Ready... Aim... Aim... Aim... Aim... FIRE!

Most of the books I have ever read that were good ones were books with plots that hit the ground running (or almost at least). Some may argue differently and I can understand this. I am not trying to start a flaming war or arguments.

But I believe the Crown of Stars story line by Kate Elliott had a slow building start. In fact I can imagine that book being thrown down by many because she works an intricate story that has a lot of information covered. I was about ready to throw it down when the female protagonist Liath was introduced, enslaved by the antagonist Hugh, raped and mentally abused over so many chapters so much that it got to the point where I nearly couldn't stand reading anymore. The only reason I continued reading the rest of the book was because I developed a strong hatred of Hugh and wanted to see him get what's coming to him. After more and more novels went by and the scumbag kept staying alive and making things worse, I finally put the series down for good.

In essence the books never really picked up much in pace either or tension either. It did have its action and climactic points, but the plot was slow moving at times so much that you almost didn't notice those parts. I gave up halfway through In the Ruins.

Do I think slow beginnings are bad? No. I can actually appreciate them but they have to be rewarding to me. A slow start should eventually build up into a minimum of a solid run towards a powerful climactic scene. The Crown of Stars series never did that for me and I felt like I was dragging my feet through the mud to get to the good parts of the story.

If a book has a slow start, I am so done with it. There are too many books out there for me to waste time with a book that doesn't really get into the storyline until chapter four.

That plays right into something I just read. Lois McMaster Bujold, in the afterward for one of her 'Miles Vorkosigan' omnibus editions, recalled how a teacher or beta reader was dead-set on her axing the first 100 pages or so of her first Miles book. The reader wanted the action to start with Mile's near-theft of an old starship and an AWOL jump-pilot on Beta Colony.

The only problem was, that first 'boring' passage sets up who Miles is, his physical difficulties, his mental prowess, and the militaristic culture of his home planet. Without that buildup, the book is about another hyperactive kid dropped into an adventure that doesn't mean much without context. Baen Books wouldn't have taken it, and Bujold would probably not have gone on to win awards for the series.

A slow beginning doesn't bother me, as long as my patience is rewarded.
Carol Berg's 'Lighthouse Duet' books have been skewered by some reviewers as starting too slow. But again, it takes 100 pages to introduce her world, its problems, and her main character's unique abilities and faults. I didn't find them boring at all.

Starting quickly works great for some genres, but it may not be the universal panacea that writers assume. Sometimes, a story is better told with a careful into.

Ardent Kat said:

I was just reading Tad Williams's The Dragonbone Chair and realized I'm nearly to page 100 and the main plot still isn't imminent. There's lots of back story, history, some beautiful writing, and plenty of establishment of the status quo for the lead character, but nothing has yet shaken the characters out of the nest and made things happen. I remember really liking this book back when I was 12, so I'm sticking with it, but that made me wonder...

When it comes to SF/F books that start slow, what makes the difference between success and a flop?

What's a book that "started" really late/slow (lots of set-up before the main plot begins) but that you really loved? (Bonus points if you can name how many pages passed before things got started) Was the slow beginning something you "endured" or do you think it was actually better with lots of build-up before the main action took hold?

What's a book that stands out in your mind where you finally threw down in disgust because it wasn't going anywhere? (Again, bonus if you can say at what point you quit) Do you find all slow beginnings disagreeable, or was this one particularly bad? How so?

I realize different readers will have different interpretations for "when the story starts", so just use your own judgment and criteria so we don't get derailed in an endless discussion of where main plot begins. Ideally, we've got a story in some form on page 1, but that doesn't mean the story has launched beyond meandering backstory or establishment of status quo.

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My major issue! And after having read some books that start slow, I got bored and put it down.

So, though you don't have to start in a glorious battle there needs to be some type of hook, conflict, and/or tension. An argument...your MC is being followed on his/her way home, and doesn't know who it is...why are they following?

That would keep me reading just to find out who the creep was!

Agents have told me: There always needs to be conflict, tension, and/or a hook in every line, something that'll keep me reading.

Overwhelming? Yes, yes it is. Lol

I do not mind a slow start. Slow does not equal boring - except in the case of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I do not mind wordy.

