Intro Chapters

[Mectojic]

Hi all.

My fantasy work is a multi-PoV work, with 7 PoV characters. My series is mostly about political and military struggles, but also incorporates a little magic. Through the PoV characters, I capture the minds of 7 very, very different individuals, who think differently (with different writing styles for each), so the audience sees the effects of the war on different people.

I'm stuck on an introductory chapter. I want the chapter to be related to the rest of the story, but I don't want it to be absolutely direct - as in, I may use a different random PoV to begin, who dies at the end of the chapter (yes, ASOIAF copying). The event that occurs should happen before anything else, and needs to be able to capture the audience, since it is introductory.

So how do I set the scene for the audience with this chapter? They need to know that this is a fantasy book mostly about war, with a little magic, a little romanticism, some religion, some aristocratic things, some badass people...

Leave suggestions And I would LOVE to hear what your introductory chapters look like, if you could describe them in TL;DR fashion.
I feel like many writers get the intro done first, as implied. I thought I had mine, but it felt weak, and not a good "welcoming" opener, especially since I want the book to be readable by children.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

My instinctive response is: you don't need an introductory chapter at all.

Here's my reasoning. A story is a number of events which form a coherent whole. So... pick the first event. That right there is the opening of your story. Now, it can be difficult to decide what the first event is. I think of it as the tipping point, the moment when the protagonist is 'tipped' out of his/her normal life.

If you have multiple POV characters, then each character will have their own story, their own tipping point, and it becomes a challenge to string the stories together in a logical way. But that's a different issue.

Short version: start with the characters and what happens to them, and that will tell you where to start.

 

[Penpilot]

They need to know that this is a fantasy book mostly about war, with a little magic, a little romanticism, some religion, some aristocratic things, some badass people...

To me it's not any different than any other scene in the book. It's importance may be higher, but the approach IMHO is the the same.

You want to convey those things quoted above. The "trick" is you have to design a scene that touches on all those elements in a natural way. And you have to find the right character to follow through that scene. Sorry it's hard to be more specific because how you go about that is dependant on you story and what elements you have access to.

For example, lets take a random bunch of elements and see how they can be stitched together into one scene.

-comic shop owner
-has trouble with his supplier
-has girlfriend troubles
-gremlins are real
-Vampires are not
-hates Superman
-loves Wolverine
-forgot to pay his rent for his shop
-has heart of gold
-after work he's going to play DnD.

So how do you design a scene that covers all that?

We could start the scene with the comic shop owner, let's call him Bob, behind the counter and on the land-line phone with his supplier. He's been on hold for 15 minutes. He knows they're not busy and are just F-ing with him. A goth-kid walks in dress ups as a vampire. Make up to the nines with fake-blood dripping fangs to match.

Bob's iPhone rings. It's his girlfriend. He presses ignore. He's got save his fight for the supplier, if and when they pick-up his call again. He notices the goth-kid slipping comic books into their trench coat. A second later the goth-kid makes for the door, but Bob doesn't move.

As soon as the goth-kid grabs the door handle, poof, a guard gremlin appears and jumps on his face. Bob says to the goth-kid, "You either leave here with your face or the comics. Your move." The kid stumbles to Bob and dumps a pile of Superman comics onto the counter. Bob tells the kid if you going to steal, at least steal something good. Not books about that big, blue, wussy. Take a real comic, Wolverine. He hands the kid a stack of old Wolverine comics as well as some old Superman ones and tells them they're on the house.

The goth-kid looks at him stunned and says, "You ain't going to call the cops?"
Bob says, "No. But don't do that again. Else the realm monster--" Bob points to the guard gremlin "--will eat the boy dressed as a fake one." Bob jerks his thumb at the door. "You can go now. It's closing time, and I got a DnD game to get to."

The goth-kid leaves, but the landlord comes in and hands Bob an eviction notice.


Hope this helps.

 

[Heliotrope]

How far are you into your draft right now? Are you just starting and wanting to start with a killer first chapter? Or are you finished your draft and now going back?

From what I know about writing a few short stories, and plugging away at plotting my novel is that I have no clue about what my story is about until the second or third draft. By then things have usually changed so much that entire sections get cut and rewritten in order to tell the 'true' story in the best possible way. So, if you are just starting out on your first draft, don't worry too much about writing a killer opening until you are finished the entire story. Just get the story all down, do a few drafts, find out what the story is really about, then write the first chapter again.

 

[Russ]

I concur with Pauline above. I don't think you need or want that introductory chapter unless it has something to do with the story you are trying to tell.

I can't remember where I read it, but one description of where to start your book is to chose one of two points, either the "initiating event" for the plot overall or the first point where the main character begins to get involved with the main conflict and start with with that or as close to it temporally as possible.

So if your "initiating event" is X killing someone and burying their body in sacred ground 200 years ago, you can get away with that an "introductory chapter" because it fits your plot. An introductory chapter just to set scene or tone or introduce character is not really in accord with modern writing technique and a riskier proposition.

These days the general rule might be expressed as "start as close to the action as is possible."

Since you asked, my WIP starts with the "initiating event" which takes place about an hour before the protagonist is drawn into the main conflict. There is plenty of world building, geneology and historical backstory behind it, but that gets mixed in later in small, hopefully manageable, bites.