The Save The Cat Beat Sheet, of which structure I am a fan, allows the first two or three chapters of the novel for the Ordinary World, the normal routine of the main character(s), before the inciting incident which kicks off the main action.
The reaction of a lot of writers is to skip that and go straight to the inciting incident and into the action from there. The reason seems to be that the ordinary world is considered boring. Avoiding it and going right to the inciting incident grabs the readers right away.
It can be. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It does mean that you have to kick up your game. The Ordinary World is where you introduce characters and make them more than names. It’s also where you set the stage for the conflict to come. Foreshadowing is certainly in order. If the Ordinary World is boring, maybe it is because your characters aren’t interesting, or maybe you are info-dumping instead of scene setting.
One type of non-boring ordinary world is when the main characters have a non-boring occupation. The cop kicking the door on an armed suspect can generate some interest right off the bat. The writer does have to kick up the stakes when the inciting incident walks in the door.
The John Wayne movie “Hellfighters” is a good example of this. The opening image is the oil well coming in wild and catching fire, and Chance Buckman and his crew tackling the oil well fire. Another day at the office, but pretty interesting all the same. It also gives the audience a chance to meet the characters, Chance himself, Greg the young Turk on his way up, and the supporting cast. The running description of the process of killing an oil well fire sets the scene for future conflicts.
In my own writing, I usually do stick to the structure. There is the risk of losing some readers, who want the action to start right away. Not everyone is going to like what I write, or stick with it. That’s the biz. In the words of the late great Robert Heinlein, “When you write fiction, you’re competing with beer.” There’s a lot of competition out there, but there is also a marketplace of unprecedented size and a much lower bar to get into it.
In my latest novel, “The Snowball Contract”, #4 in the Master Blasters series, our by now seasoned crew of characters has taken a Contract to save a world – well, some of one, anyway. This is just a day at the office. There are, of course, problems to overcome. And, of course, foreshadowing. You must not forget the foreshadowing, O reader.
I don’t do politics in this blog, as is my editorial policy. The current crisis in Ukraine is a tragedy, but it also shows that people will fight for freedom against tyranny.
Freedom is not just a nice to have. As I frequently point out in my books, we live on one grain of dust in a huge universe with vast energies rolling around in it. That universe does not care, does not even know, whether we exist or not. If we are to survive, we must learn, grow and innovate. Survival demands solving the problems that universe throws at us.
Free societies can change and innovate, respond to problems and gain the knowledge of how to do so. Tyrannies can’t afford to tolerate that. It’s a threat to their power and stability. The leader of a democracy can step down into a comfortable retirement and write his or her memoirs. Tyrants don’t have that option. Their power is their life. They put down that bet when they struck for power.
In the real world, are our emerging abilities and internal disputes just the ordinary world before the real inciting event rolls in the door? In my novels, certainly.
In real life, I think it is, too.
Be First to Comment