Where to Begin…

[joy_of_cooking]

someone had dropped 3 sticks of 60% nitro dynamite in the back of his El Camino and blew it all to hell.

year and a half later, the same cop came out of the station one morning and found three more sticks in the back of his pickup.

So... Did he keep soliciting women he pulled over?

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Most of my stories have a backstory for the prominent characters. Sometimes it's brief to explain something that is or will happen, sometimes it's in depth because that's required to make the story make sense.

As for growing up in a small town, I grew up between two towns, one had 21,000 population and the other 1,500. The former was a logging/mill/fishing town and the latter a farming town. The next closest town was 40 miles away and about halfway between those two in population. Everyone who lived or worked or did business in the smaller town knew everyone else. I don't see how any married person could cheat on their spouse in such a place.

The larger town was also that way but not as closely knit as the smaller one. I went to school (junior high and high school) in the larger of the two and I knew every kid in my (3 year) high school so every kid within 3 years of my age.

There is always places for people to meet. We had one place in the bigger town we called "The meat market" because it was where everyone of drinking age went looking for a hookup. And everyone abided by the rule: "what happens here, what you see here, what you hear here and who you see here STAYS HERE!"

I had to edit to add this: We had one cop in town when I was growing up who was notorious for hitting on married women when he pulled them over. One night he was working the night shift and parked his brand new Chevrolet El Camino in his regular parking spot behind the police station. Around midnight as he was sitting at the front desk nodding off a huge explosion went off outside. When he ran out someone had dropped 3 sticks of 60% nitro dynamite in the back of his El Camino and blew it all to hell.

The investigation went on for weeks but they never did nor ever have found out who did it. The speculation was that a jealous husband whose wife was solicited by this cop was responsible. The thing is a year and a half later, the same cop came out of the station one morning and found three more sticks in the back of his pickup. The fuse had been lit but for some reason it went out before it caused an explosion. The investigation for that one ended in the same result as the first. To this day no one has claimed credit for those bombings. Now it would be easy to track down who had such explosives, but back than every logging company around (we had a couple of dozen) kept stuff like that on hand.
Comshaw

That's one hell of a blow job, expensive, too.

 

[Comshaw]

So... Did he keep soliciting women he pulled over?

Yes he did, until he retired a few years later. He was an arrogant bastard. At least he was smart enough after he retired to move to another state.

 

[ronde]

Do you write long stories that set up the first meeting of your characters, slow burns, and/or detailed backstories/exposition? Where do your characters meet? Have you ever written a story from first meeting to later relationship?

I know there’s some variety here on AH and already know some of you aren’t into characterization and backstory. I just want to know, for the rest of you, how much you like to get into in terms of your characters’ history with each other.

I’m posting this partially because I have no idea where people in small towns meet each other for the first time outside of school

Edit: also, as a reader, is there an amount of backstory required for you to get into a story?

I tend to write stories some would consider to be "long", like my characters to have enough depth that their actions and speech seem normal. I don't write the backstory in the first few paragraphs. I sprinkle it out as I introduce a character or to explain the actions and speech of a character.

I grew up in a small rural town of 1200 and as some have said, there aren't many secrets in a small town. There are also a limited number of girls and boys of any given age, and usually it's not 50/50 so some have to find that special someone outside of the immediate community. There are a lot of ways that we did that outside of school and church.

While these are school related, they do serve to introduce one to people from other towns. I went to band camp at a local university, music contests at least once a year, and don't forget "away" football and basketball games. Football games worked the best because they were played at night and it was dark. You could hang out at the snack stand during halftime and meet a lot of girls if you were willing.

Summer jobs were another. The old tale about the "farmer's daughter" can be true.

Summer is also the time for county and state fairs and lots of guys and girls from all over the county came to the fairs.

My family usually vacationed at a fishing resort. There was always a girl or two with her family there. Those didn't work out very well because they tended to be too far from home for anything to really develop, but they were fun.

Small towns usually don't have much in the way of shopping, so going shopping in the nearest larger town or city presents some opportunities.

All this seemed to work. About half of my high school graduating class ended up marrying someone from a different town or city.

 

[StillStunned]

Do you write long stories that set up the first meeting of your characters, slow burns, and/or detailed backstories/exposition?

