How to Write Strong Opening and Closing Scenes

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now, here's your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. Episode 26, How do we write effective beginning and ending scenes that bookend our stories in meaningful and effective ways? Welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. My name is Brad Reed, and I want to thank you for giving the show a listen today. As usual, a great big thank you to the members of the Patreon team who keep me motivated and always striving to bring you the best content that I can, both here on the podcast as well as in the Patreon team member rewards.

If you're interested in being part of that team, check out the show website at bradreedwrites. com for more info. Today we're going to be talking about the importance of the first and last scenes of your novel or screenplay and how to make sure they are doing the absolutely vital work that they need to do in order to show the change taking place in your characters.

But first, I want to take a little time here at the beginning of the show to talk about a couple of things I want to experiment with a little bit. So about a week ago, I sent out a questionnaire to show listeners so that I could get some feedback about what you like about the show, what you don't like about it, and what we might be able to bring you of value. First of all, thank you to all of you who took a few minutes to respond to that survey with your thoughts and ideas. That means so much to me that you take the time to do that. If that's something that you'd still like to do, that is still available. You can go to our website at bradreedwrites.

com and click the feedback link at the top of the page. It's just a short little Google form. It only takes a minute or two, but the feedback is really important to us.

So thank you in advance for being part of the show in that way. One of the innovations that I've been wanting to try with the show seems like it would be of interest to you, the listeners, based on some of the feedback that I've gotten through these surveys and through talking with some of the listeners. What I want to do is experiment with having guest hosts on the show.

Now I'm not talking about guests to interview here. We'll still keep doing interviews from time to time. But I'm talking about guest hosts.

So here's what I mean by that. Back in the day, before TV talk shows just ran reruns when a host was on vacation, they actually brought in guest hosts that would fill in for somebody like Johnny Carson or whoever's show it was. And this person hosted the show. They sat in, they sat at the desk, they did everything that the normal host would have done. And I don't see shows doing that much anymore. Excuse me, much anymore.

They seem to just do replays or reruns of old shows. You actually see something like what I'm thinking about more commonly today in blogs where you'll have your normal host who's writing most of the content, but they'll occasionally feature a guest blogger for a fresh voice or a new perspective. And that's really more about what I'm talking about here.

So here's what I'm thinking, and I'd love your feedback on this as well. You could email me with it at bradreed at bradreedwrites. com to let me know what you think about it.

So from time to time, I'd like to have a guest presenter basically take over the main part of the show. So we'd still produce it and do all the introductions and the closing wise words segments and things like that. A guest presenter would really just be recording about a 20 to 25 minute segment where they're sharing a writing technique or insight that they are particularly passionate about. You could think of it like teaching a little mini lesson to a group of fellow writers.

So this could be recorded by you or by whoever the potential guest host is, hopefully using a pretty decent mic and acquired environment. And then you'd simply send me an MP3 file. Now, just like submitting anything else really, not everything that gets sent in would ultimately make it on the show, right? We'd have to consider the quality of the recording, whether or not the content would connect with the audience that we have here at the show and other things like that.

But I think this could accomplish two important things. First of all, it'll get some great new voices and perspectives on the show so that you're not always listening to me blathering on about my own style and techniques. We could open that up a little bit in a format that's a little more free flowing than even an interview is where they really get the opportunity to have some dedicated time to teach a skill or focus on a topic that they're passionate about. And secondly, it'll give us a much needed backlog of some content to help keep the show consistent and delivered on time with valuable and actionable content for you.

So there's big idea number one, having guest hosts occasionally. Again, if you either have some feedback about that idea or maybe you would even be interested in submitting a guest host segment for the show, let me know bradreed at bradreedwrites. com by email or by going to the talk to us link on the website.

So on to big idea number two. And this actually isn't so much an idea as it is more of a question for you as listeners. So some of the feedback that I've received is that the show can sometimes move a little bit slow and that you'd like me to get to the meat a little more quickly sometimes, which I totally understand. Part of the way I pace the show, I think comes from my background as a teacher. I try to be very methodical about the way I present information, which means I sometimes cover more background information to introduce a topic or technique than a lot of listeners need. I'm always trying to make what are sometimes pretty advanced techniques available and accessible, even to fairly new writers who may not have a lot of background in writing fundamentals.

But the pacing is also sometimes driven by my desire to keep the show the length somewhat consistent at around 30 minutes or so, give or take maybe five minutes. I'm not real strict about that, but I'm always shooting for somewhere around that 30 minute mark. So here's another thing I could use some feedback about. Would you rather have a shorter show that gets right to the point and leaves out some of the building blocks that new writers might need? Or do you prefer the longer format, even if it means that maybe sometimes you have to sit through some introductory material that is essentially review for writers with more experience.

