In defence of slow beginnings

I agree, sometimes a slower beginning makes more sense. And other times the author needs to plop us straight into the action. Genre can also play a part on how that's used.

lise8 said:

Or is the trend truly and firmly 'throw me in or I stop reading after page 6'.

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Yes.

The story starts where the story starts (i.e. not where the background starts).

Many people's manuscripts would last longer on a "from-the-slush-pile" glance-through (you couldn't call it a "reading", really?) if they simply swapped around their first and second chapters, starting the book where the story starts and giving the background a little later.

lise8 said:

What is your take on slower beginning???

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It's ok for self-publishing, perhaps: it more or less closes the door on anything else, and there are reasons for that.

For some stories, jumping right into the mix can work - but gliding in works much better. Not only can a slower beginning allow one to get to know the character(s), but it can also set up that dread of something bad happening to ruin things for them.

Of course, there's always the risk that the slower beginning is too slow, too meandering - and then it becomes, while perhaps not boring, just mundane.

I feel your pain!

I'm always saddened when I see critiques (especially in threads like "The First Three Sentences...") that basically say "Where's the story??? When does it START???"

I fear that modern novel writing will soon be reduced to a single sentence presented on an index card.

I agree with you and I don't. Many of my favorite novels take a while to get going, yet I'm still hooked enough to keep reading until I get to the good parts. In my writing (which is mainstream contemporary mostly), I don't include any scene that doesn't move the characters toward "the trouble." In my mind, I'm building toward something that when the reader gets there will say "Ah! How did I not see back on page X that this was coming?" So that's where I agree with you.

Where I disagree with qualifications is that the build up, like in the good novels I read, needs to be worth it for its own sake or the reader will never get to the "Ah!" parts. I have a beta reader right now who, after reading about the first 10% of the novel, said "I'm not really sure what this book's about yet." That's a bad sign. But at the same time she says she feels rushed toward some point where the action gets started in earnest ("dragged through the character's life" as she put it when she wants to fall into his world instead). This is also a bad sign.

So where I'm at as a writer at the moment is finding how to make the journey to the top worth it on its own. Sure, I see how everything fits together, but the reader doesn't have that luxury. I'm asking for a commitment from the reader and only have a certain amount of time for it to start paying off.

alexaherself said:

It's ok for self-publishing, perhaps

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If it's okay for self-publishing, it's okay for trade publishing.

I agree. And NOT because I generally have to scrap my first 50 pages. But I've never had to make my beginning "fast" I've just had to start where the story starts and everything is better for it.

I've definitely started books where it dropped me too fast and I ceased to care about as fast as I get bored with a snoozy opening.

I think the trick to a slow start is giving them something compelling already in their normal life. Some small goal that will foreshadow or play into what becomes the story goal. Good luck figuring THAT out though.

A story can be slow at moving into the major story arc, but still have a beginning that captivates the reader's imagination, sympathy, empathy, righteous indignation, or any other emotion that pulls that reader in.

Anything that pulls the reader into a character's head or into a story-related situation will make that reader want to keep turning pages. So, how you approach that background situation will be critical. Too often, such situations are presented in a way that distances the reader from any emotional bond with the character or from any worm-hole that makes the reader care enough to want to crawl in and experience the story rather than just have the background being told to him/her.

Maybe it would be worthwhile to post the opening in the Share Your Work forum, with a specific request related to this thread, to see what others here think.

"The story starts where the story starts" only begs the question.

Why does the story have to start on page one of the book?

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

TheNighSwan said:

"The story starts where the story starts" only begs the question.

Why does the story have to start on page one of the book?

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

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Because you are dealing with a huge number of readers/viewers who will say, 'God this is slow,' and change the channel or find something else to read.

Ummm, my husband is in this group.

TheNighSwan said:

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

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Because the long and collected experience of publishers has taught the people who determine what gets published that their chances of success are much smaller, that way.

There are always exceptions, and there are nearly always huge uncertainties, but the people who make commercial decisions about "what to publish" generally do so on the basis of increasing the odds of each book's success-chances, not of reducing them.

If you prefer a different approach, go for it. Either you're right and it will prove one of the rare, dramatically successful exceptions, or you'll end up self-publishing it because no trade publisher will be willing to take a chance on it. We all have the freedom to write whatever we want to write, just like publishers have the freedom to publish whatever they want to publish. For myself, I'll stick to starting the story where the story starts.

TheNighSwan said:

"The story starts where the story starts" only begs the question.

