I do agree that you need to be careful about just how much information you dump on your reader: Too much and they will lose focus, too little and none of it will make sense. Of course, however, the introduction act isn’t limited to only the first chapter, it is as long as necessary and depends on how much of a ’setting’ you want the reader to have and how long the story itself is.

As for what I do in the initial introduction, or opening scene, when roleplaying I like to give a minimal ’sneak-preview’ of my character, but give a reasonable amount of description about the setting: The environment, the political/otherwise situation of the ‘world.’ It gives other players the chance to see what they are to expect, as well as to give a feel to the way I’m going to be telling the story.

Often, I will apply this to my ’standard’ writing as well. It’s a personal choice of style, and I think you are right in trying out a few different ways. Let me know how you get on.

Recently I’ve been playing with introductions, trying to do slow lead ins, dropping people into action, starting descriptive, starting with dialogue, just to see what works for me. I’m still kind of playing and I’m torn between wanting people to know a bit about the characters and wanting to jump straight into the action. At the moment I’m erring on the side of caution and tend to start with the main character musing on something before they are swept off into action. Maybe I’ll work on it some more.

Thanks for the great post, looking forward to the next in the series.

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I’d say the longer the rising action continues, the more interesting the book. I like to keep the rising action throughout an entire story if I can, spending very little time on the climax, falling action or the conclusion. Personally, I enjoy when the latter parts of the fiction are used to set up some future installment or to let the reader wonder what happens next.

As goes life, good fiction rarely has a final scene that tidily wraps everything up.

I definitely agree with you, and it’s something that I will be discussing over the course of this theme. However, in summation, side-plots will often reach their pinnacle around the same point as the main plot, or if not, they will follow the same ‘five act’ structure, just wrapped inside the main plot.

So, within the rising action, you would have various five staged side-plots occurring.

But, like I said, I’ll be discussing this in later posts.

Again, thank you.

I think what is missing from this, is a closer look at side plots and interwoven stories. They are an essential part of a good novel, and to lump them in as part of the rising action seems an injustice. The rising action would seem to me, the parts that lead us along the main story line, but those other sidequests are an addition to that. Just my view.

Looking forward to reading the next couple of posts.

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Thank you for the comment, it’s greatly appreciated. And welcome to A Writer’s Journey.

I must agree with you that Sparhawk was indeed a brilliant character - one of my favourites.

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