I'd call that setting the stage. As I understand it the real inciting incident is when the MC is dragged unavoidably into the conflict and has to make the choice, to answer the call of adventure, or to refuse. In both Star Wars and Treasure Island one or both of the MC's parents (or stand-in parents) are killed and his home is demolished, so he's powerfully emotionally invested, and has no place to stay. Everything anchoring him to the normal world is decimated. This is when Luke attaches himself to his good father (Obi-Wan) to go fight his real but dark father.
I like this advice quite a lot. For me, this really comes down to editing. When I sit down to write a story, I like to take my time introducing the characters, setting up their situations and predicaments, world-building, etc., before I get to the "meat" of the story. But once I start editing, I'll cut a lot of the set-up, start closer to the conflict, and weave the background information in throughout.
It depends. In medias res works better for short stories, because you don't have time for a slow buildup or to really go in depth about characters and setting. I tend to do that too. I keep seeing the statement here on the board "Your story really starts here," and it's often a chapter or two (or three) in. But usually that's when they were trying to shoehorn in a lot of worldbuilding. If it's a novel and especially if it's character driven, you should probably give it more time to let readers get to know the characters. But of course every story has its own requirements, and some writers try to give a lot of irrelevant info about characters too. It should either demonstrate important character traits or develop plot, otherwise cut it out.
I can't speak on books or novels just because I don't write them. What I am speaking of is screenplay writing for animated series like south park, the boondocks and rick and morty. Accept I have an animated series of My own that I write screenplays for and each of them run 21 minutes in length. When you're writing an animated series, yes, I would advice people to be economic with their pages. Your introduction page (being the first page or the first minute) you should introduce your main characters and reveal the need of the protagonist. By the second page/second minute you should be into the catalyst of the conflict, which is the lead up into the very thing that the protagonist will have to figure out. By the middle or even the end of the second page you should dive into the conflict, putting you into the depths of it by the third page.
How many of your screenplays have you sold?/ had produced as actual product you seem to speaking with great authority on what people should do, and yet you’ve previously said that you bury your screen plays after enjoying special time with them, which isn’t the normal route to success as a screen writer
To be fair in a 21 minute run time rather like a piece of flash fiction you have to get to the meat of the story that much more quickly. but there are still no hard and fast rules, it depends on what the story is that you are trying to tell
I could still see taking the first 3 to 5 minutes before you really kick off the action. Of course if it's an ongoing series with regular characters, you don't usually need that time to introduce the characters—viewers already know them. It's just in the 1st episode you need to introduce them.
It also depends on what kind of cartoons they are. If it's like something for Adult Swim (crazy nasty offputting cartoons seemingly designed to destroy values and attention span) the rules are different. Well, pretty much you just do the opposite of all the rules for good storytelling.
I can think of a number of Simpsons episodes that spend the first half building up an expectation, only to completely change it in the second ha;f, and the conflict becomes something other than what you expect it to be - a sort of Psycho bait-and-switch.
That's what I was thinking, too. More like the first third, and then it would lead into the main plot before occasionally circling back to the intro as kind of a B plot. Brilliant the way they did it. Like picture perfect.
I think you can get a lot more out of reading actual stories and novels than you can from these how-to articles written by randos on the Internet.
Though I think in media res is a great way to start short stories I have to disagree with you that it doesn't also work well as the beginning in longer works. Personally, I think it can be a great option for many kinds of stories. And I also have to take issue with your the second half of your statement. As a professional short story writer, I have never found that there's not enough time or space to go into depth with my characters or setting. In fact, if you are skimping out there, that's probably a problem. There's even time for a slow buildup, but I'm not sure that's really what a writer wants to do. Just saying there is a lot a writer can do in 3k to 5k words (the typical length of short stories) with no real need to compromise or lose sight of aspects important to a story.
I'm assuming he sleeps with them in a platonic manner, just a boy and his manuscript sharing a bed, having carnal relations with your writing would take knowing it intimately a step too far
yep - if its Stephen King on writing, or Niel Gaiman or Margaret Atwood or someone of that stature whoever doing a ted talk its fair enough, but if its someone who's never actually written a book, or only written books about writing books you have to take it with a shovel load of salt. I also tend to disregard any advice which is couched in the 'this is the one true way and all other ways are wrong' style
I would say a much more common trend in film is by the 3 minute mark, some clear motivation and/or conflict is fully established. Like in one movie on my phone at the 3 minute mark the protagonist establishes his personal desire, it's not until the 10 minute mark that we start to see how the official conflict gets in the way of that personal desire. On another movie on my phone by the 3 minute mark we are introduced to the bad guy doing bad things. But it's not until the 10 minute mark that the protagonist is even aware of the bad guy, and not until the 40 minute mark that the bad guy and the protagonist get into direct conflict with each other.
We're talking about 21-minute animated shorts here, so everything needs to be reduced. We probably should be talking more about proportion rather than minutes. 1/4 of the way in, 1/2 etc.