Conventional wisdom is to start writing where the story begins. The inciting incident. If that's the meeting between the characters - which happens in at least a couple of my stories: "Red Hot" and "A Quiet Woman", and Ch. 4 of "The Dome" - then start your story with their meeting.

If they've already met before the inciting incident, ask yourself how much backstory really has to be told explicitly. If it's really relevant, it should come up naturally in the storytelling anyway.

Have you ever written a story from first meeting to later relationship?

My sword & sorcery series "The Rivals". And I have a WIP about an older man and a young woman. But I don't really do long plotlines, so it's not my thing.

 

[sirhugs]

Conventional wisdom is to start writing where the story begins. The inciting incident. ...

not sure whose wisdom this is. Granted it is "conventional" in the sense of "common", but a lot of people favour in media res
(literally in the middle of the thing), which usually leads to a healthy flashback to the back story that takes us back to the middle where we began, and then continues forward.

From Google's AI overview:

In medias res is a Latin term for "in the midst of things," referring to a narrative technique where a story begins in the chronological middle of the plot, skipping lengthy introductions to characters or events. This structure immediately hooks the audience by plunging them into an ongoing action or conflict, with background information gradually revealed through dialogue, flashbacks, or later exposition. Famous examples include Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad, and modern examples include Star Wars and The Godfather.

How it works

• Immediate Engagement:
  Instead of starting at the beginning, in medias res drops the reader or viewer directly into a moment of high tension or action.
  
  
• • Exposition is Deferred:
    Background information, such as character development, setting, and the specific stakes of the situation, is not provided upfront but is instead woven into the story as it progresses.
  • Mystery and Intrigue:
    By withholding information, the technique creates a central mystery: "how did the characters get here?".
  • Gradual Information:
    The audience gradually learns the story's context and preceding events through various methods, including dialogue, character reactions, and flashbacks.

Pros of using in medias res

• • Captures Attention:
    It immediately grabs the audience's interest by presenting them with exciting or dramatic circumstances.
  • Faster Pacing:
    By skipping introductions, the story can get to the more exciting and crucial parts of the plot more quickly.
  • Subverts Expectations:
    It can be a creative way to subvert traditional story structures and provide a fresh approach to storytelling.

Considerations and Potential Pitfalls

• • Confusion:
    If too much information is initially withheld, readers may become lost or feel overwhelmed, leading them to abandon the story.
  • Balancing Exposition:
    Writers must find the right balance between diving into action and providing enough context for the audience to understand and care about the characters and the situation.
  • Complexity:
    For very detailed worlds or intricate plots, a purely in medias res opening might be too confusing without careful planning.

[I love to subvert expectations. Occasionally I succeed]

 

[StillStunned]

not sure whose wisdom this is. Granted it is "conventional" in the sense of "common", but a lot of people favour in media res
(literally in the middle of the thing), which usually leads to a healthy flashback to the back story that takes us back to the middle where we began, and then continues forward.

You realise that's exactly the same thing, don't you? Inciting incident = immediate engagement.

In medias res might mean "in the midst of things", but it doesn't mean "in the middle of the story".

The classical example is the Iliad, which starts with the argument between Agamemnon and Achilles. It skips the whole tale of Leda and Swan-Zeus, the wooing of Helen and the oath of the Greek princes, Helen and Paris and the siege of Troy. The story of "the terrible wrath of Peleus's son Achilles", which is the stated subject matter, starts at the point where Achilles becomes pissed off.

 

[sirhugs]

You realise that's exactly the same thing, don't you? Inciting incident = immediate engagement.

In medias res might mean "in the midst of things", but it doesn't mean "in the middle of the story".

The classical example is the Iliad, which starts with the argument between Agamemnon and Achilles. It skips the whole tale of Leda and Swan-Zeus, the wooing of Helen and the oath of the Greek princes, Helen and Paris and the siege of Troy. The story of "the terrible wrath of Peleus's son Achilles", which is the stated subject matter, starts at the point where Achilles becomes pissed off.

But that doesn't mean that Shakespeare should have started Hamlet by showing the murder of his father.