Now, it may seem a little bit strange to take so much of today's show to talk about these kind of behind the scenes decisions about the show. But again, because I'm essentially a teacher at heart, it's absolutely vital for me that I check in from time to time and see how you as listeners are receiving the show and how it might be more useful and effective if there are some things that we can change or do differently. So again, if you're interested in sharing that feedback, go to the talk to us link or the feedback link at the website at bradreedwrites. com.

Importance of Opening and Closing Scenes

All right, so thanks for sitting through a little show check in prior to today's topic, which is how do we write effective beginning and ending scenes that bookend our stories in a meaningful and effective way? The first few lines of your story are arguably the most important lines of your story. They have to do so many things at once. I mean, first of all, they have to hook the reader so that they'll be interested enough to either keep reading, keep turning pages or to buy your book and take it home with them. They also have to set up the world of your story. Is it fantasy?

Is it realistic fiction? Is it science fiction? So on. They also have to introduce who your main character is and give your reader a reason to care about that character. And they also have to create some kind of tension that threatens that character. That's another main part of that hook to get a reader interested.

Now, this can be an overwhelming task to try to get opening scenes that accomplish all of these elements. And a lot of writers find that their opening, their first few scenes are the hardest part of their book to write. And I know that's true for me. And what makes it even more difficult is that it's the place that most of us start writing. I mean, we've got all these demands and expectations staring us in the face in the form of a completely blank page.

So no wonder writer's block and procrastination set in most often when we are first sitting down to write a story. We're looking at that blank page and the stakes are so high to get it right. So our opening scene should end up being the most rewritten and revised section of your entire book. And for that reason, it's actually the least important in your initial drafting.

So just get something down and start, get started writing for that first scene. Of all the scenes in my first draft, I find Anne Lamott's advice to just write a shitty first draft. The most helpful when I'm writing my opening because it helps me remember that I just need something on the page to get started. I mean, of course you should give your first pass all the attention and the effort that you can. You want it to be as good as you can. Just don't feel like you're married to it in your mind.

Know going in that whatever I write for this opening scene is almost certainly going to change and not just once or twice, but probably multiple times. So just know that until your book is about, Oh, 99% finished, it's actually impossible to write the opening that your story really needs. And that's because the opening scene and the closing scene of your novel should work like bookends to your story. They should resonate with each other and in a way kind of echo each other. They should be almost like of this is by looking at some examples. It's easier to spot in film, so I'm going to use films today, and then we'll talk a little bit about novels and other forms of storytelling towards the end.

Examples from 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'

And I'm going to use films that we've already used as examples in previous episodes of the podcast. So I want to start with a film we talked about, maybe it was last week, a couple of weeks ago, called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I think this was made in about 2013, a Ben Stiller film.

So if you haven't seen this, don't worry too much about it. It's not necessary that you've seen the film to understand what we're going to talk about, but if you do get a chance to watch this film, I think it's instructive for talking about story structure. So at the very beginning, the opening scenes of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, we're introduced to the main character as he sits in a sparse, quiet apartment just balancing his checkbook. It's the least exciting beginning to a film possible, right? Lonely guy, alone, quiet apartment, balancing a checkbook. And the lack of music and visual interest resonates with the audience because we immediately see that this man's life lacks color.

It lacks interest, right? It's a boring life, and the filmmakers, the storytellers do everything they can to represent this as a boring life. From there in the scene, he opens his computer to a dating site, and he tries to get up the nerve to click wink at a girl he's interested in.

Now, in this simple, understated opening, we learn a lot about Walter and what he wants and what he needs in his life. Now, we talked about this a little bit in a previous episode, so I apologize for going over some information that is already in some of your brains. But basically, Walter Mitty starts wanting love, right? He needs color in his life. He needs excitement. He needs a relationship, and he needs adventure.

He's alone and incredibly, incredibly boring. You can't miss those elements from that opening scene. So now let's look at the final scene, which should serve as a bookend.

So if you haven't seen this film, this actually might be kind of interesting to just literally do this. Watch the first scene, then watch the last scene. And in the last scene, there's this sweeping music that plays beneath the scene, so we already have one major difference that we're going to notice right away, right? His life, somehow between the beginning and the end, is now filled with music and interest. He's also out in the streets of New York now, instead of holed up in his quiet apartment, right? He's out kind of in the masses of New York City rather than his isolated apartment.

