Starting with a fight(ish)

[Gawian]

Very simple. Yay or Nay?

I don't really like the start of my WIP, but I think I have a solution for it.

The story is that one faction finds out about a new weapon another faction is developing and wants to destroy it. Thing is, I've done a lot of mentioning about how bad and horrible this weapon is without giving the reader much clue as to what the heck it is at the minute, so I had an idea, but I'm not sure if it's advisable from a reader perspective.

I want to start the book with a fight scene. Technically. It's actually a recording of a fight scene that the main characters will be watching, but from the readers perspective, they won't know it's a recording until after the fight is over.

And I think fight is a generous term for what will happen. More of a clusterf... you get the jist.
Three good guy ships try to surprise attack the big bad weapon. Two get completely decimated and one limps away very embarrassed. The bad guy ship seems fine.

So yeah, starting a story with a fight scene.
Good idea, or a what-the-hell-are-you-thinking-you-need-help-dont-ever-do-that idea?

 

[HareBrain]

I'd say it's risky.

The thing with fight scenes, or any kind of action, is that it often takes the reader's attention, i.e. effort, to follow what's going on. (This is where it differs from film, where the experience is much more passive.) Demanding this attention is fine if the reader is invested in the story and characters; if they are not, because they don't know them yet, the response might be "I can't be bothered with this".

If you can make it easy to follow, but with plenty of wow, you might get round this.

 

[Gawian]

I'd say it's risky.

The thing with fight scenes, or any kind of action, is that it often takes the reader's attention, i.e. effort, to follow what's going on. (This is where it differs from film, where the experience is much more passive.) Demanding this attention is fine if the reader is invested in the story and characters; if they are not, because they don't know them yet, the response might be "I can't be bothered with this".

If you can make it easy to follow, but with plenty of wow, you might get round this.

Well, I had planned it to be a minor skirmish to be honest. The characters aren't the main characters, the ships aren't important.

Would've been easy to follow. Quick and painless (except for the good guys).

When the three ships arrive, they'd try shooting the bad guy. One good guy gets destroyed straight away because of the new weapon. The other two try to escape, but one gets destroyed before they get out of range, and the other one gets severely damaged but escapes.

Nothing fancy. No main characters. Just giving the reader the idea that the bad guys are more advanced and more powerful than the good guys.

 

[HareBrain]

This might sound a bit harsh, but it's an essential question. Why would a reader, coming fresh to the story, care about this fight and its outcome? Who are they going to identify with, and why?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

starting a story with a fight scene.

A film yes, a book no. Generally. What the hairy one says ^^^^

 

[Zoe Mackay]

The characters aren't the main characters

That's likely to be the big problem. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's really tricky. Any time that you start with characters that aren't the main characters, you run the risk of your audience feeling cheated when they discover it.

Also... I had to read your third paragraph three times before I got what was going on. Action is very hard to read when there isn't a strong character identification going on. I have a theory that it's because it's hard to remember where everyone is, and which body part belongs to who, unless there's a character who can remember it for us.

There's another thing you can write which has a very similar problem. And involves swords.

 

[Gawian]

This might sound a bit harsh, but it's an essential question. Why would a reader, coming fresh to the story, care about this fight and its outcome? Who are they going to identify with, and why?

It sort of sets the scene. The heroic men go to stop a terrorist weapon, but are completely overwhelmed.

My description was a bit vague to be honest. I would've clarified that one faction that the good guys, and the other are the terrorists. So it would've set the scene of two factions at war, and one side being put at a disadvantage.
Then it after the fight, it would cut to a briefing room where the main characters are sat, debating what to do.

Also... I had to read your third paragraph three times before I got what was going on. Action is very hard to read when there isn't a strong character identification going on. I have a theory that it's because it's hard to remember where everyone is, and which body part belongs to who, unless there's a character who can remember it for us.

That may just have been my bad description of the scene though because I didn't want to enlarge the paragraph with extraneous details. I was going to keep the fight basic. It wasn't going to be a huge scene. Probably not even 1/3 of a chapter. Just enough to get the point across that the good guys got pasted 5 ways to Sunday.

There's another thing you can write which has a very similar problem. And involves swords.

I don't understand this bit??

---------------

Thank you for your advice though. I'll try and find a different way.

 

[Juliana]

There are, of course, exceptions; for instance, I love the opening to Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, where you have no idea who the character is or what is going on. It's all escaping through the trees, fighting, etc, and yet it grabbed me from the start. Usually, however, I prefer a bit of scene setting/character intro first...

 

[Twistedlemon]

If the action is easy to follow and isn't too wordy I guess you could start with a fight scene. As what was eluded to earlier, you may need to have the reader associate who are the good and bad guys before or at least during the conflict.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I want to start the book with a fight scene.

The danger with action sequences is that there's too much focus on external actions, rather than the character experience - resulting in the reader not being drawn in, and remaining aloof to what's actually happening.

Technically. It's actually a recording of a fight scene that the main characters will be watching, but from the readers perspective, they won't know it's a recording until after the fight is over.

But if you did manage to draw me in, and then drew back to show that it was a recording, I might feel very cheated by this tactic.

IMO it's better to try and draw the reader in, and hold them there - then do anything that seeks to keep them held away, pushed away, and otherwise disengaged.

