Stories rarely begin with page one.
By the time a reader reaches the first chapter, hundreds of decisions have already been made. Most of them will never appear on the page.
A city has been chosen. A street has been walked, at least in the imagination. Someone has stood beside a window that does not yet exist and looked at a view the reader may never see.
I think this is where stories truly begin.
Not with sentences.
With questions.
What kind of city makes a person look over their shoulder?
What kind of room makes two people lower their voices?
Why does one photograph survive for twenty years while another disappears before the week is over?
I have always been more interested in these questions than in answers.
Answers are useful. They move things forward. They close doors and allow the reader to continue.
Questions do something else.
They stay.
Recently, I have been thinking about cities.
Not as locations, but as witnesses.
London remembers differently from New York. Los Angeles hides things in daylight. Prague seems to have mastered the art of allowing the past to remain visible without ever explaining it.
Perhaps that is why certain stories need more than one city.
A character can lie.
A city rarely does.
It simply shows you what is there and waits to see whether you notice.
Before I write a story, I spend a great deal of time in this space. Looking at maps. Reading about streets I may never use. Studying old photographs. Wondering why a railway station was built where it was, or why one café survived while everything around it disappeared.
Most of this research will never become a chapter.
That is not wasted work.
A reader does not need to see every decision behind a story.
They only need to feel that the world existed before they arrived.
And perhaps that it will continue after they leave.
Every story begins before the first chapter.
The writer’s job is simply to decide when to open the door.
— D. Vaen