And now he's the opposite of alone. He has with him the love interest in the film, played by Kristen Wiig. So where he could barely take the risk of even clicking a wink on his computer before, in the final scene, we see that something has changed.

Now he's bold enough to reach out and actually take her hand without knowing how she'd respond to that. So the change he's undergone couldn't be more clear, even if we've only watched the opening and closing scenes. We can tell that through the story, he's gone from kind of reserved to being a risk-taker, from being alone to now being together, from overcome with self-doubt to a kind of inner confidence. The entire story, the entire character change, can be seen in these two bookended scenes, and it's accomplished because the scenes mirror each other so closely.

Analysis of 'Captain Fantastic'

So let's move on to another film. This film is called Captain Fantastic. I think it was released in 2016. This film is one of my favorite films, although I've seen critics and some friends of mine that hate it for some of the plot devices it uses.

But again, I think it's a great film, especially instructive for putting together plot and approaching it in different ways. But I want to look at this film again with just the opening and closing scene. So in what's probably the most graphic scene of the film, the opening scene shows us a bunch of kids kind of out in the deep woods. They've got their faces all camouflaged in mud, and they're hunting a deer basically with their bare hands and a knife, right?

So one of these young boys leaps out onto the deer. He slits its throat, and the family kind of comes in and gathers around, and then the father shows up and gives the son kind of a blessing and removes the heart of this deer, and the boy eats the heart. Now, this is a very unusual way for a family to behave, obviously, right?

So it gets our attention. Who is this family, right? What family operates like this?

But it is, essentially, at the heart of it, it's simply just a scene showing that family having a meal, right? How do they prepare a meal? Well, this is what they do. They go out with faces painted and knives, and they slit the throat of their meal, right? And eat the heart.

So pretty severe, a little bit, well, a lot graphic, but essentially just a scene of a family having a meal. So now compare that to the final scene. If you own a copy of this or can stream it somewhere, jump to the end, and what you'll see now is that same family now around a very traditional breakfast table. They're all dressed. They're ready for school, right? The war paint, the mud is gone, and the family simply sits quietly and serves each other fruits, vegetables, all these other natural foods harvested from the garden.

So the striking difference between these two scenes is huge, the change that has come upon these characters. The closing scene is idyllic, right? And it stands in stark contrast to that opening scene, yet it's also just a scene of a family at mealtime. If we were to only watch these two scenes, we could draw really important conclusions about the changes that happened in the story. Somehow they've gone from kind of feral to civilized, from violent to peaceful. The two scenes bookend the film.

Insights from 'Star Wars: A New Hope'

They are essentially the same scene shown to us twice, once before the change and once after the change. So your opening scene sets the stage for the entire story to unfold and sets the expectations for the changes that you'll be showing in your character or characters. So let's briefly look at one more, and we're going to pick a film now that hopefully everybody has seen. We're going to look at the original Star Wars movie, the first one released, A New Hope.

Now this film actually breaks the rules just a little bit because it doesn't really start with the opening scene. Now that may sound strange, but Star Wars uses its literal opening scenes to set up the world a bit, right? Which is something really important for this film and this genre of film. We need to know this is taking place in space. We need to know what the world looks like and kind of how it operates before we meet the main character, Luke Skywalker. I feel like the opening scene doesn't really happen until we meet Luke, which still comes fairly early in the film.

So if you're familiar with the film, you'll know that the first scene with Luke is him being ordered by his aunt to deliver a message to his uncle, right? Make sure you get this certain kind of robot or a robot that speaks a certain kind of language. So in other words, we see Luke as a kind of childlike, basically a servant boy, right? He's pretty much just an errand boy when he's at home with his aunt and uncle at the very beginning of the film. In fact, when he whines about following his uncle's orders, his uncle accuses him of just wanting to waste time with his friends, right? As though he's a little kid.

He even references that you can't do that until you have your chores done, right? So he's being treated very much like a little kid. And immediately after that, we see Luke playing with a space fighter toy.

So he's playing with it as though he really is a little kid. But this simple little storytelling move is genius. That moment of him playing with that space fighter toy tells us everything we need to know about him and sets up the change that we're going to see in the entire film.

So it's telling us he's a little kid at heart, right? And that everybody's treating him that way. But what he's really dreaming about, what he really wants to be is a great fighter pilot.

But here he is, just kind of this errand-servant boy who's not appreciated. So if we stopped watching there and we jumped to the last scene of the film, here's what we'd see. Now we'd see Luke Skywalker as the envy of the entire rebellion, right? He's saved the day. He's being celebrated for his skill now as a fighter pilot. And he's standing there alongside Han Solo.

