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In the middle of things. Is it still a viable concept? Should I even bother messing with it? I'm writing an epic story (I seem to have this problem with not being able to write anything else) and I realized that starting in the middle might actually give it the kick that I want. I want to drop the characters (and the reader) right into the action and right now I am having a problem getting everything up to speed and I think that going back and telling two stories simultaneously wouldn't be a bad way to do it, perhaps telling the story in both directions (momento style, except having it go both ways). Does this sound like a reasonable idea or am I goint to need Survivor to shoot me down?
posted
You would only need me to shoot you down if it was a reasonable idea that was flawed in some subtle way.
For my part, I think that the concept of starting a work in medias res is perfectly acceptable, as long as you do it right.
The key is to start in the middle of something that the audience will find sufficiently familiar for understanding, but novel enough to be interesting. The continuing introduction of novel elements that build on the familiar elements already presented....
posted
It's still a sound concept, but I find OSC's MICE question to be far better for determining the starting point of a story and in media res to only be moderately useful for finding a specific scene withint that starting point. Keep in mind that wherever you start you have to come up with something that the reader an both understand and care about.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Also, in media res doesn't mean you plop your characters down in the middle of a fight, and leave your reader completely clueless as to how stuff started. (well you can, but it is not limited to that)
Quest stories are an example where in media res stories don't give that "in the middle of it" kind of feel. You often start with finding the mc at home, or whatever his start position is, blissfully ignorant that his situation is about to change and he will have to leave and go do stuff he never expected to do. This can be caused of course by something that has been going on for a while, that he may or may not have known about. As they learn about what is going on, the reader learns.
posted
The problem with starting in the middle of things is that sometimes you really have to start at the beginning. But even then, you'll most likely have a sufficient amount of backstory to make it feel like you started in the middle of things. In a sense, the first STAR WARS movie, insofar as it concerns Luke, starts at the beginning of his adventure, but there's enough backstory that it makes you feel neck deep in this world. But the 4th moive--the Phantom movie--doesn't start at the beginning of anything: you're smack dab in the middle of something, but the movie sucked anyway because the back story is so flimsy and unintelligible that the movie feels thin and shallow. And Lucas can't say that it really begins with Anikan, since Anikan is only a minor character in this movie. Unlike Luke in STAR WARS, who is the main character.
Hence, I agree with Christine about OSC's M.I.C.E theory, and using that to find out where to begin. I also agree with Survivor: begin with something that will hold the interest of your readers.
Just remember this: Your ending determines your beginning. Why? Because the ending is the answer to the dramatic question that holds your story together. If you know the ending, then you know the question, and if you know the question, then you know where to begin. Examine some of your favorite stories to see what I mean.
So I suspect the best way to start thinking about beginnings is to read the beginning of a number of your favorite novels and stories and study how and why they work.
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited October 22, 2004).]
posted
I've actually been thinking about something and Balthazar just made me think of it even faster. there are basically two questions in my story, one is an even question that starts of as "why is the guy in such a hurry and what is the main character going to do about it?" but the other question I want to answer is "who the hell is the main character, actually, and where does he come from and why is he the way he is?" The second question is what I'm actually getting more excited about because I want to tell the story of how he gets the way he gets in reserve, with little vignettes at the beginning of chapters that go progressively further back in his life, revealing more and more about how he got to be the way he was.
I am trying to analyse it in terms of MICE but it's really hard because I start with an idea and it develops into a character but I want the Events to say something about the idea. I know that OSC addresses this but it's hard for me to decide which is really more important, I like to mix it all together.
posted
I don't think the MICE quotient is a tool of creation, but rather a tool of discovery. Instead of saying to yourself, "I'm going to write an event story," what you do is look at the story you're already writing, see what its MICE quotient is: what is the balance of event elements to character elements? How does milieu balance out character? What is the difference between idea and event in this story?
After taking a good look at how your work graphs onto the MICE, you can find ways to strengthen and clarify points of your story so that it has a desirable balance. You can expand upon and build up your story notes and outlines, which will inform the writing that develops from them. All of the MICE elements should be present in the story, not by default, but by the writer's careful hand.
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