There is lots of interest in YA on this forum. Most of YA starts with a bang. OK. But other genres may be written differently. If YA is your thing, then you may not care for it.

Just my 2 pennies.

YA is not my cup of tea at all. BUT what I think, across all genres, is a book should open with a hook. Being "slow" is relative. The last book I found too slow was a Dragonlance book...the first three chapters was the MC camping, waking up to see his necklace was stolen, and then walking to find the thief. Things happened, but it was a very lethargic flow, like I know it would take time to build up.

I'm of a literary mind, but books need a hook, to drag you in, plain and simple.

I don't mind slow as long there's a "hook", for me, it's more important having a relationship with the characters, I did not feel related to any of the characters of Watership Down and that is why I stopped around the time they hit the road. On the other hand, Foucault's Pendulum, whose first 3 chapters are descriptions of Paris Science and Mechanics Museum were a pain in the ass until I managed to get over them, so, a good enough (and soon enough) payoff is important if it happens to be slow and boring.

maxmordon said:

I don't mind slow as long there's a "hook", for me, it's more important having a relationship with the characters, I did not feel related to any of the characters of Watership Down and that is why I stopped around the time they hit the road. On the other hand, Foucault's Pendulum, whose first 3 chapters are descriptions of Paris Science and Mechanics Museum were a pain in the ass until I managed to get over them, so, a good enough (and soon enough) payoff is important if it happens to be slow and boring.

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+1

I've only read one Tad Williams book, and I probably will never read another--which is too bad, because there was some really awesome stuff in that book. It's just that the pacing nearly broke my mind.

But then again, I'm an impatient reader. Normally my brother and I have very similar tastes in books. However, while he raved and swooned over Laura Anne Gilman's Retrievers series, I had to give up a few books in because the stories seemed so ponderous. (That laconic 10-page sex scene nearly did me in, but I made it.)

Like everything, too slow for one person is going to be perfect for another.

Almost everyone of the Thomas Covenant books, by Stephen R. Donaldson start outside of the main story. Its not that they are overly slow, but the way they start, you have no or very little sympathy for the MC. But if you keep going, you'll realise that you are not supposed to really like the MC as much as you like all the other characters Donaldson creates to help the MC.

Me, I don't mind a slow build so long as the writing is good, the back story interesting and it all propels the story forward to the inciting conflict.

I don't mind slow starts either, so long as there's some sort of pay off. Also, I don't consider slow starts to be necessarily boring, the characters or setting could be interesting, it's just a lack of something happening. If you've got nothing going on and the characters/setting are boring as dirt, then I don't see much point in continuing the story.

There was one book I just could not read more than the 1st chapter or so, can't even recall the title, but the cover looked like something out of the Matrix. Anyway, the first few pages were filled with so much made-up jargon, it was impossible to understand what the characters were talking about without checking the glossary in the back. A few made-up words are fine, but don't throw it at me by the shovel full.

The Skinner by Neal Asher also had a bit of a slow start, the story starts in the PoV of Erlin who winds up being the most boring character out of the entire cast, and also rather insignificant. But she was necessary since she's familiar with the world (Splatterjay), and to introduce us to the characters who played major roles in the story. I'd say the story really began to pick up around the time Keech (the dead? cop) went solo, because you just knew he was up to something.

I barely got through The Dragon Prince books without hunting down the author and shaking her by the shoulders. It was a lot of political ramble. A lot of it was good and fascinating, as far as a society where all of a sudden the code of law is completely changed and made to reflect.... our own.

Also, she kept promising Dragons, and never delivered. But there was always the hint of them.... always.... Hunts. Eggs. Communicating with them. But she never delivered. I also got sick and tired of the characters slapping each other on the back and going... oh don't you remember them days? Then one character went off on a bender and just behaved like a nut job. I can enjoy a psychopath main character in a horror, but not necessarily a fantasy.

After the first trilogy, I just stopped reading. 3 books and no dragons: that was enough.

You can do world setting stuff and setting up plot instead of going straight into action BUT that writing still needs to be tight and engaging otherwise you lose readers. A badly written action scene can be just as tedious so I would argue that it is not WHAT you write but HOW you write it that makes the difference here.

