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Question about switching scenes

MiaC

Troubadour
Hello so I'm writing in 3rd person. I have two main characters (twins) and a few supporting characters. I'm just curious if what I've been doing is okay. I'll be writing one scene then when it's over I'll switch to another character (if its time for their scene) Is that okay? I mainly write POV from my two main characters but here and there, I'll add another characters POV. Also wondering if that's ok.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
Here is an example but sometimes the scene switches will be different times or days. This one that I posted below is around the same time. Kind of a back and forth type thing.

Chapter 1


Tessa laid in her warm bed, she could faintly hear a buzzing noise pulling her from her deep sleep. It became louder and louder until it pierced through her ears and her eyes sprung open. The white ceiling above came into view. She laid motionless, staring at the ceiling as the loud alarm clock buzzed next to her.

It was Monday morning, Aug 28th 2017, only a few weeks into her junior year. She was dreading going back to school today. She always suffered from horrible social anxiety her whole life but recently, her anxiety had turned into full blown panic attacks anytime she was in large crowds. She wanted to stay home to avoid all that today but her Aunt would never allow that.

She turned off the alarm clock and continued to stare blankly up at the ceiling.

The shower was running down the hallway. Her sister, Alyssa, was getting ready for the day. Alyssa was always dressed and ready to go before Tessa was even out of bed.

The next thing Tessa knew her eyes flew open again, she quickly looked over at the Alarm clock.


"Oh shit!" She said in a panic as she threw the covers off her and ran to her dresser.


There was only 20 minutes before they had to leave for school.

She quickly grabbed her school clothes then hurried down the hallway to the bathroom. She reached to grab the door knob but the door began to open. She looked up to see Alyssa standing there. Her dark brown eyes staring at her, happily.

"Oh, hey Tess-finally up?"

A sweet scent of perfume wafted through the air as she swung her long, freshly curled, dark brown hair over her shoulder.

"Uh, Yeah, I fell back asleep." Tessa said, quietly, still half asleep.

"Oh, well better hurry, we have to leave in like 15 minutes." Alyssa said as she walked past Tessa towards the stairs.

"Yup." Tessa said, walking into the bathroom.

Tessa and Alyssa weren't only sisters but identical twins as well, you wouldn't be able to tell by their personalities though, they were near opposites. Tessa was a hot headed tomboy and Alyssa was a shy girly girl.


Their Aunt was downstairs, at the stove cooking.

"Hey, Jess." Alyssa said, cheerfully as she took a seat at the kitchen table.

Jess looked back with a bright smile.

"Oh, hey hun!"

Jess was gorgeous, with straight light blonde hair that just reached her past shoulders. She was nearing 50 years old but didn't look a day over 40.

Tessa and Alyssa's parents, Brandon and Amy Stone, had unfortunately passed away in a tragic house fire when the girls were only two years old. They don't remember them at all and had never even seen a picture of them as all their belongings were destroyed in the fire.

Brandon was Jess's brother and she had never met their mother or even knew Brandon had any children as he hadn't spoken to her in over 5 years, until one day, she suddenly learned he had passed.

Jess had been taking care of Tessa and Alyssa by herself since.

Jess finished making up their two plates then walked over to Alyssa and took a seat at the end of the table, setting both plates on the table.

"Is Tessa almost ready?" She asked.

"She actually just got in the shower." Alyssa said, scooping some eggs off her plate.

"Oh." Jess paused. "Do you think she's been acting strange lately?" She asked, curiously.

Alyssa gave her a 'are you serious' look.

"Tessa, acting strange?" She paused.

"No, never." She added, sarcastically with a slight smile as she took another bite off her plate.

"I don't know, she just seems-uneasy or on edge lately. You haven't noticed?"

Alyssa slightly shrugged. "I guess." She said. "But I'm used to Tessa acting strange, that's just who she is."

"Yeah." Jess agreed, reflectively. "How's she doing at school? Any friends?"

Alyssa shook her head as she finished chewing them swallowed.

"No, you know how Tessa is; she likes to be alone."

"Yeah." Jess said, quietly with a concerned expression. "I'm just worried about her."

