Hello everyone, Right before I start I'd like to precise two things quickly: first, I'm a new member on this site so I don't really know what to expect and second, I'm french and write in french so my English might be bad or wrong in some cases. Thank you for your time so my question is "What is the right time to place the trigger of the story?" (in french we call it trigger event im not certain if it's the same for english..). So my story is pretty intense and violent since it talks about a 16 years old guy unconsciously learning to overcome his fears of the city at night by doing illegal stuff. The thing is, my trigger event is discovered through the chapter three and the whole chapter four is the following of the chapter, but with no action taken by the main character. The protagonist starts "acting" only during the fifth chapter. I'm imposing a starting point of 3000 words per chapter with roughly thirty chapters. But I feel like the first five chapters are going way too slow for an "intense" book. So more precisely, my question is: is there a somewhat suitable place for the trigger of a story or the fact that the action starts at chapter five isn't a problem? Thank you so much for your time and help! B.A.
I moved this from the Articles area where you posted it to Plot Development. The Articles area is for informational articles concerning the writing process, not questions. Specific questions, such as this one, are for the upper area of the forum. Also, bienvenue sur le forum!
I do my best to adhere to Vonnegut's advice of "Start as close to the end as possible". What's happening in those first two chapters? Is it actually important? Couldn't you start much closer to the trigger event (I'm assuming this is what I'd call the inciting incident) - in chapter three? I especially think that if your story is tense, starting with a lot of downtime might not be the best tone-setter.
Thank you for the quote I'll write it somewhere to remind myself. And absolutely, I was talking about the "inciting incident" excuse me. The first two chapters are really only an introduction of the whole character since the story is only based on the internal growth of himself (the novel is in first person). I guess I'll really have to shorten the start because I'm feeling like I'm dragging the scenes and events. Chapter four is really boring, I'll totally cut it off and mix chapter two and three. What happened is that I started to mix some slow pace atmospheric description and fast paste intense action. I guess this mix shouldn't be banned from my writing, but description only to fill in between the events: bad idea. Thanks again!
Not that I think starting with the trigger is bad advice, but if you're going for something of novel length you may well find yourself running out of steam very quickly if you don't include downtime. In my opinion downtime for the characters can be just as much fun to read as the plot-driving stuff, so long as it's interesting. I've long since stopped subscribing to this notion that every single sentence has to drive the story and be relevant to the plot.
Thank you very much for your response. I believe both description and intense can and should go together (at least in this project). I was thrilled to make a book about "city/night/illegal" stuff but I have to say I'm more of a slow pace description type of writer, and I'm a hundred percent with you when you say that it can be fun to read descriptions which make you feel more inside the story. Again thanks for the advice!
Great idea I never thought about that. Maybe a little plot can keep the reader alert throughout the sloppy beginning. (and I'll try my best to make it not sloppy)
I have just started on my rewrite manuscript. I went through a few phases, but I ultimately decided to not have the inciting event within the first chapter. Here was my thought process: 1) I had planned a story outline originally where the *real* plot didn't start until maybe half-way through. I realized that I was writing more backstory than story. 2) I corrected in the opposite direction and started the plot within the first few pages. 3) Reading up on narrative structure and plot pacing, and thinking about some of my favourite literature and film, I realized that a story should "set the stage" for what is normal for the characters before turning everything upside down. IF the resolution involves a "return to normal but different," you have to establish normal to begin with. Star Wars spends time with Luke before he joins Obi Wan. Dune spends a *lot* of time building who Paul is before he begins his journey. Part of my reasoning was that my MC and his partner-in-crime get seperated at the inciting action, and he gets a different partner for the entirety of his story. I didn't want his old partner to just be an afterthought, and I wanted the reader to have some idea of how differently my MC behaves with two different partners. I also wanted to establish the obstacle/trouble-making aliens, AND establish the technology before it all gets messed up. At step 2 I would need to establish all of that stuff after the inciting action and it felt wrong. I also agree with OurJud; though my story is likely a novella, I want some downtime. I was getting caught up in the planning/driving action part of the story and realized that I was sacrificing my characters' development. So! There are multiple ways to look at it. Whatever works for your story.
really ? If you are writing a 100k novel that's 10k words before the inciting event. I'd suggest it needs to come a lot sooner than that
Zero? I'm one who likes to get stuck in straight away. It's useful if there is some sort of hook in the first chapter which keeps the reader reading, or establishes some sort of emotional response in the reader towards the main character. That needs to be in the first chapter, and that often comes with some sort of crisis. That could be an action scene, it could be the character making a difficult decision, etc, etc. Maybe it doesn't have to be the trigger event that you planned (which could still be included in the later chapter you indicate), but it could be something else with a similar function.