If the first 100 pages/3 chapters/book in the trilogy has nothing in it but the MC's normal life or how the MC came to be a wizard or whatever then that's fine so long as it is interesting. Besides, I have read books where a lot of apparently irrelevant 'scene setting' later becomes relevant. Maybe not to that particular plot but maybe to another plot later. For example, a casual mention of one of the servants may seem pointless but in hindsight (when you find out that the servant in question was really a spy for the bad guy) may be very important.

It's not a book I've read but it's a book series that people have said the same thing about when I've looked at picking it up.

"The story starts moving in book 2"



Really?

I've decided against getting this well-known, otherwise highly-recommended series simply because I don't think I'll have the patience to read through 300+ pages before the plot picks up in the second book.

What Max said.

It doesn't have to start with explosion or mega action, but I need a hook, something to drag me into teh world/story. Something (hopefully someone) interesting. What constitutes interesting ofc will vary from person to person.

I recall a book (which I will not name, because I knwo many people here love it, and it's probably not a bad book, it just didn;t gel with me) where it went liek this

Intriguing start, setting up magic and a bit of backstory and a hint of things to come. Cool beans!

Protracted scene 'showing' how the magic worked in detail. Scene there for not much else. Interest wanes.

Another character intro'd. Not very interestin things happen to them. Meh.

MC mentions a plan. Ahahaha! Interest picks up.

50 pages later, after much mention of the plan (while lots of other 'cool' stuff is shown, seemingly just because it's cool, oh and backstory, lots of that, and my interest wanes cos I want to know what this story is, not the cool stuff, or what happened yonks ago), they decide to start planning the plan....No wonder the book is so long!

Book put down at page 100. And the main plot (the plan!) wasn't really even on the horizon.

So for me, all that wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention. The characters were meh to me, and teh story was so slow, so often interrupted I kept forgetting what the story was...

My husband said it got a lot better after page 150 but I couldn't quite bring myself to plough through that to find out.

But, and the point is, lots of people thought it was interesting stuff. I didn't. Interest is subjective.

Dark huntress said:

If a book has a slow start, I am so done with it. There are too many books out there for me to waste time with a book that doesn't really get into the storyline until chapter four.

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I absolutely agree with this. There are a lot of fantasy books out there, they tend to be frighteningly long and I only have so much free time.

One of the things people praise about my debut novel is a very fast pace and a shocking, attention-grabbing opening, so I'm now rewriting the sequel to measure up.

IIRC, The Dragonbone Chair picks up after page 250. I am not kidding. I suffered through a re-read of it a few years ago and was shocked I ever finished it the first time.

I have to say, thank you. Finally, another person who thinks Tad Williams, more often than not, suffers from an acute case of linguistic diaherra. I read about 150 pages of "City of the Golden Shadow", and - for the life of me - I still had no idea what the story was about. Finally, I put it down.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do long books. Stephen King, JK Rowling and George R.R. Martin (to name a few) do it right, I think. I haven't read enough of Tad Williams to pass very critical judgment on him, but I've tried 2 novels of his... couldn't get into either.

I enjoy stories that, in retrospect, I realize started slowly. It's okay if I think back and realize that the first chapters were not absolutely critical or were setting up for the real plot. If they hooked me when I was reading them, that setup can be an asset to the story overall.

The question is if the setup is meaningful. If a scene introduces characters in such a way that I'm sure they'll do interesting things next time, I'm fine if the scene doesn't move mountains. But scenes that only establish a world try my patience (and I think that scenes to character or mood are far worse).

Most of the people I know who attempted to read The Lord of the Rings but failed say it's because the book moves so slowly.

Chapter 1: A big party. This has almost nothing to do with the main plot, except a little foreshadowing. Really, it's just a giant character introduction and a tie-in to The Hobbit.

Chapter 2: Recent Backstory

Chapter 3: Hobbits wandering around.

Chapter 4: Hobbits in a Forest

Chapter 5: Brief Break with Bombadil.

Chapter 6: Hobbits in a Hotel

Chapter 7: Ok... some action on weather top. Yeah! Followed by:

Chapter 8: More recent back story, ancient back story, fill-in-all-the-new-characters' backstory. And let's do a quest. Quest backstory.

