Is this kind of opening overused?

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TychoBrahe

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I like my novel, and I'm really confident about my story, but I have a feeling that the beginning is weak. The book starts slowly, builds up steam, then about 1/4 the way in $#!t starts hitting fans and doesn't really let up for a good while.

So far, the only ways I can think of to strengthen my opening is to: lose the entire first chapter, (and all the accompanying character development and word count - right now I've only got about 84K, so there's not much fat to trim) or...

Do a Battlestar Galactica and open with a scene towards the end of the book where my MC is about to die, then flash back to my original opening of the book. There's a scene I could use as an opening from my penultimate chapter where this would actually make perfect sense, but I'm worried that non-linear storytelling has itself become cliche. The above-mentioned TV series used this device so often, especially in season 2, that I started to groan every time they did it.

Opinions?
 

ChaosTitan

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The "flashforward/flashback" scenario you described from BSG is an oft-used storytelling device for visual media (especially established TV shows), but I rarely seen it used on novels.

Novels don't have to start with flash!Bang! in order to get the reader's attention. Your opening just needs to be engaging. That doesn't require action scenes or stuff blowing up.

Have you had other readers tell you that your beginning is weak? You can always try posting the first 3,000 or so words in the Share Your Work forum for peer critique.
 

Pthom

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The "flashforward/flashback" scenario you described from BSG is an oft-used storytelling device for visual media (especially established TV shows), but I rarely seen it used on novels.

Novels don't have to start with flash!Bang! in order to get the reader's attention. Your opening just needs to be engaging. That doesn't require action scenes or stuff blowing up.
Heed this advice about the flashback business. In a novel, it is rarely successful as an opening device.

In addition to what ChaosTitan says, an opening must begin the story. If the story is about how the prince solves the murder of a princess, then begin with the murder. If all that excrement in the air conditioning you mention is the result of a major event, then begin with that event.

And don't make me wait until a quarter of the story is over to provide some action. You may want to analyze this first 1/4 of the story with a very critical eye. Chances are better than good it is mostly backstory. Your backstory may be necessary to the plot, but putting it all at once, especially in the beginning, is a big turn off. Weed out all but only that part of the backstory necessary for the reader to understand why the Hatfields hate the McCoys, and find a way to show it to the reader only when she needs to know it.
 

sunandshadow

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It's really annoying when books begin with one thing then flip to something totally different.

You might consider adding a chapter or a scene if you need more word-count at the beginning anyway - give one character a small yet emotionally involving problem to struggle with and solve, leading into your current first chapter. You could move some exposition from the current first chapter to the new one to thin it out if that seemed useful.
 

Kirby

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84 K word count sounds good to me. Don't be afraid to hack the first chapter. Go with your gut. If you think it's slow, what would a reader think?

Rules of a few genres:
If it's a murder mystery, there had better be a dead body in the first chapter.
If it's fantasy, I want to see the realm, faeries, wizards in the first chapter.
If it's science fiction, give me technology, science, space in the first chapter.
Whatever the genre, give me the conflict or at least set one up right away.
(Of course, rules are meant to be broken and some authors get away with it)

I'm not suggesting you start off in the middle of a major battle, but get me into your world quick. Read books in your genre to see how others have done it. Work the backstory into the manuscript and let it unfold.

You sound like you know what needs to be done. Just remember to save each big edit so if you don't like a change, you can go back to a previous version.
 

VoltShadow

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So I think the overall flavor here is set up the situation... or just take us to your world. As long as you don't start with "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away..." I think you might be alright for at least a little while.
 

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I started writing my current WIP from scratch, and it really went places once I developed the characters and the general shape of the story. After I got about 30,000 words into it, I began to feel that the first chapter left a lot to be desired, especially compared with the rest of it. I finally decided that the first chapter had been all about feeling out the story, and that, although it wasn't superfluous, it could certainly be heavily chopped. It wasn't easy to do, but now I'm a million times happier with the results. There were parts that I wasn't ready to take out, but I grinned and beared it, as they say, and I discovered that I was ready after all. Just do it.
 

