Constellation Storytelling: The End of the Beginning

Building Momentum to the Beat Drop

Let’s talk about one of the most important and under-discussed moments of a story: the End of the Beginning! (We also get into this on the Inkbottle Podcast episode on Beginnings.)

The End of the Beginning is the moment that propels us forward into the rest of the story. There isn’t a formula for exactly where it goes; this isn’t a Save The Cat type thing with page numbers. You’ll know, though. I’m inclined to put it at the end of the first chapter but that’s not a hard rule. In TV land, sometimes it’s where the teaser ends, sometimes it’s the last beat of the pilot. Probably won’t be any later but could be somewhere in between.

The word propels above is important. There should be a kinetic launching power to it. It’s about energy. Of course there are layers to this, like everything in storytelling, but one way to know you’ve got it some kind of right is that the beat either makes you yell, “Oh shit!!” or “Let’s fucking goooooo!” Or sometimes both.

From a process standpoint, I’ve found this moment to be really important because it’s often the one that lets me know I’m ready to start writing. It’s a beat that lives and dies on its dynamism. It’s not just the reader you’re propelling forward into the story, it’s yourself, the writer, too. When you land on it, you know. Often, you’ll feel it come alive in your body.

If the End of the Beginning is doing its job, it becomes what everything before it leads up to. You have a true north anchor point, and that then gives shape to the rest of the story. Beginnings especially have so much work to do; there’s so much information they’re responsible for, from the basics of who, what and where, to the overall vibes, to the promises and questions that will or won’t be fulfilled by the end, to some sense of the conflict. That’s a fuckton of data to transmit without dumping, especially considering that stories in general — but beginnings in particular — should be alive and in motion, not just a bland shopping list.

That’s why the End of the Beginning can be so helpful though. When you have that beat clear, it’s an organizing principle around which you can make tricky decisions about what to tell and what to leave out early on. You need to make that propulsion moment propulsive, so what info is gonna do that? Keep that. Most other things can wait till later.

Beyond the physical energy of this moment though, it can also go a long way in alerting us to what the story is really about. It’s an important enough beat that it’ll draw readers’ attention to whatever it’s dealing with thematically. That focus may not be conscious; it may linger in the back of their minds, but it’s part of that pulse, sometimes the first real sense of that pulse, that pulls us forward to what novelist Orhan Pamuk calls the Secret Heart of Story.

At the concept stage of writing the High Republic Adventures, I knew a few basic things: it would be the story of a group of young Jedi traveling the galaxy during the pivotal events of the High Republic era. It would span several years of storytelling that would interact with other novels and comics in the series while still telling a stand alone story on its own. And with all that in mind, I knew that I wanted the beating heart of it to be a slow burn friends-to-lovers romance. It’s something I’d never written, always wanted to, and what better opportunity than a long form story like this??

I threw some characters at the page. I’d need a girl whose whole life revolved around being the greatest Jedi ever — that certainty would be exactly what the events of this love story would throw into the blender. And to match her: a girl who’d been taught that using the Force was forbidden, that her Force abilities were a thing to be hidden, ashamed of, and the Jedi were the worst, most devilish offenders of this rule. What is love if not the tearing down of all our assumptions to reveal our most authentic selves beneath (persevering)?

Those two pieces pointed to a very clear End of the Beginning beat — the Jedi have come to the rescue of a planet mid-catastrophe, but must themselves be saved by the sudden, heroic act of someone who had always kept her powers bottled up inside for fear of being discovered.

There’s an explosiveness to the idea of long latent powers released, of the implicit sacrifice and risk taken for the sake of others, and the sudden closeness that comes from danger. Here’s an early draft of the art for that very moment by my wonderful collaborator Harvey Tolibao. Zeen, who grew up hiding her Force abilities — reaching out to stop an incoming chunk of flaming debris from falling on the Jedi, who are busy fighting off the Nihil.

original art for THRA #1 by Harvey Tolibao

A key element of this moment is that it nods to what will much later become the clear beating heart of this story — love — as you can see below. When that payoff comes, a year into the run, it’s all the more satisfying because we’ve been planting seeds of it all along in key moments.

So the End of the Beginning brought intense clarity where I needed it most — how to organize the first issue. With that moment in mind, I could make otherwise beguiling decisions about what we needed to know. The issue became a duet between two characters from opposite worlds as they hurdled toward each other — the titular collision course becomes something much more than just debris falling out of hyperspace.

What are some of your favorite End of the Beginning moments from your own work or others? How have you approached this beat?

Below, the paid tier can read a nearly final draft of the issue 1 script in its entirety.