Is chapter 3 too late?

tylermarab1987 said:

I plan on rewriting the opening and starting at chapter three. I asked this question on another site, and a poster pointed out that it may be hard to say which is the inciting incident. The bullying caused detention, which caused the mugging, which caused the MC to be grounded, which caused the MC to chase a sock gnome into his dryer.

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IA that 6000 words of backstory seems like a lot, BUT these events don't really read like backstory to me. They seem to explain why the MC is chasing a sock gnome into his dryer. You could, potentially, cut those scenes and simply explain what led up to this point in a couple of paragraphs, but you'll need to make sure to do that well, and not in a boring way (well, obviously ).

The best advice I've heard about when to have an inciting incident is this: put in the inciting incident as soon as you've established enough that the reader will care about the inciting incident. ("Enough" typically relates to character and stakes - not necessarily character-building, but who is this character, what do they want, and why do we care.)

Backstory is an important aspect of my WIP.

When I wrote Dark Side of Joy I never considered writing a sequel - but I got so many comments of 'what happened next?' that I decided to write (WIP) Dojo Wars. So having to refer to many things that occurred in DSOJ has been a struggle, I need to say enough, but not belabor the issue so much that it becomes tedious. It's been a balancing act.

What I went with is to mention parts of the DSOJ story line when they pertain to something the MC is doing or considering. So I've not done it in one big core dump, instead it trickles out during the story.

It depends on your pacing and the story itself. I start my prologue with my main character going through a near death experience- then have about 3-4 chapters of world building. Essentially I used the hype from the prologue to carry the reader through until the major event happened to send them on their way into the world, and a few fights in between too. There is no formula for this stuff, if we all followed the same pattern there would be no innovation or new content. There would be no one worth reading if everything had been done. Show us something new, so long as its gripping.

Bufty said:

I can learn his backstory later, as and when it is relevant and/or necessary for me to know it.

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I absolutely agree with this. I have no interest in knowing a character's backstory if nothing is happening and there's no story yet. A character's backstory is important to the author when they mold the setting around him or her. I don't want to read a Wikipedia entry.

As a comparison, my inciting incident happen at exactly the 260-word mark. It's all downhill from there . . .

I'll read your first three, if you want. I don't set out to be mean but I won't pull punches either.

Backstory should be evident in the wya your character behaves. For example, maybe your character got savaged by dogs or something as a little kid and are now terrified of them. Showing them afraid of dogs is probably a sentence's worth of writing and explanation, and far better than a lengthy story about said encounter.