Also - be aware of the danger of passive characters. It is very hard to make characters who are sat around watching something come across as active.

 

[Brian Rogers]

I think that if your action is from a third person or observation perspective it will feel too disconnected and the reader will finish that scene with no emotional impact, no reason to continue reading.

If there are good guys and bad guys however, you could use a more first person (watching the black box) type of approach, displaying the action from only one party's viewpoint. That's not enough however if both the good guys getting plastered and the characters who are revealed to be watching this scene are not the main character you will be focusing on.

If your main character is tied to those events in some way, and if your action sequence is done to highlight a mindset or way of operating which is consistent through the book (i.e. honor from good guys, ruthlessness from bad, etc), then it won't feel disconnected and it could serve multiple purposes. Not only revealing the dreaded weapon but giving the reader more perspective on your factions or world in general.

Just some thoughts, although it looks like the more experienced here aren't for the idea of starting with action. I still think it could work if its integrated rather than a simple stand alone scene.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I am reminded of James Barclay's Dawnthief which starts right in the middle of a battle scene including lots of military style maneuvers. It appears that didn't stop him from becoming a successful author, but I have to be honest that I didn't really connect with the story until the scene following the battle. So for me the battle did distract greatly from the character introduction and development.

Like Juliana I also found that Joe Abercrombie's beginning to The Blade Itself worked perfectly for me even though it also starts in the middle of a battle, but I think there is no contesting how amazing of a writer Mr Abercrombie is. So while he might be good enough to pull it off, many others aren't.

I think the difference between James Barclay's and Joe Abercrombie's opening scenes is that Mr Abercrombie focuses on the character experience of Logan running from the enemies chasing him. It's a mad dash to escape, whereas James Barclay's is the exposition of how a mercenary group handles combat resulting in the setup for the story to follow. It's not hard to see why one works better than the other.



Moral of the story: as long as the battle focuses on the character experience instead of the actual details of the combat, it will work.

Technically. It's actually a recording of a fight scene that the main characters will be watching, but from the readers perspective, they won't know it's a recording until after the fight is over.

While it's possible to start with a battle scene, it most definitely isn't a good idea to start with a recording. That's akin to starting with the PoV character dreaming a scene only to wake from it, which is considered a major cliché that would get the book chucked into the "no" bin.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Brilliant authors can seemingly break any rule.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm not entirely sure if there is a right or a wrong, but the advice given above is sound in my opinion.

My suggestion would be to write it as you see it now, and when you finish the book if it is weak or redundant, it will be easier to clean up or change because you will have a better sense of your arc, pace and the emotional journey.

At the moment I have what I think is a relatively weak opening to my WIP but I'm not stressing because I know it's not carved in stone. It may change completely by draft 2, or it may need a simple change, the point is to get it out and move on till you can see the bigger work.

pH

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I think the fact it's a recording is a bigger problem than the fact it's a fight.

 

[LittleStar]

Being a recording, presumably there is someone watching it, the main character perhaps? I which case, to write it from their point of view, without the deception implied with the 'it was all a dream' moment, would seem much stronger in my opinion. You have their emotions, both in themselves and reaction to the recent/distant death of their comrades/enemies and you also get a lot more world setting I think than you would from a fight involving non-essentials... it gets around quite a few of the comments mentioned above I think.

 

[Gawian]

So maybe if I suggest first that it's a recording.

Something like where a screen flickers (the old black and white dots from the CRT Televisions, heheh), and then switches to a video feed from the ships.

So I don't say outright that it's a recording, but it is implied.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

maybe if I suggest first that it's a recording.
Something like where a screen flickers

It's a BOOK, not cinema or TV. You need to have something else. Like a couple of the main characters discussing the ill-fated battle in the canteen / bar / apartment / cabin afterwards. Arguing what should have been done, this can illustrate their viewpoints and characterisation. Books are not visual in the same sense as TV/Cinema. You need to rely on dialogue, characters, and secondarily narration. A written version of a cinematic battle / recording is going to be much poorer than character interaction. Perhaps one character could be a survivor. The other could have been elsewhere with multiple observation feeds and a much better idea of what really happened, so has a much better analysis of what happened, whereas the battle survivor can only have a very distorted limited idea of what happened even though he/she was really there.


(P.S. The dots nothing to do with CRT, you got them on LCD too, they were Analog noise on an Analogue signal. Or drop out on analogue video tape. Old film gets vertical scrapes, which come out as bright thin short lived vertical streaks. Digital recordings start without disturbance, perhaps preceded by "No Signal" text message, or if a transmission, occasional freezing or gross pixellation as signal lost or jammed. Pointless really to describe in a book)

 

[Nick B]

Write it, see if it works. Liberator opens with a fight, we will find out if it works when all the betas tell us!

 

[Brian G Turner]

So maybe if I suggest first that it's a recording.

Why do you want to start with people watching a recording? Is it because you thin the visual imagery of fighting will entice the reader?

If so, you're in danger of making a fundamental mistake with writing a novel by trying to write a film instead - which ignores the unique format of the novel.

Also be warned that "watching" is a passive state - and passive characters are rarely, if ever, engaging. And for an opening chapter, you want to be thinking about an opening hook - not a visual scene, but an active character experience, to draw the reader in.

2c.