 

[StillStunned]

But that doesn't mean that Shakespeare should have started Hamlet by showing the murder of his father.

No. Why should it? The inciting incident, if I remember correctly, is the appearance of the ghost. The murder is backstory. The ghost is what triggers the events of the play.

At the risk of annoying certain posters by linking to one of my stories, I'll use Red Hot as an example. This is how it begins:

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

She appeared to be around forty, about half a dozen years younger than me. A face that had probably once been called impish, but had grown into a calm beauty that comes with the years. Red hair that hung loose over her shoulders. Hazel eyes behind large round glasses, and pale skin with freckles that covered her cheeks and nose. They were also visible in her cleavage that peeked out through her low-cut sweater.

We were both sitting at a long table in a coffee place. I came here most days to get out of my apartment and pretend to read the newspaper or a magazine. Around us, there was a low buzz of voices, broken by the loud gurgle of the Infernal Caffeine Machine (TM) and the barista calling out for a Luke to come and get his drink, Luke, your iced latte is going cold, haha.

I put down my newspaper and smiled. "I used to go by Daz." Deciding my coffee was still hot enough to drink, I took a sip and waited for realisation to hit.

It took a moment. I could spot exactly when she worked it out. Her eyes lit up with excitement. "Daz!" she exclaimed, sounding for all the world like the girl she'd have been back then. "Daz! I had such a huge crush on you back in the day!"

This encounter is the inciting incident of the story of Daz and Myrna. The backstory is that Daz used to be in a boyband. Myrna has her own backstory, but it's never told.

If the story had been about some other aspect of Daz's life - loneliness, for example - I might have started the story earlier in the day: getting up, showering, making his way to the coffee place, being alone. If the story had been about his time in the boyband, I'd have started there.

If I'd started the story later - Myrna visiting Daz in his flat for instance - the story would have been about something that happens during her visit. Their meeting would be backstory, mentioned in passing. But the story itself should be self-contained from the moment of the inciting incident.

Another example might be The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The inciting incident is when Bilbo gives Frodo the Ring and leaves the Shire. Gandalf starts doing his research, and this leads to the events of the story. The events of The Hobbit are backstory: relevant, but not part of the tale being told. They're Bilbo's tale, not Frodo's. If the story was "how the Ring of Power was found and destroyed", then you'd start with The Hobbit. But LotR is only the story of "how the Ring of Power was destroyed".

Basically, when you're writing, decide what story it is you want to tell and where it begins. The moment the protagonist's life changes from being non-story to story, that's your inciting incident. The closer to that moment you begin, the more likely you are to draw your reader in.

 

[sirhugs]

No. Why should it? The inciting incident, if I remember correctly, is the appearance of the ghost. The murder is backstory. The ghost is what triggers the events of the play.

At the risk of annoying certain posters by linking to one of my stories, I'll use Red Hot as an example. This is how it begins:

This encounter is the inciting incident of the story of Daz and Myrna. The backstory is that Daz used to be in a boyband. Myrna has her own backstory, but it's never told.

If the story had been about some other aspect of Daz's life - loneliness, for example - I might have started the story earlier in the day: getting up, showering, making his way to the coffee place, being alone. If the story had been about his time in the boyband, I'd have started there.

If I'd started the story later - Myrna visiting Daz in his flat for instance - the story would have been about something that happens during her visit. Their meeting would be backstory, mentioned in passing. But the story itself should be self-contained from the moment of the inciting incident.

Another example might be The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The inciting incident is when Bilbo gives Frodo the Ring and leaves the Shire. Gandalf starts doing his research, and this leads to the events of the story. The events of The Hobbit are backstory: relevant, but not part of the tale being told. They're Bilbo's tale, not Frodo's. If the story was "how the Ring of Power was found and destroyed", then you'd start with The Hobbit. But LotR is only the story of "how the Ring of Power was destroyed".

Basically, when you're writing, decide what story it is you want to tell and where it begins. The moment the protagonist's life changes from being non-story to story, that's your inciting incident. The closer to that moment you begin, the more likely you are to draw your reader in.

So, you just define whereever you decide to start as the "inciting incident"?
convenient.

