What's your opinion on starting a story after the action has taken place? And retelling it through your character's current predicament. Of course there is still plot/action/characterisation to come. As an example, I started my recent horror short story with my main character trapped in her room. She has been like that for two days after all the students in her boarding school were being hunted down by the teachers. There is someone currently knocking on her door, and she is thinking on what psycho teacher it could be, which prompts the plot about where she was when the incident started, what she was doing, how she got to her room and the chaos that was happening around her. All while relating it back to what's currently happening to her The reason I've wrote it this way is because: a) I'm able to pick out the interesting parts, so the reader isn't bored with her getting from a to b and b) To shorten the story's word count In short, I think it would make the story as a whole too long-winded, and I've got two or three scenes after to get to that I think are more important Do you think this is a cop-out? Would you be more interested if I started from the very beginning of the chaos?
So when you start the story, your protagonist is hiding, and someone is beating on the door. Then— instead of resolving that— you flashback to how she got there and what’s going on. No, personally, I wouldn’t like that. It feels a little cheap. I admit, though, I can't totally explain how. I don't necessarily think you need to start from the beginning. It's hard to pick out the right starting point, but in general, I think it's good to start from... like... the interesting change. The first "weird thing" that happened. The first abnormal event in her life.
If I'm reading this right and you're doing the "I bet you're wondering how I got into this mess" thing, where the hero is hanging upside down from something and narrating their own bad luck--I think it works better in movies than in books. If I'm not reading this right, then nevermind.
I suspect that you can pick out the interesting parts, and shorten the word count, while still telling the story pretty much in order. Why do you feel that these things are easier in flashbacks?
Well, this is going to push a lot of scream buttons for automatic prologue-haters, but this is a situation where you could start with a prologue. Your character is locked in a room, waiting for psycho teachers to come knocking on the door. How in hell did THAT scenario come to be? To answer that question—posed in your prologue—you then start to tell the main story from the beginning. In other words, the prologue acts as a flash forward, while all the other events are presented in chronological order, starting with chapter one. This is a time-honored way of telling a story, by the way. When a person reads a prologue, they know that something will be different about that chapter. A prologue prepares the reader and gives insight into what the story will deal with. Readers will be prepared for the time shift, if you work the transition right. What they will not be prepared for is if you start with the crazy teacher at the door in Chapter One, and then suddenly switch to long flashbacks that will feel like diversions. The question the prologue asks is 'how in hell did this happen?' It's a question. It's not a cliffhanger which leaves the reader dangling. We don't know these characters yet, so we're not invested in their fate at this point. It's a question. We want to find out the answer, but we're not on the edge of our seats about it yet. With Chapter One, we then get invested in the story, invested in the characters. We start with normal and move gradually into weird. We find answers to the question about how this scary scenario could have happened. As the story unfolds, we are led back into the situation depicted in the prologue. We experience that scene (complete with fright and horror which we now feel, because we now know these people) and then, at the end, the issue gets resolved in some way.
Or try the most celebrated: My god, a black cell of nothing, and am I, who am I, trapped in a nothing I cannot see, nothing but black something, the horror it is me @ 2000 words .THE END
Like "Titanic"? And "Deadpool", and "Wuthering Heights". It's not a "cop-out", it's a type of story. Otherwise we can call most story devices "cop-outs". You don't need to have whole chapters about those past events in order to let the reader know what happened then. The same information can be put in a paragraph, or in some dialogue. It's up to you to decide how to tell your story. It can be done either way. If the events are worthy of telling, they won't be boring. If you can keep the reder on their toes, it won't be boring. If you can't do those, it will be boring. Obviously, since your MC is here now, they definitely survived those past events. So when you start telling us about those past events, even if you show how dangerous the situation was, the reader won't be worried about that character. We already know that character is alright. So you have to find another source to keep the reader's interest and the tension up. In "Titanic" everybody knew the boat will sink, but the story was so well made that everybody cried when it happened. The Titanic story didn't revolve around "will the boat sink, will they all die", they had another source of tension and the audience had different things to care for. Of course, the readers would be curious to know how the madness in your story began, what led those teachers to go bezerk. But that can be answered in couple of sentences. If you want to have a longer explanation and keep the readers attention over couple of chapters of telling them how it happened, then you have to give them something to care for. But at the same time your reader will still be curious about the current events, about that character trapped in her room. And if your other story about "how it happened" isn't worth the distraction, your reader will simply skip over it and go check how your trapped character is going to get out of their predicament. In the case with Titanic, it was really interesting to see "how it happened", so for about three hours we totally forgot about "now". It was just a very riveting story, the audience enjoyed spending three hours with those characters. So, that's what you need to aim for.