If I've ever seen a man's man, right, this is Han Solo. Kind of the opposite of the kid who's being ordered around to do chores. And now he's an equal to Han Solo. And they're in front of a throng of fans and admirers and people who now respect him as the fighter pilot leader that he is.

So he's no longer a boy. And he's no longer just dreaming about being a fighter pilot. He's gotten everything that he wants. And it's all there in the opening and the closing scenes of the film. You know, when they basically remade A New Hope as The Force Awakens, and if you watch those back-to-back, you'll see how they're basically a retelling of the same story. And they use almost identical opening and closing scenes, or at least an identical technique.

So remember the first time that we see Rey in The Force Awakens? She's basically doing chores, right? She's out harvesting all these parts from wrecked spaceships. And there's even a moment where she is resting and she puts on an old it's still there subconsciously. When we finish a film and these bookends echo each other, we can't help but kind of call back to that opening and think through the entire story to process and understand the impact of the story that we've just seen. And that impact is always about that character change.

It's always about seeing where they started and where they ended. These are the bookends of your story. Now, this technique is generally clearer or more easy to spot in films than it is in novels, mostly due to the fact that films are under such an extreme time crunch. You know, everything must fit into a 90 to 120-minute window unless you're Peter Jackson and somebody like that and you can demand three or more hours to tell your stories.

But most people, most stories are going to happen in film within that 90 to 120-minute window. So everything is a kind of severely compressed. Every scene, every moment must be packed with meaning and intention.

So we notice it a little more clearly in film. Now, while this is not necessarily true when writing the more loosely controlled novel, it's still a good rule of thumb to use in your prose writing. Even if your scene is not literally the first scene of your story, make sure it comes early. Your readers want to know right off the bat who they are reading about, what their desire is, what they're up against, and especially what kind of changes to be watching for as the story comes to its final moment.

Wise Words on Story Beginnings and Endings

So as we look at our wise word today, our show was not really about breaking new ground. I'm sure if you've studied story structure at all, you already understand the importance of the beginning and ending scenes of a story. But like so many other techniques, it's really easy to forget kind of those fundamentals when we're in the thick of writing our story.

So for our wise words this week, I wanted to hear from some other writers and writing coaches that echo today's topic, which is basically kind of a reminder of the importance of those two scenes. So we'll start our wise words with this simple pronouncement from Henry Ward Beecher, who says, the beginning is the promise of the end. And that is so true. You're making promises to your audience in the opening of your book, promises that should be fulfilled by and often in the last few scenes of your story. Katherine Ann Porter talks about how she approaches her story with the end in mind.

Here's what she says. If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last line, my last paragraph, my last page first.

Now, while I don't think it's necessary to follow her advice specifically, I'm not suggesting that you have to write your last line, your last paragraph, your last page first. It is a good mindset to have that echoes the concept of today's show that you can't really know how to revise or rewrite your opening until your ending is complete. And finally, I guess we're doing kind of a trio of wise words today. We'll leave off with some wisdom from Pascal. He says the last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first. And that is essentially what today's been all about.

Weekly Writing Challenge

Our weekly challenge this week is to take some of the work we did today and make it specific for the kind of writing that you do. Here's what I mean by that. I was going at first, I'd planned to give some examples in today's shows from novels or novellas, but I decided to leave that work for you to do. Why? Well, because it'll be much more insightful if you do the work.

So for this week, I encourage you to choose a book or a screenplay that is similar to what you're working on. So I often do these, or in fact, I always do these weekly challenges along with you. So this week, I'm going to be looking at Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

And so what I challenge you to do is to just read the first chapter and the last chapter of kind of this exemplar book that you're looking at and discover how your writer went about making the promises of the story in the opening of the book and how did they fulfill those promises in the last chapter of the book. And ask yourself, can you tell just by reading these two chapters what changed the main character or characters underwent throughout the story? Ask yourself, how is the setting, the scene, the dialogue or the tensions similar between the beginning and the end? And finally, what can you learn from the way your writer approached the opening and the closing that you might be able to use in your own writing? And remember, we're not talking about copying here, right? There's a difference between being inspired by another writer's work and simply kind of regurgitating their stories with your own characters supplanted.

So by all means, be original, be surprising, but don't hesitate to learn from the masters in your particular genre. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Again, I really hope to hear from you regarding the things we talked about at the top of the show. I'm looking forward to reading your emails, hearing your voicemails or seeing your feedback through the Google form on the website. You can find out how to do all those things at the Talk to Us link at bradreedwrites. com.

So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same. Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.