How do you ease into the adventure?

[Feo Takahari]

I've run into a spot of trouble on my new project. The premise involves a sorcerer and a child accidentally transported to a parallel dimension. It felt awkward to begin with the accident, so I instead began with the sorcerer's arrival in town, and established a bit of his interactions with the townsfolk and the child in question. But apart from the child, it's possible that none of the townsfolk will play an important role in the story, nor will the town, and that's making me wonder if this whole beginning is unnecessary.

To put this in more familiar terms, if one doesn't wish to set one's adventure in Hobbiton, how does one establish the protagonist's peaceful life in Hobbiton before sending him off to destroy the ring, without getting into all sorts of details about Hobbiton that aren't necessary to the story? (I'm specifically choosing an example that I don't want to imitate, since I gave up reading before Frodo got out of the Shire.)

 

[CupofJoe]

To continue with the LOTR analogy...
Life in Hobbiton is close to irrelevant to the narrative but it is essential as motivation to protect it later. Those early chapters are essential at establishing the bonds between Sam, Pippin, Merry and Frodo and their bonds to the Shire and why they do what they do for each other and to keep their homeland safe...

What relationship is formed to the child with the Sorcerer before the accident? Is it important to the story? Does it drive what happens after?

Personally I'd be tempted to start with the [metaphorical] dust settling and the sorcerer expounding a series of expletives.
You could then fill any missing details with flashbacks, memories or dreams.

[Oddly I like books that start halfway through and then use cutaways to fill in the missing pieces but I hate it in Films and TV]

 

[wordwalker]

Two things that I think help here:

One, what facts or character struggles would add buildup to the story? If there are rumors of worldrifts, or the child has an Attitude that keeps clashing with the sorcerer, scenes focused on those can raise our interest in the right ways. Especially, one scene might contrast with another or yank it into a new direction, to make the reader more aware of just what foundation you're laying.

And, a non-action scene can hold its own if you zero in on exactly who wants what at the moment and what's in the way. The sorcerer wanting to shop for herbs while an annoying but starving child pesters him can be very different from the sorcerer shopping for herbs and trying to get a frightened child to give him directions.

For most books, I'd think out just how much of these to use to set the stage. Still, for something as abrupt as a worldrift--and an accidental one--I'm tempted to say it has to begin with the transport itself, or maybe with a chapter struggling over one thing that becomes the gate triggering in the middle of it.

 

[Telcontar]

Without knowing more about the plot it's hard to offer specific advice, but there are certainly a number of other subjects you can get a start on in the village itself:

-Relationship between sorcerer and the kid, which is important at least insofar as the main plot involves them.
-Why the sorcerer is there in the first place
-Whether the sorcerer's reason for traveling has anything to do with him getting sent off to this other dimension (which I would assume it does)

Simply getting to know both main characters a little in the context of their "normal" lives helps smooth the rest of the book, because we'll know whether the actions they take are odd or straightforward for them.

 

[Jamber]

The home setting can give us strong reasons to feel for the child even before something happens. Is there trouble at home, in school, in the street? You can set up a great relationship dynamic just based on us knowing that the child has had a difficult run and the sorcerer isn't necessarily a kindly person -- we'll care enough to worry and keep reading based on that alone.
cheers
Jennie

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Without greater context it's difficult to give an accurate opinion. However, I'd almost always recommend just getting into it. I'll never understand the desire to ease into the adventure. Unless you're imparting some really necessary information, in an interesting way, you're only giving yourself an opportunity to bore& lose a reader.

 

[Penpilot]

To put this in more familiar terms, if one doesn't wish to set one's adventure in Hobbiton, how does one establish the protagonist's peaceful life in Hobbiton before sending him off to destroy the ring, without getting into all sorts of details about Hobbiton that aren't necessary to the story?

This is a tricky balance. Generally speaking you put enough detail in to establish the setting, character relationships, and hint at the conflict. Once that minimum threshold is reached, it's your choice of whether you want to take more time with it like LOTR or just get on with it.

If you want some examples of how you can do this in one quick scene look at some movies.

Tell me if this generic description of a scene doesn't sound familiar. It pretty much encompass most of what you need to do to set up a story quickly: Character, conflict, world building, and possibly inciting incident.

A cop patrols the mean streets with his partner. He's complaining about his ex-wife and not seeing his kid enough. A robbery call comes in and they're off to answer it. The bad guy gets taken down by the protagonist (maybe in a funny and unique manner). But the guys partner gets wounded or maybe dead. Skip ahead to the protagonist getting a new partner.

Setting up the protagonist's normal life only requires that the reader understand what it is. The reader doesn't need to know every detail intimately, just enough to understand. Notice in the example I gave, a simple mention of ex-wife and not seeing his kid enough sets up a conflict and hints at a part of his life that may not be all that important to the plot. The way the protagonists acts in taking down the robber reveals character, and the whole situation develops the world and shows what normal day in the protagonist's life is. And the partner getting wounded, can be the inciting incident, the thing that upsets the status quo.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Now I'm indecisive. There are two ways I could write this story:

1): The plot mainly deals with the sorcerer and the child, and the parallel world doesn't connect directly to their own. The former's sister, a sorceress in her own right, contacts them occasionally but doesn't play a large role.

2): The parallel world mirrors their own, and they spend much of the time confined to a parallel version of their town, infested with twisted monster versions of their friends and neighbors. I may also have a B-plot dealing with the sorceress, who the first world's townsfolk suspect in the child's disappearance.

I was intending to write the introductory sequence before I planned which of these to use, but it looks like version 2 will require much more foreshadowing than version 1 (which could feasibly have the accident just a couple pages in.) I'd better decide between the two before I write any more. (I'm leaning towards 2--the best way to gut-punch a reader is to gut-punch the characters, and fighting their neighbors will go a long way towards that.)

 

[The Dark One]

To continue with the LOTR analogy...
Life in Hobbiton is close to irrelevant to the narrative but it is essential as motivation to protect it later.

At the risk of derailing the thread, I profoundly disagree with this statement. The opening Hobbiton scenes are crucial for portraying the soft, complacent rusticity of the hobbits and thus the commencement of their journey/character arcs.

 

[wordwalker]

At the risk of derailing the thread, I profoundly disagree with this statement. The opening Hobbiton scenes are crucial for portraying the soft, complacent rusticity of the hobbits and thus the commencement of their journey/character arcs.

It's Tolkien. It works if you like it-- and if you don't, you don't need ANY reason besides "It's 1940s pacing."