 

[sirhugs]

As to Hamlet, once again, Google AI overview:

Yes, Hamlet starts in medias res, a literary technique that begins a narrative in the middle of the plot, not the beginning. Key events like the murder of Hamlet's father and his mother's subsequent marriage to the killer have already occurred, and the audience learns this backstory gradually through dialogue and exposition. This approach hooks the audience immediately by presenting them with a mystery and the immediate consequences of past actions.
Here's why Hamlet is a prime example of an in medias res opening:

• Backstory is missing:The play opens with the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet appearing to the guards and Horatio, an event that occurs after his death and murder. The audience is not shown the murder itself, but rather a scene where the ghost demands revenge from Hamlet.
• Focus on the present conflict:Starting in the middle of the story allows Shakespeare to focus on Hamlet's reaction to his father's death and his struggle with the ghost's demand for revenge, rather than bogging the play down with a long introduction.
• Creates immediate intrigue:By placing the audience in the middle of events that have already transpired, the play creates immediate tension and mystery, prompting the audience to question how these events came to be.
• Gradual exposition:The play uses the ongoing actions and dialogue of the characters, particularly the soldiers and Hamlet's initial reactions to the ghost's story, to fill in the crucial backstory as the plot unfolds.

Wikipedia shows a similar view.

 

[StillStunned]

So, you just define whereever you decide to start as the "inciting incident"?
convenient.

No, you decide what story you're telling. Then you figure out where that story starts. Fortunately storytelling isn't like real life, and you can choose a moment and say, "There, that's where it happened!" A chance meeting in a coffee place. Walking into a therapist's office to start treatment. Seeing your childhood bully walk into your place of work. Sharing a sleeping bag with your sister.

The fact is that your inciting incident is an intrinsic moment in your story. It defines what your story is about. Get it right, and your readers will be engaged. Get it wrong, and you risk your readers losing interest before it happens, or being confused about what story you're telling.

 

[StillStunned]

As to Hamlet, once again, Google AI overview:

Yes, Hamlet starts in medias res, a literary technique that begins a narrative in the middle of the plot, not the beginning. Key events like the murder of Hamlet's father and his mother's subsequent marriage to the killer have already occurred, and the audience learns this backstory gradually through dialogue and exposition. This approach hooks the audience immediately by presenting them with a mystery and the immediate consequences of past actions.
Here's why Hamlet is a prime example of an in medias res opening:

I don't see what point you're trying to make.

 

[sirhugs]

No, you decide what story you're telling. Then you figure out where that story starts. Fortunately storytelling isn't like real life, and you can choose a moment and say, "There, that's where it happened!" A chance meeting in a coffee place. Walking into a therapist's office to start treatment. Seeing your childhood bully walk into your place of work. Sharing a sleeping bag with your sister.

The fact is that your inciting incident is an intrinsic moment in your story. It defines what your story is about. Get it right, and your readers will be engaged. Get it wrong, and you risk your readers losing interest before it happens, or being confused about what story you're telling.

word salad
now excuse me, my plot bunnies need carrots...

 

[joy_of_cooking]

So, you just define whereever you decide to start as the "inciting incident"?
convenient.

That's how it works in well written stuff. I'm sure we've all read a few stories that start instead with "hi my name is Earl. Let me tell you how I look, how my wife looks, how we met, and how I got into my current line of business... I usually get up pretty early so I can get out to my first client before the traffic gets bad. I love these morning drives when it's just me and the road and the sun thinking about rising over the ridge. It's quiet and peaceful and I get a moment to myself. Or I do most days. Today there was some jackass in a little pavement princess pickup---I'm talking duallies and lifted suspension and tinted windows and two smoke stacks and spotless dark cherry red fleck paint job--- who wanted to sit right on my ass. He was getting madder and madder and I was starting to get a bad feeling about this."

 

[ChuckWolf]

All of my characters have backstories, but rarely a shared backstory in the same tale.

The exceptions are Nudity Retreat Humiliation and Hot Trouble In Cooter County, which involves a married couple.

Normally the main characters are meeting for the first time and under unusual circumstances.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Please ignore this random ramble if a boring media analysis is not your thing. the tl;dr is that I think this conflict about in medias res and inciting incidents boils down to denotation VS connotation on both sides of the aisle and my summary of the answers given so far about the central question, what folks would do when writing erotica, is...whatever the author thinks they want and/or their reader wants given the story they are about to tell.



