Anonymous asked:
How do people feel about "cold" opening? Like a fic that starts with a character waking up from being unconscious?
ao3commentoftheday answered:
I love it. Give me all of the mid-action starts. Make me have to catch up to where the characters are. Feed me backstory slowly while I’m following characters on their current adventure. If you start off with some kind of mystery, I’m hooked from line one.
What about the rest of you?
In media res is literally the oldest trope in western literature (Iliad, holla!) and it’s still used today because it’s frankly a fascinating way to tell a story.
Few pointers:
- As with any opening, make sure you’re setting the right tone, making the right promises, for the story you’re about to tell. Humorous, mysterious, action-packed, etc. If you’re writing The Hangover, don’t start it like Momento.
- Make sure YOU know how your character got into that predicament, even if your readers don’t. You’ll want to properly hint at/foreshadow/reveal the backstory.
- You can reveal what happened through hints, through flashbacks, or just jumping back and retelling from an earlier point. Don’t feel tied to a particular narrative strategy from the start, but do provide a relatively consistent reading experience (ie pick one method and mostly stick to it)
- Again, be aware of your story type. If waking up from being unconscious is presented as mysterious, but the mystery is solved on page 3, your readers will expect a new mystery to ALREADY BE INTRODUCED by that point. You’re leveraging interest early, so make the most of it.
- Might be a weird choice for a serious romance story? Ehhh I’ve seen weirder on the Hallmark channel though.
That’s all I’ve got. Good luck and happy writing!