At this point, many people are asleep. In the last 75 pages of FOTR you get: mountain snowstorm nearly kills everyone. Wolves nearly kill everyone. Watcher in the Water nearly kills everyone. Orcs nearly kill everyone. Balrog nearly kills everyone. *** dies. *** tempts ***. *** tries to overcome ***. ***dies and ***and *** are stolen.

If the first 225 pages held as much action and page-turners as the last 75 do, more people would have stuck to reading it.


Chapter

I think reading Tolkien, Eddison, Haggard, etc. must be a generational thing.
They wrote in a more leisurely fashion that may be difficult to grasp a century or so later. Especially by anyone more accustomed to terse modern fiction, cell-phone novels, and Twitter.

I read Tolkien at age ten, and it was tricky then. I've noticed that in the last 20 years, I've lost my tolerance for extreme wordiness. I tried to read a Thorne Smith novel from the 1920's, and gave up. Nothing happened in the first 50 pages except a drunken pool-party/orgy, and even that was disconnected and boring.

Filigree said:

I think reading Tolkien, Eddison, Haggard, etc. must be a generational thing.
They wrote in a more leisurely fashion that may be difficult to grasp a century or so later. Especially by anyone more accustomed to terse modern fiction, cell-phone novels, and Twitter.

I read Tolkien at age ten, and it was tricky then. I've noticed that in the last 20 years, I've lost my tolerance for extreme wordiness. I tried to read a Thorne Smith novel from the 1920's, and gave up. Nothing happened in the first 50 pages except a drunken pool-party/orgy, and even that was disconnected and boring.

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I think it depends on the year, decade, time period, etc. I've noticed from the 1890's and on novels grew less wordy. It also seems to be a geographical thing.

Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction starts slowly. He opens multiple plot lines and builds his world. I loved the books and was lost in their detail and intricacy. I kept turning to the next page. On re-reading, I found I had much less patience for the slow start. Hamilton takes just as long building into his characters as into the plots and world, so I don't have anyone to grab my attention at first. What really annoyed me on my first and subsequent readings was the ending. Even though Hamilton laid the foundations for SPOILER the Deus Ex Machina, when Joshua wishes really, really hard and everything turns out okay, /SPOILER I wanted to hurl all 3800 pages at Hamilton's head with great force.

The Lord of the Rings is a notorious slow starter. I love the books, though, and I enjoy all the party and Shire stuff. The characters are well-formed quickly enough that they carry me along. I confess I always skip the Old Forest stuff when re-reading. The Lord of the Rings also has two endings. The scouring of the Shire could stand alone as an independent story. It can't really be cut from the main book, though. It is the thematic end of the story. The long, false ending of Aragorn's kingship only ties up the action.

John Varley's Titan series are interesting. The first and third books have slow beginnings. Although a series, the three books can be read individually or out of order. In Titan, the first book, we get thirty or so pages of hard SF with orbital mechanics, rivets, and heroic astronaut introspection. Then the ship crashes and we're off on a psychedelic romp through wonderland. The false start doesn't set the tone for the book, but it does set the tone for the main character. Re-reading it, I still read the false start because I know this is the character I'll be following through wonderland. It's interesting because the character is interesting. [ETA: The false start is also is essential because it introduces the characters who are the object of the MC's quest. It gives us quest objects to care about and makes the MC's motivation believable.]

Demon, the third book, opens with nearly seventy pages of short subjects—disconnected vignettes of characters and settings before they come together and the plot gets going. Again, it's interesting because the characters are interesting. There are just enough cross-references in the vignettes for the reader to be reassured that these slices will come together later in the book.

The second book, Wizard, is basically a sex manual for centaurs.

Slow =/= boring.

I'm reading A Shadow in Summer, book one of the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. Not a lot really happens, plot-wise, in the first quarter of the book*, but the world is so fascinating and different from the usual Western Medieval fantasy (it's more Japanese/Chinese, with a really cool but low-key magic system) that seeing the world through the eyes of its characters has been enough to hold my interest.

"Seductive" is the best way to describe it


* I'm reading it in iBooks, so page number is arbitrary