Doesn't everything written in past tense mean the action has already happened? But I believe you are talking about flashbacks, which are fine, definitely start in the present narrative, which it seems you have, and be careful not to derail too far or for too long from the present narrative. But books do what you are talking about all the time in every genre.
A lot of horror writers start with a violent scene. It's a promise that the book will get there, when they know that the first large part of the story will be character building. I don't know about short stories, but for longer works, you can totally start with someone banging on the door, blood on the floor, pain, whatever, as a prologue. That's a very common style. Even in a shorter work, the main reason you do that is to make a promise to the reader, who doesn't know you, that this story will be scary. You promise fear, then you go into character building, promising investment. Those two things can egg horror readers on. So yes, I think starting with the banging on the door is fine. The rest doesn't have to be presented as flashbacks. You can go back, after showing that part, and start from the beginning.
^I will say-- I agree with @John Calligan and @jannert. If you're doing to do it this way, I like the idea of framing it as a short prologue.
If you happen to be Stephen King, you can dispense with this advice sense your name serves the same purpose as a prologue.
Starting your story after the action has happened isn't a bad idea at all. First, it gives your MC time to sort through what's happened to them and allow them to give a more accurate description of what took place. Second, while it does kill any tension for any scene that happens before you flashed back (this actually is kind of a bad thing in my Mind), since you're writing horror, it gives a sense of hope that the MC can make it through the rest of the trouble as well. You can then shoot this hope in the head and leave your audience with a big hole where their heart used to be. Finally, anything can be done well if you put enough effort into it. So just do your best, and you'll get to where you wanna to go. (great, now I'm talking like an adult, that's a true horror story for ya)
Thanks guys, a wide range of opinions here! Just to be clear, it’s not a fullscale flashback she’s having. She’s relating what’s happening to her now (sinister, quiet knock on the door) to which one of the teachers it could be, and revealing what they have done to other people to make her so afraid of them. When I was writing it I didn’t think of her describing snipets of the past 2 days as taking out of the current tension, so thanks for that note, because now that it’s been said—I completely agree I might change it happening over 2 days and just tell the story in one night from start to finish in my 2nd draft and see if that goes any better Thanks again
I like the idea, but: it would be hard to have her describe what has happened previously and still keep my interest. What you talk about in your last post sounds good: if we got to pick up what happened by her thoughts and not by description would be interesting. For example, she may be wondering if there's another student still alive knocking at her door right now instead of a murderous teacher, and show her thought process of figuring out if she'd open or not, where what happened the previous days would reside, as integral part of her decision-making.
You're right to address whether something might be dull or boring and therefore taking action to avoid that. However, going from the beginning to the past doesn't always work; your reader usually wants to move forward, so if you start the beginning off with a person in one situation then making them jump to the past you initially avoided, you're pressing pause. Saying wait, reader, watch this really quick. Kind of like the person who read the books, and when the movie starts, they stop you and relay all that happened before the movie even started. You typically just want to watch the movie. Not hear a novel's worth of information first. You can succeed in starting off trapped in that room. Context clues will tell your reader what they need to know. Teacher comes to the door. That tells the reader that the teacher is the one holding them captive. Your MC wondering which teacher tells us there was something going on, and some might even wonder if your MC is he only trapped student. You can develop a story that way, dropping context clues without forcing your reader back in time. Now, don't get me wrong, flashbacks can be really helpful, but to throw one in for the sake of a story setup, you're asking your reader for a huge favor straight from the beginning, and you'll likely have them more involved with your flashback than they are with your story. That or they'll be a bit turned off by a fake start to the story in which you start in one place, but really, take them elsewhere.
As long as you grip your reader in the first three paragraphs and possibly drop hints or bits of what came before a little bit at a time you will be fine - plenty of short stories take this approach. The key thing to remember though is that you must make your readers want to keep reading and find out what came before, and if you intend to write a big block of back story somewhere in the middle make sure you have the reader hooked before you take time out to fill in some backstory.