Why does the story have to start on page one of the book?

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

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Personally I don't like reading an author throat-clearing. A movie isn't a book. And if I could skip opening credits, I would. But even in a movie there's a burden on the story-teller to bring something of interest and start the story in the right place.

TheNighSwan said:

"The story starts where the story starts" only begs the question.

Why does the story have to start on page one of the book?

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

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I would argue that those James Bond intro scenes are more like prologues to a book, rather than the opening. And those opening movie scenes tend to be filled with tension, action, explosions, and other such stuff. They aren't usually world building, doing nothing else than setting the location, or showing how the main character got his job at the Quicky Mart.

Where many writers--myself included--get it wrong is setting the stage for the story when not as much stage needs to be set as we think.

You can have a slow simmer, but it still needs to be engaging.

"We publish X because X works" is a suspicious statement. If publishers really knew in advance what would work, there wouldn't constantly be flops and surprise successes.

This boils down to argument from conformity: we publish X because we publish X.

If only books with fast beginings are published, then of course the majority of the reading public will be comprised of people who like fast beginning —since nothing is being published for those with different tastes.

I personally know people who hate books that start in media res, that don't explain anything about their characters, that give no context before several dozen pages in —because they can't care about the tension surrounding characters they know nothing about and thus haven't been allowed to emphatize with.

So of course, these people pretty much give up on modern novels and stop buying them.

If people want A or B, but you only give them A, then of course they only buy A —and then commercials conclude that people only want A, and so will never ever sell them any B.

That's the whole "video games are for boys" canard all over again.

Something usually happens at the beginning that interests the reader or viewer. Let's say you have a book about a boy who's father is murdered. You want to establish the boy's life beforehand to show how much it changes later. A boring way to do this would be show him going to school and nothing happens. An interesting way would be to create a subplot of him realizing he had a project due that day so he quickly finds a way to get it done. The actual story doesn't happen until the murder, but the beginning is not boring.

When I'm in a bookshop and browsing for a book by an unknown author, I will read the first chapter. If there isn't something there to hook me within a page or so, the book is back on the shelf. I want you to convince me this book is worth spending £18.99 on.

Library books I have more leniency with, but not much more.

Scattergorie said:

I feel your pain!

I'm always saddened when I see critiques (especially in threads like "The First Three Sentences...") that basically say "Where's the story??? When does it START???"

I fear that modern novel writing will soon be reduced to a single sentence presented on an index card.

"John exploded."

The End
​

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This, to me, misunderstands what is meant by "story". When I say this - and I do say this in the first three thread, reasonably frequently - I mean, "when is something going to happen?"

I don't mean "when is someone going to die?"
I don't mean "when is something going to blow up?"
I don't mean "when are the laser-mounted sharks going to turn up?"

Show me an interesting character, in an interesting situation, doing something interesting.

Those things can happen at a fast pace or a slow pace. As long as it's interesting, the pace is irrelevant.

NeuroFizz said:

A story can be slow at moving into the major story arc, but still have a beginning that captivates the reader's imagination, sympathy, empathy, righteous indignation, or any other emotion that pulls that reader in.

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^ this, pretty much.

TheNighSwan said:

"The story starts where the story starts" only begs the question.

Why does the story have to start on page one of the book?

Movies are allowed to start with opening credits or introduction sequences that have otherwise nothing to do with the main plot. Why not books?

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Because books are not movies. Movies don't have TV-style opening sequences because they're not TV. Different media have different features. Wouldn't it be boring if everything was the same?

Slower beginnings are fine. What's not fine is an uninteresting beginning. How you make your beginning interesting depends on you and what kind of story you're telling. Thriller readers would likely find some action interesting, but a romance reader might be more likely to stick around if something interesting is going on regarding someone's relationships. If your book was a comedy then you'd want to make the reader laugh in the first pages. If it's a drama then drawing the reader into an emotional moment makes sense.

Here's my point: no matter where you start in terms of the plot of your story, make sure your beginning sets up the right tone and begins to deliver to the reader what they're there for. Until a reader has read the entire book they won't know everything about what connects to the plot and where the story should start anyway. What they will know is whether or not they were interested enough to keep reading. Does that make any sense? I'm still working my way through my coffee this morning.

onesecondglance said:

Because books are not movies. Movies don't have TV-style opening sequences because they're not TV. Different media have different features. Wouldn't it be boring if everything was the same?