Thank you! My first chapter is really boring for the moment. I will change it with an intense scene wetheir it is violent or something that makes the reader emotionally involved. (Even thought the prologue is an action scene) I'll keep your advice in mind
This is really good advice (Love Vonnegut). It's something I've also been contemplating, because I have a fair amount of backstory for my character before the inciting incident (these terms are all new to me). I have considered going into some of the more important things as outside the linear timeline, like flashbacks I suppose, but I'm not sure how I would do that. I don't really want to resort to dates to illustrate a timeline. A rough timeline is that a pregnant woman is on the run from her family who killed her boyfriend, there is a time/space disturbance sending her into labor and then dying after giving birth. This is the MC. He is taken by a completely unrelated person who is also on the run from something and takes the baby as disguise/cover from people looking for a single woman. She dumps the baby with her sister's family claiming it's hers to gain sympathy. He is raised by this family, but befriends a woman whom his real mother was actually coming to for help. She knows who he really is but keeps it secret. The false mother discovers there is a bounty for the MC and comes back to get him for the money, but it goes badly and the mentor figure is killed. They threaten to frame the MC (at this point he's probably about 16-18yrs old). He escapes and joins a crew of space nomads. This is the beginning of his adventure really. I think the death of his mentor is the trigger. Maybe she tells him he's not who he thinks he is just before she dies. I was thinking a chapter or prologue of his birth, and him getting dumped with an adoptive family. Then a chapter of him growing up or meeting this woman, maybe establishing his personality and maybe a bit of illustrating that he has memories of his mother that are really more than memories. Or.. is it preferable or advantageous to start with the death of his mentor and fill in the backstory another way?
Presumably some of this backstory is unknown to your MC and will be discovered by him. I would reveal it to the reader through the process of him discovering it, rather than giving them all the answers at the beginning. Luke Skywalker's discovery of his background was interesting enough. Another example of discovering the past without spoonfeeding it to the reader from the beginning (can you tell I'm not a fan of backstory? ) would be Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder. That leaves the important events that he is aware of, but that come before you want the story to start. One possibility could be to start with a life subplot--maybe something that seems terribly important to him comes up (Accused of cheating at school? A car accident? Coping with a medical diagnosis?) and he needs the mentor's help with it. Then you get the false mother and the death and you're off and running.
Subplot sounds like a good approach. I'll chew on that idea a little bit. Also I agree with the preference for getting right into it. The birth scene is definitely important but I am feeling like tucking it away for later suits the story best. I may need to really shift my perspective to the MC to get it all laid out in a way that he is discovering things.
I agree with the general consensus that you should have your inciting incident as close to the start of the book as absolutely possible, to the exclusion of almost literally anything else. I don't know that I quite agree with Vonnegut, although I suspect his thrust is close to the same thing, and the last book I wrote has the inciting incident before the book starts, it's simply not show and throws you immediately into the consequences, doesn't really show why because why isn't all that important, what happens is this girl is now pretending to have cancer. I would say that you almost need to go in medias res in this day and age. Save your background for later. Throw the reader right into the plot on page one, or at least within the first chapter. You need that immediate story beat, that immediate sense that things are happening and giving the reader (and the agents and publishers particularly) a taste for what this book is really about. All the characterization and description and world building you can do once you've already got people interested in the book, even if that means throwing stuff at them the don't quite understand just yet. That's ok. They don't need to understand it all right at the start. What they need right at the start is to go "Oh wow, I need to keep reading". And you just won't get that by slowing down to tell them about how this world works. The readers will run with you and wait to find that out. But they won't wait for something really interesting to happen. They need action. And if you can put that literally on the first page, in the first line then yeah you should absolutely do that.