From the outside looking in, it seems the central conflict between @StillStunned and @sirhugs might actually boil down to the technical translation/definition of "in medias res" and the general literary (and media) uses of the device followed up by the same sort of connotation/denotation conflict for inciting incident.

From the definition google is providing, ANY story that doesn't start with the birth of the main characters is in medias res. This is not surprising, AI can be quite literal. Everyone has a back story that happens before the story starts and everything that has happened in our past can be (and probably is) relevant to the current story, especially if it is a longer one. If we stick just to the translation of the original latin, all stories are in medias res and if we stick with the characters and the story long enough, we will get flashes of that back story when it's relevant to the present.

And yes, this is true of The Hobbit as well - as it is starting in the middle of the story of Durin as he seeks to reclaim his kingdom. The Hobbit is complete with flashbacks to past relevant events as time goes on. Any properly built world will have back story and any story told within that world will by necessity start in the middle of the overarching timeline. We can define this as in medias res if we stick with the literal definition as well.

But how is in medias res typically used? We're not usually this literal. The examples that come to mind for me include that record scratch moment. Think of the beginning of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. "You might be wondering how I got here" type moments. Unless you are going with the literal translation the way a Google AI summary might, I think this is how the majority of readers think of in medias res and experience in medias res.

I think this distinction between the connotation and denotation of in medias res is further driving the disagreement about what an inciting incident is and both how it is being used and how it should be used.

But then what is an inciting incident? If we go with a literal definition - it's the event that starts the story. In that case, yes, the inciting incident IS defined as where you decide to start writing so long as the audience can understand why you started there and any relevant details that happen before or after that point are given in a meaningful and entertaining way.

But in terms of connotation, I think to have an inciting incident, I think you need to have a status quo to push away from.

Let's go back to the Lord of the Rings example and call the inciting incident Bilbo giving Frodo the ring and disappearing. This isn't actually where the story starts - it's just what pushes the characters out of the status quo and towards the "adventure" of the story itself. The story starts by establishing that status quo - it starts in the quiet Shire ad by establishing how peaceful and pastural the hobbits are. You don't have to start a story with an inciting incident and in fact most stories don't start with one - they give some sort of background to establish the status quo before they destroy it with the inciting incident.

I think Hamlet serves as an exception, not the rule, The first scene and the inciting incident are one and the same here. This doesn't really surprise me, though, given how many other rules Shakespeare liked to break in his works. His "brand" was making things up as he went along (including inventing words when Engish just wasn't good enough) and doing things his own way. That's why he's held up as this monolith of a writer even to this day.

The Iliad may look like another exception - it starts with Wrath and with that conflict. But I don't think it really is. Why? Well, I'm not Homer but my best guess as to why it started with wrath and the fight between Agamemnon and Achilles would be that when The Iliad was being performed (well before Homer wrote it down), the audience was already expected to know the story of the Trojan War. The backstory was history - and it was shared history. They didn't need to perform or write down the backstory because someone else had already done it for them in a previous chapter that we just aren't reading because Homer started where the bards would have. The bards reciting the tale were there to entertain the crowd, not educate, so they assumed you already knew the status quo. As we get farther away from that shared cultural knowledge, we also get more likely to want to do things like read Iphegenia first or learn at least a little bit about the Trojan War before reading The Iliad, for context. It's why movies written today about WWI don't need to explain how you got to the trenches - anyone reading that novel already knows enough about that part. They can dive right into the action in the trenches themselves.

The inciting incident isn't just where you start writing, but it is where most people would say the background ends and the story begins. Then the question just becomes - when writing erotica, how much background do you include? Do you expect your readers are going to want that background?

And that goes back to the question, when one says "conventional wisdom" do you mean regarding the writing of erotica in general or regarding writing overall? From what I have been able to distill from opinions on this thread (I've been having trouble myself deciding if my backstory elements are too long and how I'd split up a story I'm in the middle of into two parts if needed because of it) - opinions are mixed. Some give only a paragraph of background before the inciting incident, others full chapters. Some give a single line, others nothing at all. The opinions seem as varied as the usernames.

