Beginning Close to the Action

May 24, 2019 / Writing Tips / 12 COMMENTS

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’m running a short blog series on making your life easier as a writer. I’m planning on sharing a few tips that I’ve learned over the years (often through making mistakes).

Starting it out today is a quick tip for writers: get the central action of the story started as soon as possible.

Some writers advocate starting in medias res, or in the middle of the action.  This can work too, if you can handle a bit of backstory well later (how did our heroes get in this situation? Who are these people and why should we care about them? What’s going on?)

But starting in the middle of things comes with its own set of problems, too.  The stakes aren’t as high when readers aren’t yet invested in the characters.

I’ve started in medias res a few times…namely when I’ve opened the book with a dead body.  But I’ve written many others where the body is discovered later (but always in the first 50 pages since that was Penguin’s preference and I stuck with it out of habit).  For me, this means introducing the reader to the main characters quickly and in a fun situation, setting up a murder, and then delivering the body without too much blah, blah, blah.

I think starting the action sooner than later is better, even if you don’t choose an in media res approach. This way we’re able to engage the reader a little faster.  The reader is going to either want to latch onto an interesting character or an interesting plot. If we put off the inciting incident, we could be setting ourselves up to fail by trying to establish character, again with some backstory pitfalls.  We risk boring the reader and possibly losing them. And there’s less setup at the beginning.  Sometimes story setup is painful to structure and then is painful to read.

If we start our inciting incident sooner, we can lightly sprinkle backstory in later. And hopefully hook the reader on our story quicker.  A mystery reader is waiting for the murder to happen.  A romance reader is waiting on the romance to start.  The sooner we can deliver what they’re looking for, the easier our life is.

For further reading, check out Paul Buchanan’s article: “Begin From the Middle: How to Start Your Story in Media Res” and K.M. Weiland’s “How to Tell if Your Story Begins Too Soon.”

I’ll be back next Friday (after taking Memorial Day off) with part two of the series, “Keeping Files Organized.”

How fast do you like to be pulled into the inciting incident as a reader?  How fast do you introduce it as a writer?

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  1. I’m taking the day off next week as well.
    That might be the issue with my current story. I’m not sure I introduce the main plot soon enough. I need to go back and check how many pages in before it happens…

  2. I do this most of the time, but it’s not always possible. For example, I have a long-running mystery series where the characters grow and change over time. The back-story for the primary couple and the family life swirling around them are primary reasons, besides the mysteries, why my readers like the books. You can read each book as a standalone story, but you’d be missing the evolution of the cast of characters.

    All of that is to say that sometimes I open with a focus on the characters and then I plant a dead body. I’d say I usually get to that well within 50 pages, but in my current WIP (Book 12 in the series), I may be testing that.

    1. If you’re at book 12 in the series, you’re playing with different rules. :) Your readers are already invested in your characters and story world and you can play around with the mystery more.

  3. I agree with you, Elizabeth, about the need to invite the reader to engage in the story right away. I’ve found that it doesn’t have to be the discovery of the a body, or the murder. But getting the story moving, if I can put it that way, is important. Most readers aren’t willing to wait more than a short time before they want something to happen.

    1. Good point that it doesn’t even have to be the main plot’s action but perhaps a subplot’s action…something to progress the story or development of the characters.

  5. I try to get some sort of movement in the beginning, but I tend to stay away from backstory since it slows things down. And I’ve always felt it was better to dribble in backstory later, after you get to know the character and his/her situation.

  6. Hi Elizabeth – how true for all writing … too much waffle doesn’t do the author/journalist any good – as a reader, we need to know what we’re dealing with … relevant with stories, as well as things we read everyday.

    I’m looking forward to your series of articles coming up – cheers Hilary

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