Nivarion

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i would also tell you, NO FLASHBACKS. they don't work in a novel, because it takes away all of your POV's but one, so it kills many of your tools. and as for the first chapter, all of my beta readers told me that though i had a good first chapter the $^%& started hitting the fan too soon. so i will give you the advice i was given.
you want your readers to see how things are when they are normal, give them a little time to grow and name as many characters as you can, because you want your reader to get attached to the hero and his home, so that its tragic when stuff starts hitting the fan.
it also allows you to provide a background for your characters, lets the reader see that the humanity and individuality of your guys and start to know their character.
as advice it also lets you refine your character more as a person, lets you get to know him more like a long lost friend to have a long first chapter, then you know how he would react in situations he is put in so that it is all the more believable as a writer.
my first chapter originally was about 3k words, but since i have taken it and broken down, it has expanded to almost 10k words.

so in a nut shell, have stuff happening, have your first chapter long, but not stretched or drawn out.
 

Ruv Draba

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Tycho, I think that the most common reasons for a slow start are that the author either needed to 'warm up' to the story; or doesn't understand where a story opening most properly resides.

In my own case, for a long time it was a bit of both. I'd often open with setting description (really a form of mental warm-up), and then try to find 'a tense or unusual situation' from 'early in the plot'.

As I discovered painfully over time, this was inadequate. There are actually some strong dramatic principles that tell you where the story starts, and some good reasons for those principles. And worse (in my case at least), if you start from the wrong place, you can end up developing the wrong story.

A great tutorial on story openings is Les Edgerton's Hooked( Writer's Digest, 2008). A good reference on them is Jack M Bickham's Scene and Structure (WD, 1993 - if you only buy one writing book in your life, buy this one; if you buy two though, buy them both). What follows is my potted, spiced, parboiled version, covered in aspic and sealed into a little flat tin:

You actually need to know several things about your story before you can work out where to start it.

1) Who's your main character?
2) What is your main character's ruling passion?
3) Where is the story set?
4) What is the inciting incident that causes an initial problem for your main character?
5) What is the deeper story-worthy problem that makes this story worth reading?

Once you know these five things, you can pick your opening. You pick it in a way that introduces the main character in the setting either just before or just after the inciting incident occurs. You have the character react to the incident in a way that kicks the story off, and somehow introduce the story-worthy problem as part of the reaction.

I'll explain what the terms mean in a minute, but here's an example I did in response to a SYW thread. It's the first part of a possible first chapter:
'Come on baby', I prayed to the beast in the cornfield. 'C'mon. Bite me again.'

My hands sweated around the butt of the old shotgun like they'd sweated on the fours-over-deuces I'd held at the hotel last night. And standing there bandaged and shaking on the dark, empty highway, beside a pile of stinking road-kill with Jeff's gun and the silver restaurant dining-fork I'd stuffed down the barrel, I wondered if this time, I'd finally pushed my luck past breaking.

The night before, the poker hand had only cost my car. But tonight, I knew that a second brush with the howling monstrosity could cost me my life.

But better that, I figured, than I go home with its taint in my blood... home to Janey and little Bree.
Here are my five opening elements:
Main character: Jim, a travelling salesman
MC's ruling passion: Jim's a compulsive gambler
Setting: A country location somewhere in Iowa, modern era
Inciting incident and initial problem: Having lost his car to a poker game, Jim is attacked by a werewolf on the walk back to his motel-room. Now he dare not go home for fear of attacking his wife and child.
Story-worthy problem: When the reward is high enough, Jim ignores the risk

Since I don't know your story Tycho, I don't know what your starting elements might be. I can say though, that I'd often start my stories without understanding my MC's ruling passion or the over-all story-worthy problem - and this made it hard for me to know where to start.

In your post you asked about the 'crisis/flashback' style of opening (such as those used in Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and others). I've been reviewing these openings for some time now and can say that they don't work universally well.

In Firefly, for instance the episode 'Out of Gas' starts off with the spaceship's captain collapsing alone on the ship, with oxygen running out. His crew are all left and he's trying to carry a part to the engine-room to repair the vessel. It works because the inciting incident (the ship running out of oomph) gave rise to the story-worthy problem (the independent, tough-as-nails Captain needs his crew) at just the point where he collapses.