 

[TheRedChamber]

@SamanthaBehgs has pretty much nailed this one. I don't think it's important to nail down an exact binary for when a story is and isn't in media res, more that you can recognize that there are various techniques.

Take the James Bond films for example. They have a five-ten minute action sequence before the opening credits roll. These begin, nominally in media res, with Bond in the middle of a mission. He'll, say recover a microchip from a safe in the dirst thirty seconds, then goons will break in and he'll be off skiing down the mountain chased by gunfire.

I say nominally IMR because typically nothing before the credits will matter for what comes next. When the theme song ends Bond will be back London, he'll flirt with Moneypenny for a minute then he'll get his mission and the actual point of the story from M. Occassionally the "Really big infodump" might refer back to 'that microchip you recovered in Alaska'

You could of course open a Bond story with Bond strapped to a table, a burning laser working its way upto his neithers and then flashback to how he got into this predicament. This is undeniably IMR. Honestly though it seems a bit unnecessary for most movies these days.

You could also open a Bond movie with the birth of Bond and the story of his life through the deaths of his parents, how he got recruited into the secret service and his first mission. Lots of superhero movies do origin stories, after all. This is probably a bad idea with Bond simply because the death of his parents has never been a particularly big deal.

You can begin a story anywhere you have a reasonable shot of getting the reader to keep reading.

I'm currently in the middle of slightly rewritting a story because I decided it needed to start with my MC getting ready for work rather than travelling to work. Without going into detail, I decided after writing most of the journey that a couple of thousand words of her interacting with her family would be a) interesting, b) establish the theme of the story more clearly, c) get people to like the character better, d) weave a few Checkovs in more naturally and e) not start on a massive world building info dump. I hadnt realized all this before I started writing the first time because I thought her travelling to work might already be a slow start. I might, once everything is finished, be completely wrong about any of those specific points.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

@SamanthaBehgs has pretty much nailed this one. I don't think it's important to nail down an exact binary for when a story is and isn't in nedia res, more that you can recognize that there are various techniques.

Take the James Bond films for example. They have a five-ten minute action sequence before the opening credits roll. These begin, nominally in media res, with Bond in the middle of a mission. He'll, say recover a microchip from a safe in the dirst thirty seconds, then goons will break in and he'll be off skiing down the mountain chased by gunfire.

I say nominally IMR because typically nothing before the credits will matter for what comes next. When the theme song ends Bond will be back London, he'll flirt with Moneypenny for a minute then he'll get his mission and the actual point of the story from M. Occassionally the "Really big infodump" might refer back to 'that microchip you recovered in Alaska'

You could of course open a Bond story with Bond strapped to a table, a burning laser working its way upto his neithers and then flashback to how he got into this predicament. This is undeniably IMR. Honestly though it seems a bit unnecessary for most movies these days.

You could also open a Bond movie with the birth of Bond and the story of his life through the deaths of his parents, how he got recruited into the secret service and his first mission. Lots of superhero movies do origin stories, after all. This is probably a bad idea with Bond simply because the death of his parents has never been a particularly big deal.

You can begin a story anywhere you have a reasonable shot of getting the reader to keep reading.

I'm currently in the middle of slightly rewritting a story because I decided it needed to start with my MC getting ready for work rather than travelling to work. Without going into detail, I decided after writing most of the journey that a couple of thousand works of her interacting with her family would be a) interesting, b) establish the theme of the story more clearly, c) get people to like the character better, d) weave a few Checkovs in more naturally and e) not start on a massive world building info dump. I hadnt realized all this before I started writing the first time because I thought her travelling to work might already be a slow start. I might, once everything is finished, be completely wrong about any of those specific points.

Great example!

The best place to start a story is the point where you can set the hook.
You probably have a plot idea in your head, where is the moment where you create that interest? Start just ever so slightly before that, or at the point where you can tease it.
If Beth is going to meet the love of her life today, I don't really need to spend 2000 words talking about her getting ready for work.

 

[SkyBubble]

It sounds like a cliche, but begin at the beginning. Start where the story starts. Sometimes that's when the people meet, sometimes it's another point.