My story is about a merc who gets hired by his family (half related, he's the affair child but doesn't know he's their family and neither do they) to protect a shipment of historical artefacts for them. What I can't figure out is how to introduce him. On one hand, if I start with my MC it limits my options and focuses too heavily upon him. On the other, I can't pick where to start if I begin with the family hiring him. There's a meeting in which one of them already knows the MC which eases the introduction for the MC but I feel as though it may be jumping into the thick of it. It feels like there should be something before it but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what it is I'm missing. Any suggestions or insight would be greatly appreciated
You could open the novel with him hired on a similar job. That's give us an introduction into who he is and familiarise the reader with what he does. And then perhaps from that he is scouted by the family who recognise his skills.
That's kind of what I don't want to do though. I can't make it fit cohesively, there's no good segue between one anonymous job with no baring to the plot besides introducing the MC and the family meeting up to pick a merc for their job. MC's already quite well known within the universe and has a good, reliable reputation. I was gonna say I didn't think something like it could fit but if it was a prologue intro rather than a first chapter intro then I could go right to the family in the first chapter... Thoughts? If I do it properly I could even tie it in to a fight down the track. Same guys or something...
Going through the motions as to how this set-up is arranged is a crucial plot point, but - as you said - just launching straight into the thick of things I thought would be a little bit too disorientating. At least gives the reader a chance to absorb the setting, and it allows some ground rules to be established. You can provide little nuggets of information your MC might be, and initial clues as to how they got into their current situation. You say it has no bearing on the plot, but even that doesn't necessarily have to be true. The employers could be competitors to the family who then poach the MC from them. Or perhaps the MC is bribed by the family to do a botch job which already created a revenge motif.
The problem is whatever credentials the MC has, the reader doesn't know they're the best merc in the business. They don't know that the family desperately want to hire this person because they're the best in the business and they know their artefacts are going to be safe with him presiding over them. The best way for to let the reader know that is to show it. Show a job, show them do some badass stuff.