By contrast, if you started Lord of the Ring with Frodo fighting Gollum at Mount Doom, it wouldn't work - because the story-worthy problem (that Frodo must learn to be a hero) doesn't begin there, but much further back, when Frodo inherits his uncle's magic ring and follows in his footsteps on the road.

In short, while there can be some very clever ways to present the opening, there's only one good place to start it - and that's where your story-worthy problem (which is really just one end of your story's major theme) begins.

How do you know when your problem is story-worthy? It's my personal opinion, but it's when your character's ruling passion sinks its teeth into the problem created by the inciting incident. If this doesn't occur then I reckon you either have the wrong inciting incident or the wrong ruling passion - or maybe you don't understand the problem well enough.

Why must a character have a ruling passion? Because dramatic stories are supposed to be interesting, and it's character emotion that makes them so.

Hope that this helps.
 
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ChaosTitan

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i would also tell you, NO FLASHBACKS. they don't work in a novel, because it takes away all of your POV's but one, so it kills many of your tools.

Nivarion, I'm a little confused by your advice here. I've seen flashbacks work in novels. My own agented novel contains a chapter-long flashback. They don't kill your writers tools; flashbacks are actually one of the tools sitting in your writer's toolbox.

Are you saying that using the "crisis/flashback" opening doesn't work in a novel? Because it limits the storytelling to one point of view (which isn't a horrible thing, because thousands of novels have been written from a single POV)? I can agree with the former, since I've stated much the same thing above; however, I flatly disagree with the latter.


Nivarion said:
and as for the first chapter, all of my beta readers told me that though i had a good first chapter the $^%& started hitting the fan too soon. so i will give you the advice i was given.
you want your readers to see how things are when they are normal, give them a little time to grow and name as many characters as you can, because you want your reader to get attached to the hero and his home, so that its tragic when stuff starts hitting the fan.


I suppose this depends on the sub-genre in which one is writing. For a LOTR-type book, sure, it works have that meandering opening chapter where you get to know people and places and things. I'm not a fan of high fantasy, though, so do all HF novels open like this? Ten thousand words of introduction?

Urban fantasy often just picks up and runs. You get to know the main character as they experience whatever crisis is happening around them.

The book I just started reading (Greywalker, Kat Richardson) has the narrator beaten until near-death within the first two pages. There was no need for ten thousand words of her preparing for the meeting, going to the building, knocking on the man's door, and then making her offer on behalf of her client. It starts at the important part--the man going postal and beating her to death.

Storm Front (Jim Butcher) doesn't open with a fight or action scene, but it does open with something plot relevant, and the entire first chapter introduces us to a Chicago in which magic exists.

I suppose this is just my meandering way (;)) of saying you don't have to show your character within their environment pre-crisis in order to establish them. Heck, the first time we meet Luke Skywalker, the Droids have already crashed on Tattooine and brought the rebellion smack into the middle of his world.
 

ink wench

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Listen to Ruv Draba's advice. He knows of what he speaks.

And no, you don't need to start off with a bang. A whimper suffices so long as it's an interesting, compelling whimper. I have no idea how you can tell that, though. My beginnings always suck. Good luck!
 

Straka

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In Firefly, for instance the episode 'Out of Gas' starts off with the spaceship's captain collapsing alone on the ship, with oxygen running out. His crew are all left and he's trying to carry a part to the engine-room to repair the vessel. It works because the inciting incident (the ship running out of oomph) gave rise to the story-worthy problem (the independent, tough-as-nails Captain needs his crew) at just the point where he collapses.

That's actually one of my favorite episodes. But I thought if those couldn't tell each other they loved one another at that point, then it was hopeless.

Anyway this is a problem I was encountering myself. Trick for me was I start my WIP with the MC leaving school to be a "typical" adventure for 30 pages then he gets sucked somewhere he really doesn't want to me.

The first 30 pages are supposed to be a little campy and poke fun at adventurism, but when he gets teleported the story becomes very dark.

2 of my betas like this setup, as those 30 pages help flesh out how silly the MC is being and acts as a foil to where he gets sent. 2 other betas thought it should be cut down a great deal to almost where he just gets teleported.
One argued it was because the stories feel changes fairly drastically.