Then Jess got up and began preparing something for Tessa to eat at school since she was running late.


After showering, Tessa slipped on her black pants and clasped her black bra around her then began towel drying her long, thick, damp, dark brown hair that reached down to the middle of her back.

Tessa was very beautiful with radiant, olive colored skin, gorgeous dark brown eyes and full lips. She was average height, about 5'6 and her body was thin but curvy. Her and Alyssa were completely identical; Most identical twins have those small differences, slightly different eye shape or eye color, but besides personality and style, it was as if they were the perfect mirrored image of each other. They were both gorgeous but Tessa was often outshined by her twin as she was more likeable and took extensive pride in her appearance, you couldn't catch Alyssa without her hair and make-up done perfectly. Tessa never really cared about any of that stuff and she preferred it that way, she liked that no one really noticed her.

She quickly threw on a faded, black Fleetwood Mac T-shirt she wore all the time then began brushing the tangles out of her hair, she always let her hair air dry and left it natural, flowing over her shoulders. She finished getting ready, gave herself one last look, sighed, then made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

Alyssa and Jess were both sitting at the table as she entered. She walked past them and grabbed her black sweater and backpack off the hook near the door, then looked back at Alyssa.

"You ready?"

"Yeah." Alyssa said, quickly as she got up and placed her plate in the sink then walked over to the coat rack and grabbed her small pink hoodie and backpack off the hook. Tessa began to open the door.

"Oh Tess!" Jess called out as she stood up quickly and grabbed a brown paper bag off the table. "I made you something you can eat before school."

She handed Tessa the paper bag.

Tessa gave a weak appreciative smile as she took the bag from Jess. "Thanks, Jess."

Jess slightly smiled.

Tessa opened the door and her and Alyssa walked out.

Tessa stood underneath the porch awning, staring up at the massive dark rain clouds that hung above in the sky and the tiny sprinkles that fell through the air.

They lived on Valencia Island, a small island in Northern Washington. There were only about 5,000 residents. The girls had lived there their whole lives. The weather was beginning to feel a bit more cool now as fall had fully set in, and it had been raining for nearly a week straight.

Alyssa threw up her hood to cover her hair from the light rain then quickly walked to the car. Tessa enjoyed the rain so she didn't care to cover her head. She took a deep breath through her nose. She loved the smell of the damp cool earth and enjoyed the way the sprinkles felt brushing against her face. Something about the rain and gloom felt serene to her.

Tiny raindrops hit the windshield as they drove off. They lived about 15 minutes from their high school, and the highway into town was a one way deserted road with large towering trees on both sides.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Without reading the example, because I am lazy, much depends on the type of 3rd you’re in, Omniscient or Tight? If you’re full-blown omniscient you can go in and out of heads, but you better have a clear narrator’s voice to make it work. If in tight 3rd, then you need to indicate shifts like this with an *** or extra line break so that the reader knows what the hell is going on, similar to how jumps in time are often handled. Dune is a masterwork in Omniscient, LoTR is a more classical style of Omniscient, such as you might see from Dickens. GRRM writes in tight third in a Song of Ice and Fire and keeps the POV steady through every chapter.
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
I kind of noticed some more pressing problems.

1: If your story starts with your character waking up, it better be for a good reason. Having them take a shower and eating breakfast isn't exciting. But if Tessa woke up and thought "I absolutely dread that I have to get on that space ship today," then that would be interesting.

2: Describing how attractive all the girls/women are is...not a great look. Who is the narrator, exactly? Because at this point since it's not one of the characters, it's more "voice of the author," so it comes off as you putting the attractiveness of these characters as vitally important to them, and it's something that we, as the readers, need to know. Which we don't. Even if this was first person and Tessa was looking at herself in the mirror, it would still come off as "the narrator needs to tell us how hot she is." Now if she has a complex relationship with her body, like she's actually a dragon trapped in a normal human body, then describing how she feels putting on her "human outfit" and getting into the mindframe of being a normal human girl would be interesting!

3: Nothing happens in this chapter. You sprinkle in some back story, but it's not relevent to what's going on. I know they have a brother, okay, what does that tell me about their motivation to do things? What is the conflict? Why should I care about these characters or keep reading?

There's nothing inherently WRONG with switching POV characters scene by scene. Ideally there is 1 empty line between the scenes, which denotes that you're breaking them up into seperate scenes. How this is written in standard manuscript format is:

This is the paragraph where Tessa does some stuff.
#
Now here's a paragraph of Alyssa doing some stuff.
Here is a second Alyssa paragraph. There is no extra whitespace between them.

See what I mean? You might already be doing that in whatever word processor you're using, but it doesn't really show up like that in the forum. But also you don't HAVE to do this. In Dune, the narrator is "third person omniscient" which means it knows EVERYTHING of what EVERYONE is thinking. it hops between character's heads, but it honestly isn't all that jarring. Paul does something, he thinks about how difficult it is. Someone else thinks of what Paul is doing and how Very Important it is for him not to fail. They then say something to Paul. Now we're being told the physical things Paul is dealing with, how hot the sun is, how scary the worm is, you know how it goes. But doing that smoothly is difficult to do. It's easier to just use white space like I posted above, but if you execute it really well then it can add a lot to the story, if that's what you're going for.

I think what would be the best use of your time right now is to ask yourself "What is the point of this story?" If you only had 1 sentence, 1 tweet to tell someone else what it is, what would you say? Now your first chapter has to connect to that in some way. They spot a leprechaun on their drive to school, Tessa has some pressing reason to dig up the backyard established in chapter 1 so she can find the portal to the other world in chapter 2, Alyssa gets turned into a newt, SOMETHING has to happen to grab our interest.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
This isn't the full chapter, I got like 4-5000 words per chapter. I don't think it would let me fit it all here. I'm confused kind of on how to make the narrator someone specifically, rather than someone just telling their story. Like I've read Harry Potter, which is 3rd person, have you read the books? Does it indicate who the narrator is? As far as I can remember it doesn't. I think in this beginning part, I was just trying to let the readers get to the characters a little bit, their personalities, looks. Some back story, but this is only like the first part of the chapter, more happens.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
This is the end of the chapter if you care to read it lol. This isn't switching scenes or anything just more of what happens I guess. I'm just hoping it's not bad. That would suck. I've never written anything so I don't really know. Her panic attacks have a lot to do with things.


Tessa made it through her next three classes and walked into her last period English class. She took her seat at the back of the class near the window, as usual. This was the most boring period. The teacher was so uninvolved with the class, all he did was assign chapters to read then handed out homework at the end of class but she didn't mind, at least she could block everything out without being bothered.
The whole class was silent as they read. Tessa watched the raindrops slide down the window. She hadn't even read two pages of the chapter that was assigned.
Her mind quickly began to wander, thinking about what it would be like to be normal, or what other people considered to be normal, being happy and having friends and not having to hide from everyone or shut people out. It was really lonely for her sometimes but at the same time, she preferred it. With the cruel nature of people, It seemed better that she did avoid having friends but the thought of having a friend was still nice from time to time.

She had been doing so good at staying inside her head today, she almost forgot she was even in class. She began to be pulled back to reality by a voice that was calling her name.

It was very faint at first but then got louder as she felt someone grab her arm.

"Hey, Thersea!"

She quickly snapped out of it and turned her head to look at whoever grabbed her arm.

A girl who was sitting in the next row over was staring at her, strangely.

Tessa just stared back at her confused, wondering if she had actually said anything to her.

"Are you okay?" The girl asked in a whisper as the rest of the class was still quietly reading.

Lately, people were asking her that daily.

"You were staring out the window for a long time, you looked out of it."

Tessa turned her head forward, embarrassed. She rubbed her eyes to hide her embarrassment.

"Oh... um, yeah I'm fine."

"Okay." The girl said, confused but was quiet after that.

Tessa could feel the anxiety creeping up very fast. She tried to concentrate on the rain falling down the window again but this time she couldn't block anything out. She knew an attack was close. Her heart began to race and her hands began to tingle and shake. She clenched her hands tight and shut her eyes, her breathing became rapid as she tried to calm herself down. She could feel her emotions overwhelming her.

She began focusing on her breathing, slowing it down and relaxing every muscle in her body. She was telling herself, it'll be okay, you are in control, repeatedly. This actually seemed to be helping. Her muscles and nerves were relaxing and her breathing slowed. But just as she opened her eyes, something rushed into her mind. Her eyes widened with shock. It felt like her mind was being charged up, very rapidly.

Then she heard something inside her mind, a girl's voice. It sounded exactly as her own thoughts would but it wasn't her voice, it was someone else's.

"I can't wait to see Jimmy after school, I'm going to lose my virginity tonight!" The girl's voice sounded very excited and was crystal clear inside Tessa's mind.

Tessa sat there, still as a statue, with her eyes widened and her hands gripping the sides of her desk as hard as she could. It was like every muscle in her body was involuntarily stiffing up.

Suddenly, the voice changed. "I'm so hungry, I wonder what mom's cooking for dinner?" A boy's voice said.

Then someone grabbed her arm again, she instantly jumped and nearly fell off the side of her seat.

She looked over at the girl next to her, frozen and wild eyed.

The girl was staring at her very strangely.

"Are you sure you're okay?" The girl asked, worried.

Tessa hesitated as her eyes darted around the classroom, terrified. Everyone was looking at her like she was crazy now.

She didn't say anything, she just quickly grabbed her backpack and ran as fast as she could out of the classroom.

"Theresa!" The teacher had called out but the door had already shut behind her.
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
Unfortunately, yes, I have read Harry Potter. Think of the narrator as the camera in a movie or tv show. In Star Wars, the camera follows different characters around, music plays to help tell us what emotions they're feeling. Since Luke is the character in focus, when Darth Vader shows up, it's "oh no this is a scary situation," not "I, Darth Vader, will win this fight cause I'm so awesome." In first person, like in a lot of YA, the "camera" is the character's own eyes and ears, we see and hear and feel what they are seeing and hearing and feeling. Katniss has to inference what Peeta is thinking based on what she can see him doing and what she knows about him. But if Katniss was blind, we couldn't see anything, because she can't see.

But if the story is in third person, the camera would be "outside" of the character, like how cameras are in most movies. You can see the spooky monster sneaking up on the hero because they're showing us more of the world than the character can see. You can also change how "close" the narrator is in third person; it could be "deep pov" where there's no "Naruto felt sad because he had no friends, he sat on his sad little swing," it's "The familiar rope of the swing bite into his hands. He was alone. Again." Or the "camera" can be pulled really far back, like how you would narrate what you think the ants in your driveway are up to. You can pull in close or back up depending on what fits the scene the best, it doesn't have to be one all the time. But, generally, you shouldn't switch between third person and first person, since that's going to be really disorienting.

So when I say "who is the narrator," I mean "who is pointing the camera in this story?" In stories like Harry Potter it's the kinda generic "it's the narrator of the story, it's not literally someone" but it IS focused on in and in the head of one character (Harry). In Dune, the narrator is literally the Princess Irulan, which is why everyone is all "wow Paul is so COOL and AWESOME," and she's writing this book about Paul after he became the messiah (tho the whole "well who's the REAL WIVES now? haha" bit at the end is kinda weird now that I think about it, why would Irulan put that in there?), and she chose to hop around into the heads of various people (Stilgar, the Baron, the Lady Jessica, the Duke, the Bene Gesserit lady at the beginning...lots of characters) to show what everyone thinks of Paul being COOL and AWESOME, or they're doing things somewhere else that is relevant to the story. The Baron is the Bad Guy, so we need some scenes on his Evil Planet showing us the Evil Things he's doing. Dune is kind of like Game of Thrones in that there's a lot of players in the game, so by knowing what they're thinking and planning, we can fully understand and appreciate the complex plans and backstabbing. So there's multiple reasons why they do this.

You need to think of why you have multiple pov characters and why we're seeing a particular scene from their point of view, why the camera is biased to their emotions and feelings. I use multiple POV characters, though each chapter is only 1. For each project, I only break this rule once, and that's both for The Pivotal Fight Scene; they're rivals, fighting to the death, they each have strong motivations and reasons why they cannot fail. But if I only showed it from one character's POV, then it biases to only HIM being "the good guy"/in the right/the reader will assume he'll win, cause he's the hero. I want the reader to see both people as "the other," "the bad guy," a thing we have to disassociate from the characters we've grown to know and understand, because seeing the other person as a person would make killing them (emotionally) impossible to do. There's a Very Good Reason why I break writing norms (and even my own established rules), but we'll have to see how successful I'll be at doing that (that's what beta readers are for).

And I do get why you want to give us back story/time to get to know your characters. But you need to keep in mind that no one is going to care about your characters as much as you do, you might have the most amazing writing ever invented at page 100, but if nothing happens in the first 99 pages, no one will get to that point. This is where "show, don't tell" comes in. It is easier for you, the writer, to tell us "Tessa is a tomboy and Alyssa is a girly girl" but it's not interesting to read. But if you write "Tessa grew impatient. She only had 20 minutes to get ready, and her twin sister was hogging up the only shower in the tiny house. Of course, she'd take as much time as possible to straighten her hair and perfect her makeup. Tessa would only need 5 minutes to get ready, she never cared about her appearance much, but Alyssa would tut-tut her and say "You should have woken up earlier" as if she was her mother. Just because she was 5 minutes older didn't make her any wiser" then we get that they're sisters, twin sisters, the difference in personalities, their contentious relationship, some implications about their living situation since the house is so small. The narrator isn't stiff and formal, it's a little more like how a real person would talk, and since the "camera" is from Tessa's point of view, a teenager, it'll look at things in a way a teenager does. If you ever do a scene from the aunt's point of view, it might be more formal, it might more concerned for the girl's safety, or maybe wistful and sad for their lost family members. Does that make sense?
 

MiaC

Troubadour
You don't like Harry Potter I'm taking it? Lol. But Thank you for elaborating. Yes, it does, thanks. I don't know if you saw I posted the end of the chapter above.
 
I found myself zeroing in on this detail:

They lived on Valencia Island, a small island in Northern Washington. There were only about 5,000 residents. The girls had lived there their whole lives.
Literally their whole lives? Did their late parents live on the island? Did Aunt Jess move to the island to take care of them? Assuming she already had a home somewhere, it would've made more sense for the girls to move in with her. But if she already lived on the island when their parents died, she would've known their mother, and she would've known of her nieces' existence. There's no way to not know that in a community that small. Even if she and her brother weren't getting along, they would've still had to see each other around.

The only way Jess could've been that distant from her brother is if they lived in entirely different places. But if he did not live on the island, and the twins moved there to live with Aunt Jess, then they haven't lived there all their lives.

But really, I don't think this is the way to introduce the setting. Better to show than tell. Have someone say something like, "This podunk town sucks," or, "How nice it is to live on an island without too many people around, so peaceful," or talk about catching the ferry to the mainland (that tells us we're on an island), or they pass a sign that announces the Valencia Island something-or-other festival, something like that.
 
Regarding the shifting point of view, I think it would work better if the scenes were separate chapters. All we get out of the Alyssa scene is a focus on Tessa from another point of view. Is Tessa supposed to be the sole protagonist of the story? Or are we supposed to give equal weight to Alyssa? Or Jess?

If you're shifting to Alyssa's point of view, then the focus of that scene should be on Alyssa. Her thoughts, her feelings, herself. Is she looking forward to school today? Fretting about an upcoming test? Wishing it were still the weekend? People think about themselves most of the time, not their sisters.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
There's a lot of backstory, my book is about witches and vampires, Greek gods and goddesses. The girls were born in Lovelock, Nevada. So, I guess I should change that. They were 2 years old when they moved to the island. Their Aunt was at a witch school when some bad things happened and she ended up taking off. 5 years prior, her brother (the twins father) was banished from the school for doing certain things that were forbidden. After that he hadnt spoken to anyone from the school, even his sister, Jess. 5 years later, Jess leaves and is homeless for a few days, she has nowhere to go. She ends up getting a call from social services that her brother and his wife died in a fire and they have their children in custody. She is his only relative, she ends up going and getting them and then moving to the island. So from 2 years on she takes care of them. This is all explained by chapter 3
 
Seems like weaving in the backstory is a whole issue here. The author may know the backstory, but it tends not to work to hit the readers with it all at once. The backstory should be revealed in dribs and drabs.

How much of it do the twins know? Having them learn of it, if they didn't know already, would be a great way to work it in. But piecemeal.
 
About point of view. The way you do it can work, but it's a bit jarring with the POV sections being that small. Common is for a whole chapter to be in 1 POV or to have a large scene (if a chapter contains multiple scenes) be in the same POV. If you want to have these smaller chunks then you might want to consider omniscient POV. The difference between 3rd limited and omniscient is that in 3rd limited you are stuck in a single person's head and you only see what they see and think what they think. The narrator for that section of the novel is the character in who's head you are. For omniscient, you have an outside narrator who tells you the story and can jump into everyone's head.

To make the difference clear: imagine you have a character sit in a room with her back to the door. In 3rd person limited you can't tell the reader who enters until the character knows, either because she turns or recognises a voice. In Omniscient, you can tell who entered the room. For a good introduction, check this:

Harry Potter is in 3rd person limited. Go back and reread it. Pay attention to what you are shown. You only see what Harry Potter sees and you never get inside anyone elses head.

As for the piece you posted, I agree with the others. Don't start with a person waking up and getting ready for the day. It worked in The Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy because Arthur Dent's house gets bulldozed and the world gets blow up while he's still getting ready to face the day. But if that doesn't happen in your first chapter, drop it. It's boring, it doesn't advance the plot and it tells us nothing interesting about the character. The same with any backstory. Remove it from the first chapter unless it is immediately important in that chapter. Tell your reader about it later.

Also, trust your reader. Readers are a lot smarter and figure things out a lot faster than you might think. To give you a good analogy, pick your favorite TV show and think about how a single episode starts. And about how the series started. I bet not a single episode started with telling you "this is Sheldon. He's a really smart nerd who works in the University in the physics department. He lives together with his best friend Leonard, who also works in the same university. A pretty blond lives across the hall from them." They just jump right into the story and start telling it. Stuff happens and they make sure the viewer has no reason to turn off the show.

Same with books. A good mantra to use is "In late, out early". Start as late as possible to something happening and leave the scene as soon as it has been resolved.
 

cak85

Minstrel
To add to this conversation - another example of switching POVs is when 2 different characters have VERY different world views or opinions about the same events.

I like how Chasejxyz referenced a fight scene as a good opportunity to do this.

I did read through both of your passages and it is pretty challenging for me to distinguish the difference between the two sisters and even more so when you are switching POVs. This is where you can play with voice.

One way to achieve is to think how they would respond to the same question.

Even a simple question like "What do you want for dinner?"

The Tomboy could come back with something like - "Whatever you make is going to be burnt anyways."

The other sister could say - "Whatever you make Dad/Mom will be delicious!"

One question and 2 very different answers.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
Just wondering, would a preface help? Lol. Like if I added something exciting that happens later on? This kinda detoured from my original question but every one seems to have an issue with the opening.
 

MiaC

Troubadour
Or should I just change it opening from her waking up all together. Her panic attacks are a big part of the things that are happening to her. I think that's why I started with that.
 
Just wondering, would a preface help? Lol. Like if I added something exciting that happens later on? This kinda detoured from my original question but every one seems to have an issue with the opening.
I don't think a preface is what you need. I think it's more important to have the scene setting work and enough contrast between the characters that when you switch points of view, something new is gained. As it is, it reads as if Tessa and Alyssa were the same person. You've told us they have very different personalities, but you've done nothing to show us that. They both speak in the same voice. If it weren't for the different names, I'd think the whole chapter was from the same POV.

That's not to say you can't write an overview of the story for yourself. It might be a helpful exercise to do just that. But the overview isn't what you're going to show the reader. It's just something to refer back to as you write, and ask yourself, "Is this scene consistent with the overview?"
 

Chasejxyz

Inkling
Just wondering, would a preface help? Lol. Like if I added something exciting that happens later on? This kinda detoured from my original question but every one seems to have an issue with the opening.

I'd argue that would make things worse. You start the story with something exciting that happens later in the book.....the reader wants to see where this is going, then they see the story essentially starts over with different characters, a different setting, nothing exciting is happening. That would just make them frustrated and feel like they've been duped. When I first started writing, that's what I did for my novel because I thought it was Really Cool. But as I wrote more and learned more about the craft of storytelling, I realized why that was a bad idea and why it's better to just have stuff interesting from the start.

Harry Potter and Eragon and Lord of the Rings (or the movie, at least) have prologues, but they're for things that happen BEFORE the story, and they set up the world/conflict in some way. We find out Harry is an orphan with ties to the wizarding world and he's put in this crappy situation for his own protection, we see an elf get chased by not-orcs, and we're told that there's these magic rings but one super-duper ring that the Evil Dark Lord has and that's what's causing all the problems. HP and Eragon were both written by first-time writers and it kind of shows (though Paolini was 15 so it's more understandable for his case), while Peter Jackson has made a ton of successful films, he needed this very short prologue to set the tone/world/conflict of the film, as he had 3 huge books to go through and he knew a lot of the audience didn't read them (or only read them once a long time ago). HP's is more successful than Eragon's because we see the flying motorcycle, we're teased about Voldemort, about this secret community in our modern-day world and how there's risk that it will be revealed in a disastrous way, while Eragon's is just really cliche fantasy stuff. Though when I first read it in middle school I thought it was Very Cool because I've never read something like that before (it was my first fantasy book "not for kids" and was really influential for me).

I say all this...but also the most important thing for you to do is to keep writing. You're only going to get better by putting more words on the paper, and some of them will suck! Not every baker makes a super yummy batch of cookies while they're learning, some will get messed up in some way, but they'll learn "okay I just can't sub powdered sugar for regular sugar" or "I didn't take the warning seriously and burnt the chocolate, I'll be more mindful next time." As you keep writing your story, you'll get to know your characters and world better. You might figure out the things you made them do in ch 1 for the plot to happen doesn't fit their personality or motivations you've developed in ch 30. Make a note of it and go back and fix it in editing. Working on perfecting the first chapter when you don't have the rest of the story written is setting yourself up to throw out your hard work later.

Example: I wrote a several-page high-level outline for my epic fantasy manuscript. I needed to because there were 4 POV characters and I need some sort of structure/"guideposts" when I'm writing or I get paralyzed by choice. I then broke the story up into fourths (act 1, act 2 parts 1 and 2 and act 3) and then made a much more detailed outline for the first quarter. I had "goals" for each chapter, a list of scenes, and things I'd need to have in each scene (info, emotions, specific conversations). It took me awhile to set this up in Excel so I didn't want to do the whole novel at once lol. But once I got to the half way point...I realized what I was going to have one of the POV characters do in the second half didn't make any sense anymore. I had to give him something entirely new to do, which meant I would also need to go back and change previous scenes for this change of direction to not feel like it came from nowhere. But I also didn't have to throw out the very detailed outline for his chapters because they weren't made yet, and I didn't do any editing of past scenes until the first draft was finished; a lot of his early scenes were heavily rewritten if not entirely thrown out. But if I focused on making each chapter or scene as perfect as possible before moving onto the next part, then I would have been a lot more hesitant to make this major change because of all the work I've already done. The story would have been far worse as a result.

A common mantra among computer programmers is "work smarter, not harder" and that should apply to all endeavors. If you find problems in your story, make a note of it and keep writing. Your first draft will be an inconsistent mess, and that's fine, but as you read it to start editing, you can tackle a number of issues at once instead of one at a time. If you have 50 issues, it's better to make 5 drafts, tackling 10 issues each time, then to make 50 drafts and focus on the problems one by one. It's better to tackle the huge structural problems before things like "I think the tone of this scene is a little off" because you might end up rewriting that scene anyways. The hardest part of writing is finishing that first draft, and once you do, you will know your story very, very well and be much better equipped to handle these problems. You might even find that starting at chapter 3 would work and throw out chs 1-2, but you'll never know that if you don't write chapter 3.
 
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