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I hope you are aware of the irony of asking me why all things should all be the same when I was precisely advocating doing things differently by pointing out to other possibilities, precisely against the idea that all books' opening should have the same format.


I think this ties to a problem I have noticed before. When you ask people (here and elsewhere) what a novel is, they answer "any long fiction", which is certainly a fine definition —but is not at all the definition they hold to in practice.

In practice, what you get from reading this forum (and other writing places) is that a novel should do this and this and this, and should not do that and that and that, so that there is in fact a very precise and formatted definition of what a novel is/should be, in terms of structure, plot elements, characters, pacing, etc, a definition that almost everyone knows, but that almost no one aknowledges as such, instead keeping up the myth that "a novel is any long fiction".

And this definition seems to be the dominant definition among writers, publishers and agents, which would be fine, if other definitions weren't ignored or even argued to be wrong. This is done by arguing that other definitions do not work —but if writers will only write novels of type A, if other writers will only encourage them to write novels of type A, if agents will only represent novels of type A, if publishers will only release novels of type A, then of course only novels of type A exist on the market, and so only those are bought.

But I know people, readers, perhaps not the majority, but a significant number, who would rather read novels of type B. But these aren't made, writers are explicitely discouraged from making them, agents won't even read a manuscript that they know is type B, publishers have no intention of ever publishing anything of type B… so of course type B is completely absent from the market, so of course no one buys it —even though many people would buy it if it existed.

Victor Hugo wrote novels that, by today's standards, would not hold a chance to even be represented by an agent. Those are very long novels where the plot is dilluted in long explanations; his novels start with long descriptions and exposition. He was the top selling French author of the 19th century.

gothicangel said:

When I'm in a bookshop and browsing for a book by an unknown author, I will read the first chapter. If there isn't something there to hook me within a page or so, the book is back on the shelf. I want you to convince me this book is worth spending £18.99 on.

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£18.99?? This is why I don't buy hardbacks

I do the same thing as you, mainly on Amazon now tho admittedly - I read the first chapter to see if I'm hooked. If I'm looking to see how much is left on the scroll bar to find out how much of the sample I still have to read... then I'm out. It's the same with a movie, if I start checking my watch I know it's just not holding my interest.

I don't need a dead body on page 1 to keep me reading, but I need a reason to want to see what happens on page 2.

I prefer slower beginnings. Begins that still are relevant to the story and interesting, but not necessarily immediately driving the plot. I enjoy finding out about the world as characters navigate through it and resolve issues and do interesting things. I often do not enjoy stories where I'm quickly rushed from plot to plot as I often then forget these stories and their plots. I've been making an effort recently to read more current releases and I've found that this faster pace is more prevalent. I simply don't enjoy it.

That said, clearly if I wish to be published in the now, I need to change my stories to fit this newer model. I'm finding that I'm entirely changing the pace and thus cutting out some really great character stuff and events that display the world. I'm liking my story less and less as it becomes what it needs to be. I'm also gaining more confidence that it's the story that others would want to see.

Then again, I've always loved a slow burn with interesting detours.

lise8 said:

I think this is exactly what I need to find. I thought I was doing that by showing the MC's relationship with her daughter, but failed because of a few variants. I am searching for a situation that would make the reader empathise with my MC, so that they learn about her and her strange way of being without giving up too much of the plot line... still searching...

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I call this approach "the conflict before the conflict", and I think it's a very powerful tool in a writer's toolkit. By no means does every book need to start with a gunfight or a car chase, or hurl the reader in media res into a battle, but every book should start with something interesting happening, with some conflict between the character's wants and what they have. Luke Skywalker doesn't join the rebels until almost halfway through Star Wars, but the first third of A New Hope has a very clear conflict, even as it shows his daily life: he wants adventure and excitement, and to leave his humble moisture farm.

I think many of the best books begin with the MC struggling with some issue or yearning in their personal lives, then the external conflict occurs, and the MC's journey towards the external conflict in fact ties into their personal struggle established beforehand.

TheNighSwan said:

But I know people, readers, perhaps not the majority, but a significant number.

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I feel like you just answered your own question. If I'm a publisher who has to make a big bet on a book, and Book 1 will appeal to X readers, and Book 2 will appeal to X-10 readers, why would I back Book 2? No one denies there are some people out there that like slow-paced books that are heavy with exposition, but if this number is smaller than the number of people who prefer fast-paced books that show-not-tell, it makes absolute rational sense that publishers would target the larger group.