At the beginning of your story, you need to set up all of the cool stuff that’s going to happen in a hundred pages. You do this with exposition. However, if you’re going to lose your readers at any point, it’s most likely to be here. Take too long with your exposition or lore-dump too quickly, and your readers will abandon your story before you can get to the good part. So brevity is important in this section.
But you can only cut so much exposition without sacrificing payoff later down the line. So how do you buy yourself some time? How can you promise to your readers, “I’m going to tell you a really cool and really exciting story, if you’ll just bear with me for a moment?”
Consider a concept which I’ve learned from a lecture from Dan Wells: the “Ice Monster” prologue. This strategy gets its name from A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. If you’ve read the book or seen the show, you know that we open on three men travelling into a dangerous land and dying at the hands of ice monsters. The prologue is beautifully written, and it promises that we’re about to read a story involving action and magic. Thus, we are willing to take some time and learn about more mundane, factual matters in the pages following. We stick through the introduction to Winterfell, the Starks, and Westeros as a whole because of what the prologue has promised us. And about a hundred pages later, Martin gives us another action hook. I would be surprised if anyone didn’t finish reading the book after this point.
This tactic is incredibly common, and numerous examples can easily be found. As such, this has become somewhat of a trope in the science-fiction/fantasy genre. But tropes are popular for a reason.
Let’s take a look at another example. Would we stick around with Luke Skywalker at the beginning of A New Hope if we spent the first thirty minutes of the movie learning about his life as a moisture farmer on Tatooine? Maybe, but far more captivating is first getting an introduction to our villain, Darth Vader, as he cuts down rebels on Leia Organa’s starship. We’re promised action, adventure, and cool laser swords. What’s important here, too, is that our prologue intersects with our main character very shortly. R2-D2 and C-3PO arrive on Tatooine after the action in space, so we know that Luke will be involved in the action soon. The movie promises us, “Hey, more cool stuff is going to happen. But bear with us while Luke learns about the Jedi.”
I’ve employed this concept in my current manuscript, A BOY FROM NORRU. My main character Alix Pelior begins as an apprentice spaceship mechanic to a demanding master. He wants to leave his life of grueling labor, but his overthinking scares him into inaction. That all changes when he accidentally stows away on board the ship of an infamous smuggler-thief. Now, if I began the story showing Alix’s day-to-day life, that could be an interesting opening. However, the excitement really begins with his meeting the smuggler. So how do I infuse the beginning with more action?
Before shifting the scope to Alix, I start by focusing on the smuggler-thief in a heist gone awry. There, we’re introduced to the main plot conflict, which Alix will eventually have to deal with. But I need to lay out the exposition before I can get there, so I indicate to my readers, “This is going to be a fast-paced, heist-filled romp through space, but first, bear with me while I tell you about this kid.”
I intend on utilizing this same tactic again in future manuscripts. Hopefully, this concept helps you in your own writing, whether in short or long form, whether for novels or for stage or screen. And as always, keep writing!
– AJG
If you found this post interesting, consider browsing similar articles here.