I tried the flash forward thing, but I see everyone's point here about the cons against it.

At the moment I'm stuck, but my gut tells me my original layout is the best.

Guess I need more opinions.

Beta services anyone? :)
 

TychoBrahe

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Thanks for all the comments, guys. You've actually restored my confidence in my original opening, which I think I'll be sticking with until an editor tells me otherwise.

Nivarion pretty much sums up what I was trying to accomplish by holding off the violence in the beginning:

you want your readers to see how things are when they are normal, give them a little time to grow and name as many characters as you can, because you want your reader to get attached to the hero and his home, so that its tragic when stuff starts hitting the fan.
it also allows you to provide a background for your characters, lets the reader see that the humanity and individuality of your guys and start to know their character.
as advice it also lets you refine your character more as a person, lets you get to know him more like a long lost friend to have a long first chapter, then you know how he would react in situations he is put in so that it is all the more believable as a writer.

My plot is something of a disaster/worst-case-scenario situation, and the whole thing hinges on what the characters are like beforehand, and how they change and cope while their world falls apart around them. That's not to say that the first few chapters are without action; it's just that it starts of as Mardi Gras and only turns into Die Hard at the end of chapter three.

However, all the talk about non-linear storytelling not working in prose is really making me want to try it out, just to be sure. Maybe my next project...

Cheers!
 

Ruv Draba

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i would also tell you, NO FLASHBACKS. they don't work in a novel, because it takes away all of your POV's but one, so it kills many of your tools.
Flashbacks are over-used in SFF - especially amateur SFF, and really crappy published high fantasy. The reason they screw up isn't PoV though.

It's tension.

When you flash back then the reader already knows the outcome: that the MC is still alive for instance, and what state the MC is subsequently in. All you can really show is how the MC got into that state - and it's not always easy to get tension out of how.The reader often skips past flashbacks to the action - or puts the book down and looks for a better read.

Two good times to use flashbacks are:
  • When a major character appears to act out of character. You often need to show the reader why that is; and
  • When you make a backstory claim so outrageous that the reader wouldn't believe it.
In the Firefly 'Out of Gas' episode I mentioned earlier, independent chew-em-out Captain Mal is about to act out of character and kiss up to his crew when they return, so a flashback is warranted. (Indeed, if you ran that story in its chronological order, I think it would be less tense and a bit cheesy; I agree with Straka: running the story as flashback interleaved with regular time really makes this story work).

Really, really bad times to use flashbacks are:
  • When you have fifteen pages of uninteresting backstory or setting exposition you want to stuff down the reader's throat, and you believe you must always 'show don't tell'; or
  • You love your clever story opening, but there's a bit of plot-logic that precedes it;
  • Your plot had a logic hole but you're too lazy to rework it; so slap-patch to a flashback.
My advice: don't drag the reader through uninteresting backstory or setting exposition ever (if there is one - just ONE thing I would change about high fantasy it's authors who follow Tolkien's footsteps of over-researching their worlds but then insisting that we must walk every step of their marathon with them)

My other advice: your story has potentially tons of clever opening sentences, but probably only one good place to open it. If you're in love with just the expression of your opening, there's a good chance that you're not at the right place to open it. In the right place, it's the problem not just the expression, that will sell the opening to the reader.

My last other advice: Don't patch your story; rewrite it so that the logic becomes integral. (Or if you want to avoid a full manuscript rewrite, get the core plot and character logic done in advance of detailing the scenes.)

so in a nut shell, have stuff happening, have your first chapter long, but not stretched or drawn out.
Very early novels (including all of Charles Dickens', say) used to get serialised in periodicals. The way that authors like Dickens would design their novels was to break them into installments called chapters. That's how chapters were born (and probably explains the cliffhanger approach to tension too, that you often see in Victorian novels).

Some authors no longer use chapters at all, arguing that: a) they're not part of the story and b) they give readers 'permission' to put the book down. Other authors like to give their novels a serialised feel (they often label their chapters with provocative names). Others just hold to the convention because readers are used to it.

