Princess Mononoke and How to Start A Story — The Porte Port Write Like a Geek

How do you get readers to invest in your characters?

Wouldn’t you hate to see, “who cares?” in the review section of your book?

It makes my stomach churn even thinking about it.

As writers, we want instant connection–to our readers...and our readers to our stories.

We scour the internet, trying to find how we can make readers love our characters. We desperately look to find a story structure out there that will work.

And you know what? It kind of exists.

Bestselling author Dean Koontz has a straightforward approach to getting your novel started while getting your reader to care. He says, “plunge your character into terrible trouble as soon as possible.”

That’s it.

It’s really easy to remember, and it makes sitting down to write a little less intimidating. How should you start your book as you stare at a blank page? Terrible trouble.

Why Your Novel Needs to Start With Terrible Trouble

There’s a reason this strategy works so well.

We tell the stories we do because our characters are taken out of their ordinary lives.

Your story isn’t about how Jurassic Park keeps operating just fine. Or how Frodo keeps reading under the tree, never leaving the Shire. Or how Luke Skywalker stays on for this year’s harvest.

The moment we start a story, something is changing. That change needs to happen ASAP, or else that’s not really the start of the story.

The start of your book should be doing multiple things at once (and we will get to what those things are in a sec), but primarily it needs to suck your reader into the story.

Let’s look at the classic storytelling structure:

Inciting Incident
Rising Action (Complications)
Crisis
Climax
Resolution

Sometimes I look at Inciting Incident and think, “Do we really need to be reminded to start the story?”

Yes.

Often, we get caught up in describing our fictional world, the culture, the scene around the characters, what kind of coffee our character has in their hand as we start the story that we forget none of that really matters in the story hook.

The reader wants to jump into the action as soon as possible. They want to be promised there’s going to be tension and hard choices coming. So let’s make that promise.

But often the Inciting Incident is boring.

I wrote about story hooks with the example of Raiders of the Lost Ark recently, and I realized after I wrote it, the Inciting Incident doesn’t come until after the exciting boulder-rolling opening.

Once Indy gets back to teaching, and told about the Ark, he finally is given the Inciting Incident. He’s taken out of his normal life and into the story we all love. The whole boulder part has nothing to do with the plot.

But imagine if the movie started with him as a professor, and we didn’t get any action until later? There would be a whole different vibe. And we would wonder how this professor is such a badass all of a sudden.

Defeating his enemies by assigning homework on the first day instead of just going over the syllabus!

So instead, Indy is thrown into terrible trouble right at the beginning of the story.

But you can do both. You can have exciting trouble for the character while also giving them their Inciting Incident.

That’s the sign of a skilled storyteller.

Which brings us to our example.

How Princess Mononoke Makes You Care Immediately

Princess Mononoke is one of those movies where you say, oh, it’s for kids...holy shit, nope!

And you figure that out immediately.

The story starts with Ashitaka protecting his village. Right away, our main character gets thrown into terrible trouble. Instantly we see an event that takes our main character out of his everyday life.

And that’s what you want out of your Inciting Incident. Your character has a normal life. It takes them out of that life without a way to simply ignore it. And unless their normal life is as exciting as Indiana Jones, we don’t need to see much of it, if at all.

We don’t need to see Ashitaka keeping watch of the village for days and days of peaceful vigil to understand that he is a protector.

Or see him farm to know that he is from a simple village. That’s all established as the terrible trouble of the inciting incident plays out.

In the story, a horrible mass of...shadow worms?–that’s about as accurate as I can get–come crawling out of the forest near the village.

It destroys a watchtower and is hell-bent on a path of destruction towards the village. It’s up to Ashitaka to stop it.

What’s important is that this isn’t just some cool scene of kick-ass action. We learn a lot about the theme of the story, and the character of Ashitaka as this scene plays out. (And we instantly start caring about him.)

First, Ashitaka tries to reason with this swarm of nightmare. He (appropriately) calls it a demon and asks it to turn around or stop.

I mean...nice effort but, like, probably KILL THE HORRIFYING THING RIGHT NOW!

But this is establishing Ashitaka’s character. Even when it seems very clear that violence is the answer, he does so cautiously. He knows the danger of giving in to rage and hate. Palpatine would have a tough time with this dude.

Later in the story, everyone he encounters demands that he take sides with their own causes. That everyone else is the real enemies that are going to destroy everything. It’s this investigative caution that saves Ashitaka and a lot of people around him.

In the opening, despite his efforts, he has to kill this demon thing. The shadow worms die off, revealing a boar carcass under it. (Ganon anyone?) This god of nature was corrupted by hate and turned into a monster.

And there you have the theme. Hate consumes even if that hate is justified. Also, Ashitaka can take care of himself pretty well in spite of his desire for peace. Don’t fuck with him just because he starts with negotiations.

Ashitaka, however, is infected with this hate that begins to consume him. If he gives in to anger, it will spread even faster.

There’s our Inciting Incident. This terrible trouble that the character was thrown into diverts his entire life.

Ashitaka must now seek out the nature of this curse in the hopes of curing it. He is taken from his everyday life and onto the path of adventure.

The story’s hook gave us action, dove into characterization, started setting the tone and theme and called our hero to adventure.

Using Terrible Trouble to Start Your Novel

Imagine your story starting with a fuse lighting. That’s what terrible trouble is.

Your main characters are thrust into something so awful they are plucked out of their daily schedule. The rest of the plot is about their attempts to solve this problem (and they usually only make it worse.)

Every scene brings the fuse closer to exploding.

If you can find a way to mash the action and inciting incident together, all the better. Your reader will invest and start asking questions about what’s next. And when that happens, you got ‘em.

Now, you might not be writing in a genre that calls for demon boar shadow worm creatures bursting out of the woods to endanger a small village—just saying. You don’t have to start with that kind of action, but find where the tension lies in your story and don’t wait to trigger it.

Cast your characters into terrible trouble.

Then they have to find their way out of it.

And your readers will love the ride.

If you’re a geek like me, I would love to geek out with you when you sign up for my newsletter. There’s more novel writing advice as we pull the storytelling techniques out of everything from Lord of the Rings to...Mystery Science Theater 3000? No time to explain here; check it out below: