Being a Better Writer: The Two Types of Openings - Opening Chapters Part 2 · 8:43pm Jul 28th, 2014
I return!
No, it's true! I'm both back from my vacation and back at work on Colony (as well as advertising for Dead Silver). Which means that the regular updates can now resume! For both these guides, the fanfics (I've got three in the pipe right now and am at long last working on the sequel to "Rise"), and whatever else comes up!
Anyway, enough chatting about work! Time to get on with it!
So, a few weeks ago I talked about writing an opening chapter. It wasn't a bad blog post, but as some pointed out, it was purely about structure and structure alone. There was nothing covering any of the other bits and pieces that went into an opening chapter.
This was, admittedly, a failure on my part. One that today I mean to rectify. So, once again I'm going to talk about openings, but this time from another perspective. I'm going to talk about the type of opening you choose to have for your work.
Now to begin, I see there being two general "classes" of openings. Bear in mind this is strictly my own viewpoint on the matter, and by no means some sort of thing you're going to hear from another author, as they may see things completely different than I or use their own terms. But in any case, I see most introductions as the extension of one or two types: the hard opening or the soft opening.
These terms do not denote the difficulty or curve to the reader, but rather the type of scene that you choose to open your story with. If you start with a soft opening, your work will begin with a fairly ordinary day-to-day that builds up to something unusual, while a hard opening will begin right smack in the middle of things, usually with the inciting incident happening right away and a generous helping of out of the ordinary action. Note: this type of opening is separate from in medias res, which I'll get to later.
The thing is, both of these openings are equally useful, and I'm not going to claim that one is better than the other, because they aren't. The truth of the matter is, both openings can be of incredible value to the story.
Let's take the case of the soft opening and look at this first. With a soft opening, you're beginning your story in the day-to-day for your character, the average experience. We're familiar with the archetypes of plot, of which the most basic is "character exists, something happens to change up the ordinary." A soft opening isn't a departure from this, but rather the where we move the focus. With a soft opening, we're going to start with an increased amount of attention on the "character exists" part of that story, setting up our player(s) and what their daily existence is like before we jump into the "change."
For example, "Rise" starts with a soft opening. While the prologue contains hints of the inciting incident (Celestia and Luna's decision to move forward with the formation of a new Guard division), it is presented in a very ordinary, everyday format as the two rulers relax at the end/beginning of their day. The soft opening continues through the next chapter, as the story follows the average day of the main character, starting with his morning run and ending with his receipt of the orders to report to the capitol—the actual inciting incident.
The key here is narrative tension and interest. Soft openings are tricky, as they don't rely on the whiz-bang explosions of a hard opening and screaming action to suck the reader in. Instead, they lay groundwork and heighten the reader's interest through anticipation and depth. "Rise" certainly doesn't have any explosions or chase scenes in its opening chapters. Instead it relies on a few interesting elements, such as Celestia's story about Blueblood's fear of cake, to keep the reader going until a promise of the inciting incident arrives. When it does, it's not with a bang, but with a promise that something big is going to happen. From there, we cut to Steel's everyday life, and the reader is carried along by three things: the differences in Steel's life and activities compared to the reader's own, the introduction and gradual reveal of Steel as a character, and by the eventual promise that something is coming; most likely him being tied into this Dusk Guard thing somehow.
There's no action, no explosions. Just exercise, a conversation with the mailmare, some shopping, and then a package that turns everything on its head.
Let's take a look at some other great soft openings. Here's one from a particular favorite film of mine: Despicable Me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the whole thing, but give it a quick watch.
This intro is a perfect example of a soft opening. There is absolutely nothing blowing up (well, unless you count the balloon animal) or any great chase. Instead what we have is a demonstration of Gru's everyday life. It's not exactly our everyday life, though, and so we keep watching. We watch as Gru "helps" a child who has dropped their ice-cream, gets coffee, drives home, talks to his "employees," and even gets a phone call from his mother. All before the inciting moment where he explains his grandiose plans. What keeps us watching is the fascination and hilarity that come from comparing our own life to Gru's and the knowledge from the earlier sequence that something big will happen.
The soft opening is even heavily relevant to the story as a whole. Not only does it introduce us to the nature and mannerisms of Gru (which, though reinforced in later scenes, are most prominently featured here), but it also serves as a backdrop for the "normal" day, so that later on in the story, so that when Gru's personal life begins to be completely changed by the actions he's taken during his plan, the audience is aware of it.
Btw, the second film plays things a bit differently—although its introduction event is much more hard than soft (sort of like a hard prologue), the actual opening of the film with Gru remains fairly soft (and hilarious, anyone else die laughing when that kid told Gru he made a fat fairy?).
Alright, one last example for a soft opening.
Anyone here read the first Harry Potter book? Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philospoher's Stone if you're international)? Show of hands? Oh good. Well, Sorcerer's Stone is a great example of not one, but two back-to-back soft openings.
The first is the prologue, which starts by following the everyday, perfectly normal life of the Mr. Dursley, who is perfectly normal in every way, thank you very much. He has breakfast with his family, goes to work where he sells drills, and comes home for dinner. Which sounds like it could be boring, except for two things. First, it becomes very clear very quickly that something weird is going on, what with the owls, the people wearing robes, and the cat that just stares at him from the wall while Dursley is in his car. Oh, and then there's the small hints that the Dursleys are in fact, terrible, horrible people for whom "normal" is synonymous with "general jerk behavior in the self-superior name of shaming others."
Then at the end of the chapter a bunch of stuff happens, culminating in a single line that echoes through the series. Then the reader turns the page and—
A second soft opening, now over a decade later, and this time from Harry's point of view. Wake up, do chores, have breakfast, get yelled at by the Dursleys, go about your day, etc. It's another soft opening. Some weird stuff happens (snake, anyone?), the suspicions (and declaration) that the Dursleys are a bunch of jerks is cemented, but overall, it's just a semi-normal day. In fact, if you're looking for the actual inciting incident that kicks off the plot of the book, it doesn't actually happen until halfway through the third chapter (meaning, amusingly enough, that Harry Potter would face an instant rejection on account of structure from EQD as well as a number of other fic reviews seen around fimfic). Granted, this is unusual. But that's how strong Harry Potter's soft opening is. So strong that the writer spends two and a half chapters establishing character and lore before even getting to the moments that kick of the plot (even then, the next chapter follows the character running away from the inciting incident so that it actually doesn't take full effect until a chapter-and-a-half later).
Now that is a well-done soft opening. It's pretty much perfect, in fact.
Alright, now let's discuss a hard opening.
A hard opening is the opposite of a soft opening. Where a soft opening takes time to set everything up in an ordinary manner, a hard opening dives right in, often starting with the inciting incident or even just after the inciting incident has occurred. Again, I'm not talking about in medias res where the story starts in the action and then jumps back in the narrative (we'll discuss this next), but a story that starts right in the action.
Monster Hunter International, for example, has a hard opening. The story starts with the character explaining that he threw his boss from a fourteenth story window, and then tells you exactly how that happened via a crazy action sequence. He hints at his day to day life—the kind of thing you'd read about in a soft opening—but only in the context of "Right now I'm shooting my boss—who's turning into a werewolf right in front of me, by the way—and everyone else here is going to be jealous." What follows is a knock 'em out, no holds barred battle royal that trashes the building and ends with the main character victorious but hospitalized. And from there, the normalcy never shows up. He's in physical therapy, he's being told by a monster hunter that they'd like to hire him, he's in boot camp, and so on and so forth. The story starts running, rather than walking. The inciting incident (the werewolf boss) is on the opening page.
This type of intro is no less effective for the purposes of storytelling. It allows us to dump a reader right into the meat of the story, the moment when things start to happen. If you're going to write an action thriller, this is generally the more preferred type of opening, as it grabs the reader by their retinas and refuses to let them go. As the reader you're not sure why exactly the hero is doing battle with these people/robots/aliens/whatever, but what you do know is that someone just drove a semi-truck through a bridge railing and bailed out in mid-air by running along the trailer—all while being pursued by helicopters with guns.
A hard opening has it's strengths aside from pulling your reader in right away. Where a soft opening generally explores a character and what their day is like, a hard opening presents a character in very different terms, such as how they'll survive a plane crash. A hard opening will typically skip over an introduction of the characters capabilities, personality, and history in return for having the reader learn it on the fly. As a result, a hard opening not only allows a writer to skip over what could be boring, everyday narrative—and this is why many modern-day stories start out with a hard opening: The reader is assumed to already know enough about what the day to day is like—but also in a skilled author's hands to keep select information from the reader by playing off of those expectations of normality.
In The Icarus Hunt, for example (and I'm going to try to be as spoiler free as possible), we get a hard opening in which a tavern goer is beset upon by three thugs who he then must fight off on the opening page. No sooner has he done this and sat down then a man approaches him with a job, allowing the narrative to not only deliver the inciting incident, but feed you a few key details about the main character. Then no sooner has the job offer been extended and the client left than the thugs return, and we get a chase scene through downtown.
Definitely a hard intro, but also one that plays on the reader by expecting the reader to fill in a few purposeful blanks with their own assumptions which (and this is about as spoiler free as I can get it) become key character points later. In a soft opening, these points would have been much harder to conceal, and the author likely would have had to resort to either lying to the reader or making them conspicuously absent, neither of which are good choices.
Now, just because you have a hard opening doesn't mean that the story needs to continue non-stop throughout with its action. In fact, most stories with this opening don't. they start hard but then take advantage of the lull between events in the story to then flesh out characters and establish key details for the world (like who our hero is fighting). The trick (and a weakness of this opening) is that once you start hard, you establish certain expectations. If your story starts with a strong hard opening full of action and events, but then becomes very "soft" for the next two-thirds of the book, you run the risk of losing readers that came for the action rather than the plot and character. Likewise with a soft opening; you run the risk of having too much action later and alienating the readers who came for plot and character, not battles.
For instance, I'm currently a bit worried that my current book, Colony, might be falling into this trap. It starts out with three opening sequences—one for each primary character—of which two are hard and the third is soft with a kick at the end. But then, after that initial 30,000 words (first 100 pages), there isn't a shootout or a battle for another 200. It's all just the characters being brought together, getting tied up in the plot, and putting things together. Even though the action is now ramping up with fights and battles once more, I'm worried that because of the hard opening, I might lose readers in that interim. I'll probably end up chopping about 50-100 pages from there if I can.
Now, one last "type" of opening: The infamous in medias res (I say infamous because everyone's always asking about it). An in medias res, for those who don't know, is a sort of halfway point between the two narratives. While technically it's a soft opening work, a story that is done in medias res starts out with a "fake" hard opening full of action and set after the inciting incident. It pulls the reader in with that "hard" opening, then usually ends on a cliff-hanger and jumps back in the narrative to the actual, soft opening.
Basically, it's almost a blend, a sort of combination of the two types of openings. And while it can be well used (for example, you can have parts of the narrative that don't line up or make the reader question things as they happen), more often than not most of the time an in medias res opening is used, it's usually because the author is going with a soft opening, but doesn't have the experience or talent to make the soft opening interesting (or at least, doesn't believe that they do). So they start with a "fake" hard opening to reel you in, end with a cliffhanger, and then hope that the "teaser" of what you'd just read is enough to make you want to continue on even if the book is dull or boring.
Personally, I'm not such a big fan. Unless you're an author clever enough to take advantage of possible narrative dissonance or the fact that you've given away large swaths of your plot on the opening pages, generally an in medias res opening is usually used to cover for the author. Used poorly, they can ruin narrative tension (characters that are in an in medias res beginning usually mean we know who's living until then), lead to damaged pacing (remember the hard opening and then no action after that? A lot of in medias res openings cover for this), or even just give away endings (a little to much narrative detail in an in medias res opening can give away the whole plot ten pages into the "real" opening).
Now, they can be done well. For example, Schlock Mercenary does a great one with the book The Sharp End of the Stick. By juggling multiple flashbacks, amnesia, and an in medias res opening, it paints a curious mystery that has you wondering what's going on up until near the end of the book, all while keeping the jokes (and the action) coming at a steady clip. So an opening of this kind can be done well.
Make no mistake, however, that while many young writers assume that an in medias res opening is the best way to start , they're probably wrong. A well-done in medias res takes a lot of skill to pull off without screwing up the narrative pacing and plot of your story, most young authors should probably stick with soft and hard openings until they understand the potential strengths and weaknesses of each before jumping into an introduction that uses both types.
So, let's summarize. We have two types of openings. There is the soft opening, where things open before the inciting incident has occurred or taken effect. A soft opening will often establish character(s) lives before everything gets upset and present them and the world to the reader. Then there is the hard opening, which drops the reader into the scene just as or shortly after the inciting incident occurs. These openings rely on the events to carry things forward, letting the readers get to know the characters and world only after the explosions have stopped (or in some cases, as the object/world in question explodes). Lastly, we have in medias res, which isn't a "third" type, but more of a timeline-jumped soft opening pretending to be a hard opening.
All are useful for varying reasons, and have their place in writing. When one will suit your story more than another is up to you to figure out and decide.
So, that's all for this week. For a challenge, take a look at your own works and see what kind of openings you've done, and then determine which one suits your style best. If possible, write a short opening for the same story in both styles, and see which you prefer more and how the result at the end of the opening is different.
Good luck everyone, see you all next week!
Amen. Thanks to this site, I now hate the in medias res opening. I have yet to read any story here that uses it well. I seriously believe that no one on this site (with the possible exception of any very experienced authors) should even try it. Nothing good ever seems to come from it.
I feel like my comment should be focused on the main topic, but all I can think of is you saying you're cutting content from 'Colony'. Please don't do that
I understand that you need to cater to a larger audience, but for us few hardcore character aficionados out there, maybe you could make a "Directors Cut Edition"? I'd be more than willing to pay extra for 100 pages of character development and backstory
I know this is a long shot, you need to consider proofreading, time management, economics, where it fits in the larger narrative, all that jazz. The concept might not even work on paper.
It's just an idea, but damnit, the thought of you throwing out perfectly good story doesn't sit well with me.
Oh, and, great post, really informative. I admit it's probably going to be a while before I use it, if ever (going back to school). I really like knowing and understanding the workings behind things I enjoy. Namely, books and good stories
Hm... what would you call it if in a soft opening, the inciting incident happens very early, interrupting your introduction of the character's normal life?
2323948
If the inciting incident happens very early and things happen, that's a hard opening.
So to call back to your previous opening chapter blog, you said the first sentence is important. It's what hooks the reader. But all the examples you gave were of a hard opening. I think.
Do you have an example of a soft opening, with a good first-line hook?
I mean, I tried by starting in the middle of a line of dialogue, and my inciting event didn't happen until the very last line of chapter three. (Interestingly enough, EQD didn't complain about the pacing)
2324403
Actually, a great example is referenced in the blog itself:
—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
A few others I can think of:
—The Wheel of Time
—The Name of the Wind
—There Will Be Dragons
There are definitely more out there, but that's a small list.
Interesting categorization of openings. Though I wanted to ask, do you have any particularly visible bad examples, either from fiction as a whole or on this site? Or would that stir up too much debate if you were to share your opinion?
2323709
Bah, I think that the in-medias-res problem is just a symptom of a bigger one. Pacing is one of the biggest problems in storywriting on this site. Heck, even the main show constantly gets criticized with this, trying to fit large stories into 22-minute timeframes.
2325831
First of all, just realized that we've had a confusion of terms here. Technically, an in medias res opening is any opening that starts in the middle of the action without much explanation of how we got there, essentially what Viking has described as a hard opening. These usually lead into an extended flashback that last for half of the story, or into several smaller flashbacks spread throughout a large portion of the story. This seems to be especially true in tv shows and the fanciction around here. So I don't actually have a problem with in medias res. What I have a problem with is the "how we got here" plot that the next half of the story usually has. There's a time and a place for that sort of thing, but don't use it as a cheap trick to draw in readers because you think the won't like the real opening of your story.
Now that that's taken care of, I suspect there is some truth to what you say. The show can get at least a bit of a pass because they have a rigid time constraint on the length of the episodes. But we have no such constraints. Perhaps this does lead to poorly-paced stories in which the author tries to compensate by putting an exciting g scene from the middle in the beginning.
And if you want bad openings, I suppose TV Tropes' Lost in Medias Res page is a decent place to start, though there are probably better examples out there.
EDIT: Actually, the whole pacing problems page has some nice examples to look at.
Food for thought. I think I'll go back and look at some of my openings with this in mind. I think I've favored soft openings, but I'm not entirely sure.
2325955
Kinda the point that coincides with today's audience for this site. Was on Extra Credits videos, and they discussed the type of games my generation played (action-reflexed based platforming) versus the popular games of today for youths (building and crafting). I speculate that similar themes transfer over to reading as well. We want action, for things to happen, and for it to happen right now. Slow buildup has to be particularly well written for it to fly with readers, otherwise they will just get bored. That seems to be the general trend for popular stories that haven't drawn readers in via premise or authorital backing. (Apologies for blanket statements.)
Oh why did you have to link me to that infernal site. I had just escaped after my friends inadvertantly led me to Kill la Kill on there. I have done nothing productive all day.
2326346
Hahaha; this isn't the first time I've heard that. In fact, I've said it quite a few times myself, so I feel your pain.
2326358
Doesn't make it any less appealing. I know it's a time sink. You know it's a time sink. I know you know it's a time sink. But I jump in anyways...
2325831
I try not to give bad examples in clear, easily identifiable quotes, for the exact reasons you pointed out. Not only is it pretty disheartening to the writer (unless I know they can take it), but, it would churn up controversy, especially if I chose examples from this site.
2325955
I blame anime for this one.
And now you've brought up Fimfic's other great sin: Flashbacks.
2326440
Yeah I can see why. Arad's recent blog post comes to mind on criticism wording. But still, there are just those fics that you want to see succeed, but it flops one way or another, and all you can do is cringe when the author ignores criticism.
On flashbacks, I would rather see a linear progression of the story, with readers having to recall X or Y from back when, then feel smart/smug about it. Brings the commenters together. Not as effective if the story is massive though, but yeah, I've seen way too many stories using this to change up the pacing.
2326370
Exactly. Back in the days before ponies, I would spend hours getting lost on TV Tropes. Now I tend to spend most of that time reading ponyfics instead.
2326440
Indeed. But we've already had that discussion.
2326513
Not just criticism wording, unfortunately. I think there's a broader problem than just the wording or people being polite (and one that was brought up in the comments of that particular post) which was that with the rise of the internet, everyone is convinced that they're an expert after a day or two (sometimes not even that).
Case in point, I was linked about twenty minutes ago to another site that was someone's young book review startup, and the reviewer was going after Larry Correia's Spellbound. And I do mean going after, their opening words made it clear that they were only doing the review to slam Correia and his work in any way possible. In any case, one of the big complaints of the review was against the primary antagonist group of the book, a government group known as The Office of Coordination of Information, or OCI for short, formed by FDR.
He railed on this group for several paragraphs, everything from the name (so obviously fake and made up) to the way they operated and the extent of their powers. It was an example of Correia's lack of talent, he proposed, that something so fake, unbelievable, and completely at odds with how the government worked was presented as an antagonist. Lazy, hack writing.
The problem? The OCI actually was a real group formed under FDR, and they did indeed have a wide range of power and operations similar to the book. Correia did his research.
This is the world we've got now, a world where anyone can claim knowledge of a topic and get an audience even if they are completely uneducated on said topic. And it's still a new enough prospect that most don't even know how to react or what to do about it. Worse, it leads (inevitably) to prideful conflict. You get someone who's been placed on a pedestal for purported knowledge, and when that pedestal starts top crumble, flame wars and rage result more often than humble admission that someone was incorrect.
I had a brief exchange with a fic promotion group here on fimfic where I disagreed with a few assertions that were made about proper grammar. They told me I was wrong, and I had to prove it. So I pulled up examples from Google searching (which they claimed they could not find in several hours of searching, it took me one search), quotes from well known books (such as Harry Potter) and even examples of it on grammar and literature pages (as well as the word of my own editor, the one who does published stuff). The response was to feign ignorance, declare all of the examples were ineligible and incorrect as they saw it, and declare their view superior, and that they would not accept contrary. I politely thanked them for their time, left the group, and never looked back. The problem? The person I was speaking with was placed in a position they didn't have the proper knowledge to be in, and when faced with their own error, they knuckled down and made blanket statements rather than swallow their pride and admit error.
And there's a rant. Blech. Still, with the internet it's a real problem. We can "test" all we want, but at the end of the day there's no way to tell if that person reading your stuff who has some position of authority got it because they actually know what they're talking about, or because they Googled a few things and got their position that way. When everyone can play at being a critic, it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
2326596
Ouch. Anyone from that group actually side with you, or did they all just stay silent or support the other side? In this world where information is a few keystrokes away, it's easy to get away with being an 'expert' on a subject. Best way I find to get good critics is to just dig through them all. Otherwise you might miss out on a good critic. Stressful though.
2326808
I do not know. The discussion was entirely between me and this one individual. Unless they shared it with the rest of the group, it probably never went further.
2326815
Sorry. From the way you worded it, it sounded like you were speaking to the fic-promotion group, instead of a single person.
2326888
Well, it was with the group's representative, but they shuffled me off to the one individual, and that was where the bulk of the discussion took place. For all intents and purposes however, when you represent a group like that, you are representing the group as a whole, and if you are not, then you shouldn't be in the position you're in. It really outlined a lot of the problems with some of these "review" groups for me however. For instance, one thing that I noticed with this group (and I pointed out to the person I was speaking with) is that rules for possessive apostrophes are different for some words depending on whether you're following the standard literary grammar or newspaper journalism (which is a chopped down version designed to save space for newsprint). They were using journalism standards (poorly, I might add) and turning away common literary standards, or at least they had with what we were talking about. They refused to discuss that topic after I pointed this out.
The only fic review group I've ever found to be a good, positive one is Twilight's Library, simply because they're looking for a good story, not a ridiculous adherence to some honestly arbitrarily minute English grammar rules. Most other fic "review" groups I've come across quickly seem to spiral into elitist, grammatical dogma territory (we're Chicago-style 15th edition, not 16th, you uneducated swine) with ridiculously precise and ultimately pointless rules being enforced.
An example of a well done en medias res opening is the first episode of the series Breaking Bad. It starts out showing a scene full of action that we have no idea why it is happening as a cold open, and then cuts to daily life and slowly builds the action throughout the rest of the episode. We finally see the explanation of the action scene at the end of the episode, and the story then continues on to the next episode. Thought i would add that one, considering the sheer number of people who have seen that show
2327040
Just thought of another one myself: The Prestige. Perfect example of a well done in medias res. Absolutely.
Hmmm... another thought. I should get a list of "great examples" of things going.
This is a fairly elegant description of story openings, even if it leaves out a few grey areas (which is both inevitable and understandable). There's pretty much no question about what sort I prefer. My most popular story on here starts with an interdimensional traveler hurling a carrot at Celestia's ass and then running madly through the palace to escape, only to leave large swaths of it completely destroyed. Even if I'm not writing a crackfic or something with the "Random" tag, I just always felt more comfortable throwing readers into ridiculous, humorous situations to hook them in before getting them involved with the characters on deeper levels.
KInda makes me feel like a homeless street magician conning passersby with cheap parlor tricks, at least until I can get to the good bits.
Anyway, I was wondering what your thoughts were about prologues when it came to soft and hard beginnings. Take The Wheel of Time and The Stormlight Archives series, for example. Both of them start off with decidedly hard openings (not gonna spoil either with details, but given your pedigree and your previous comments I'm guessing it's safe to assume you're familiar with both). The first chapter of their respective books then diverge in tone and 'hardness', with The Wheel of Time describing the protagonist's walk to town for a festival, and The Stormlight Archive detailing one character's rampaging attempts to assassinate a king. For another example, I've got story on the burner with a prologue that involves the Mane 6 and Luna ripping themselves from Equestria, to the shock of Princess Celestia, and sending themselves to the far corners of the Earth. The opening chapter, however, introduces the protagonist sitting bored behind the counter at the lumber yard where he works, whittling on a piece of wood, His day plays out about as normally as you expect, minus a certain Princess of the Night at the end.
None of the three examples classify as in media res, so where would you say prologues fit in when it comes to soft and hard openings?
2326440 Sounds like an eerily similar situation I had with Equestria Daily. Thankfully, their second prereader was a bit better than the first, and made quite a few helpful suggestions.
The first interaction left a sour taste in my mouth, though. Enough of one that I don't see myself ever submitting another story to 'em, anyway.