From a story design perspective, it's not chapters that should concern us as authors anyway, but scenes, plot and character arcs - since these are what create the drama.

In terms of making a good story opening, I think that a short opening is better than a long one, because the longer you take to sink the hook, the more likely that the fish will nibble elsewhere. But that said, you may wish to have more material in your chapter than just a hook - and most Ch1s do, since the hook usually sinks within a few paragraphs in a modern novel. All I'd suggest about chapters is that you end all your early chapters on a disaster, so the reader will want to read the next chapter rather than putting the book down.

Unlike the Victorian novellists, we don't need to end each chapter on a cliffhanger disaster of unresolved action. We can also end on a reaction scene, f'rinstance, with a decision that foreshadows a lot more tension to come -- and often, that's how a modern Ch1 ends.
 
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Ruv Draba

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Anyway this is a problem I was encountering myself. Trick for me was I start my WIP with the MC leaving school to be a "typical" adventure for 30 pages then he gets sucked somewhere he really doesn't want to me.

The first 30 pages are supposed to be a little campy and poke fun at adventurism, but when he gets teleported the story becomes very dark.
Just passing squint-level intuition here, Straka, but is it possible that you have two distinct stories here, rather than one?
  1. A 30 page 'warmup' partial story about a post-school adventure - perhaps a story that's going nowhere because it lacks a story-worthy problem;
  2. A darker story that begins on or near page 31, which actually starts to test and change your main character.
 
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sunandshadow

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84 K word count sounds good to me. Don't be afraid to hack the first chapter. Go with your gut. If you think it's slow, what would a reader think?

Rules of a few genres:
If it's a murder mystery, there had better be a dead body in the first chapter.
If it's fantasy, I want to see the realm, faeries, wizards in the first chapter.
If it's science fiction, give me technology, science, space in the first chapter.
Whatever the genre, give me the conflict or at least set one up right away.
(Of course, rules are meant to be broken and some authors get away with it)

Quite true. I write fantasy romance, and in between the two genres there's practically a checklist for the first chapter: main character's appearance and personality, their current problem, their loneliness or other romantic issue, their species if non-human, their culture if non-common-historical-type, if possible a hint at who the love interest will be or introduction of that character as an opponent, and either the resolution of their current problem or a twist/escalation of it.
 

Rabe

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Overused?

Only every week on "Flashpoint". Not to mention every time someone puts on, or parodies, Sunset Boulevard.

So much so that I hate any sort of 'flashback' opening. Also, it ruins all dramatic tension built up in the story until you get to that point because NOW the readers know that your MC can't EVER be in trouble until they get to the point where the flashback goes - and even then I don't buy the tension of that scene because when people do 'flashbacks' they also try to do a more 'in character head' storytelling voice in which I have to ask myself - how does the story get told if the MC dies before he has a chance to do the telling?

Rabe...
 

Straka

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Just passing squint-level intuition here, Straka, but is it possible that you have two distinct stories here, rather than one?
  1. A 30 page 'warmup' partial story about a post-school adventure - perhaps a story that's going nowhere because it lacks a story-worthy problem;
  2. A darker story that begins on or near page 31, which actually starts to test and change your main character.

Perhaps yes, and no. The first 30 is the MC leaving school, to start his own adventure of slaying a demon, despite warnings of his foolishness from friends and teachers. During those pages the MC's flaws and ideals are drawn out as he reaches the area where he thinks the last demon is. When he gets there, nearly dead, he finds out there are no more demons. He encounters an old researcher at said spot from another land and the MC teleports himself to that land in a last attempt at glory, only to find out he's sent himself to a land completely filled with demons. The first 30 are used to create a foil to the land he gets sent to while highlighting his idealistic goals and motivations. Both of which change rapidly when he gets to the second land. It is to say, carefully what you wish for.

The story worthy problem for the first 30 is he wants to slay a demon like his grandfather to gain fame and fortune for fame and fortunes sake, but also to elevate himself above the lowly craftsman status thus enabling him to marry a young rich girl from his school.

When he finds out there are no demons, it denies him that upward mobility into a higher class. He becomes desperate, refusing to return home to a craftsman life, so he gambles by going into the other world in a last ditch effort.
 
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