Thank you all! When I realized a couple of days ago how slow and boring my beginning was, I simply placed the trigger event a chapter closer. But it's happening throughout the second and third chapter. I still wanted to use the first chapters as a (boring) introduction of my main character, the place he lives in, his parental issues scholar situation etc. etc. So yesterday I checked some advices about first chapter writing, about how it needs to be 'attractive'. The first chapter has to come up with something in relation with the major plot. You have to give a peek at what the reader is going to see throughout the whole book. For example Harry potter starts with a baby placed in front of a door. But theres magic happening, strange characters, a scar etc. Letting the reader learn about the character later throughout the book is not an issue and can be a sort of creation of suspense. (if you manage to make the reader want to learn more about your character.) I hope it helped and thank you again
I know it's really tempting to do that but I would strongly suggest you don't need to. I know you want to show people all this cool stuff you came up with so they can really understand how important things are when they happen but it's just not the best way to do it. The problem is that all that cool stuff doesn't have weight to the reader until they've started to see something of the action. It almost doesn't matter how good your setting is because that's always going to be, well, the setting. And the plot is the plot. And the plot is what is going to grab people. Fantasy writers tend to get this the worst but it's true for all kinds of writing. We all remember reading books as a kid (or whenever) where the setting felt so alive and it sucked us in and wanting to re-create that magic. But the truth is that the audience already knows enough about your setting to follow that first plot beat. With maybe a paragraph you can give them all they need to know. You can almost literally say "This is high fantasy; and now this is happening" and fill in the rest later. Not that much later. But later. After you've shown them something big. You can jump around in time, that's ok, or use some device so that we can see what happened before that. But it needs to start with a bang. Your character is a person, that's enough for right now. I'm sure he has plenty of interesting stuff going on but you have a whole book to tell us who he is. You only have one chance to grab the reader.
The first sentence or first paragraph is your story hook. "Leroy heard the dog barking. He had to get in the door now, or the police would have him." The hook pulls the reader into the story, and can be the trigger or inciting incident, but doesn't have to be. The inciting incident, what someone else does that starts the real story in motion, can be anywhere in the first 10% of the story. You don't need to rush it, because the first thing you want to do is show us your main character. Who he is, how he feels, and why we should care enough about him to read the rest of the story. He's living in some situation or environment that is oppressive while he pursues whatever his original goal is. Then boom, somebody does something that screws things up for him (10% in), and now he has to decide or be convinced to go outside his normal bounds and try something different to solve the problem. When he finally agrees to do so, that's the first 1/4 of your story. If you've got 30 chapters, your Inciting Incident is ideally in Chapter 2 or 3. Try this. 30 chapters means the first quarter is 7 chapters. Chapter 1, hook us with something dangerous or exciting, make us care about who he is and what happens to him. Chapter 2, give us a taste of what the overall plot/conflict is going to be about, like organized crime or such. Chapter 3, set the trap that pulls him into the conflict. Chapter 4, have him meet his mentor, and take some kind of risk. Chapter 5, show the back and forth debate on whether he should or shouldn't step outside his comfort zone into some new role. Chapter 6, hint at what the villain is up to. Chapter 7, something world altering happens that forces him to choose his new role. The details, of course, are up to you.
Ok I see this is an old post I have the same question. I see a lot of answers here. I'm writing a fantasy novel hopefully a series. I see a lot of answers mostly saying as soon as possible the trigger event should take place. However My favorite writer, David Eddings, in his series The Belgariad, in book 1, Pawn of Prophecy, the trigger event happens in chapter 5. The first 4 chapters consist of the main character growing up. Now my story doesn't have a character to grow up. But I've been contemplating on using the first or first few chapters building up to the trigger event and if so, how many?
Hi @No1Ozz, It sounds very strange to me to have 5 chapters of the character growing up before the inciting incident, but I'm not familiar with that series, maybe there was a good reason. My take on your question is that you want to start with a good strong hook to pull readers in. Make them gasp and clutch the arms of their chairs (or one anyway, they need to hold onto the book with the other one). Then you can relax for a while and give some important background material (as long as it's important. Never bore the readers). But I would try to get the inciting incident in pretty quickly after that. Definitely don't start with exposition, which is a lot of dull information explaining things the readers need to know. Start on something exciting in some way, and if there's any info they need to know, sprinkle it in little by little along the way. Break it up, don't dump it all on them at once. What you might do is, if there are some things that need to happen chronologically before your hook or very far before the inciting incident, present them later. Here's a good example—it all happens so fast it's included in the Sample at the beginning of the book: The Zero Stone by Andre Norton @ Amazon Note the way it's done. She starts after the inciting incident has already happened (Andre Norton was a woman), with the protagonist running scared through dark alleys and being pursued. He can't actually run, due to the slippery slime of the alleyway—he must walk very deliberately—which gives him time to think about the inciting incident that forced him to go on the run. Then he makes it to the sanctuary and gets inside, buying time to relax for a while, and thinks back more long term, to when he was younger. He gives a brief accounting of the important events in his life that led him to become a gem trader and introduced him to the Zero Stone and the intrigue of spacefaring thieves and spies. Intrigue that killed his father under mysterious circumstances. I think it's superbly done, and gets the info in perfectly, while being structured to keep things moving along and exciting. If she would have started with his growing up and gradually becoming a gem trader, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as exciting. She was a natural-born storyteller who really knew how to spin a great yarn.
If there isn't something to spark my interest in the first chapter, or maybe the second, the book goes on the discard pile. More likely I will return it and get something different.
