
This is all really abstract and general. I apologize for that. But don't worry. It's just groundwork for everything else about character.
When I start thinking about an opening scene and who I put into it, I have to be in a situation where I won't have any distractions for a bit. It's like looking into a scrying bowl or a crystal ball. Music is grand, silence is fine, a noisy crowd–all good as long as no one or nothing in particular is going to bug me. Because picking a character and opening a story with that character takes chess master concentration. It might only take a minute, but it needs to be an undisturbed minute. You can have a cat in the lap if the cat is asleep or has its eyes closed and is purring.
I have to think about the inspiration for the story, and then place a character (preferably not me unless I'm writing a memoir! no Mary Sues or Gary Stus, thank you) in the heart of that inspiration. I have to decide gender. If there's going to be love (whether it's familial, sexual, fraternal, whatever) will it be a man's love or kinship story, a woman's love or kinship story, and will it be with the same or opposite gender? I don't pick in a political way. Say that my inspiration is a fight to the death between a deadly winged plant being and my hero. Does my heart stir more if I imagine that this person's most important person is there, or away, and are they in danger, or safe, or helping? Are they powerful, or weak, and what feels the most striking/poignant/beautiful/intense to me when I think about this inspiring scene? And if this character doesn't have a relationship, how are they holding up on their own? Will they win (and what will it cost) or will they lose (and what little lift will I put into this tragedy?)
Then I have to extrapolate from that inspiration point to the beginning. Has this person met the antagonist? If so, I have to work out their relationship at this point, and then figure out if the opening scene is going to be about a conflict beginning with them, or (I usually prefer this second choice) will the opening conflict give the readers a good idea of who they're dealing with before I introduce the real problem? And it's really fun to make the opening seem like it has nothing to do with the big conflict, but deep down, it turns out to be all connected.
So let's say that the character is tearing their hair out trying to do something with the composition of eggshells, and they overreact to their boss pressuring them to move on … but later (maybe chapter two, maybe chapter eleven) the readers find out that this egg project has to do with the survival of the human race because of the threat the winged plant creature poses.
I usually discard the first place I stick them in in my brain. Lab–ho hum. How many times have you seen scientists in a lab doing research and it's going badly? I can do better. Scientist chilling at home, trying to figure out the problem on their laptop because they're obsessed, and they get an email from the boss. Waaay better. I'd love to write the emotional email that the character then trashes because they decide it's a bad idea to hit send just before they click the mouse. If I think for a bit more I might even come up with a better physical spot to start.
That really leaves me with just one more thing to do with my character in an opening scene.
Before I actually start to write it, I have to think about what is going to rain on the character's parade. The best advice I've gotten on scene writing is to have a strong contrast between the emotion I open with and the emotion I end with. So maybe the character begins totally frustrated, but ends up inspired and eager to get to work. Or maybe the character ends up being terrified. Either way, if I subconsciously aim for that emotion and then start writing, I don't even have to have a plan. I'll be mentally prepared for everything to change, and it will change.
If it's a memoir, that may seem to be a little more tricky, but it's not if you look at the story dispassionately for that uninterrupted moment and think about where that first chapter will begin and end. Because even though you're (sort of) depicting things that really happened, which seems to give you no choice, you actually have a huge amount of choice about where you begin and where you end that first chapter in the grand scheme of all of your personal history.
Next time I'd like to talk about the opening setting. Your choices about character and the initial problem that character faces will suggest setting, but how do you present it, and at what pace?