Young Writers Society

Hello, I have a quick question to ask. Do you think it's okay for the plot of a story to be introduced later instead of in the first chapter? This may sound like a dumb rookie question, but I'm just curious of what everyone else thinks.

Of course it is fine! The novel that I am working on right now didn't have a stitch of plot sown in the first chapter or two. Albeit, my novel started out quite randomly based of of typos in the YWS chatroom. That'a a long story though...

I think that it is totally fine not to have plot in the first chapter. To be honest with you many books I have read are that way. Some have no plot at all until several chapters in to them.

On the other hand, you as the writer should plan your book well. It is always helpful to have your big pictured in the back of your mind. As you are writing. If only I could... I hope this helps!

r4p17 wrote:Of course it is fine! The novel that I am working on right now didn't have a stitch of plot sown in the first chapter or two. Albeit, my novel started out quite randomly based of of typos in the YWS chatroom. That'a a long story though...

I think that it is totally fine not to have plot in the first chapter. To be honest with you many books I have read are that way. Some have no plot at all until several chapters in to them.

On the other hand, you as the writer should plan your book well. It is always helpful to have your big pictured in the back of your mind. As you are writing. If only I could... I hope this helps!

Thank you for your insight! I was just worried that a story would be boring if the true plot wasn't introduced until a few chapters into it. I know where my story is going, I just have to get to that point without rushing myself.

Okay, I'm going to turn this question a little on its head:

The spirit of your question is: if it's okay to have the main plot of the story start later on than the first chapter. The answer to this is "yes", for reasons outlined— it happens a lot in stories, and sometimes it takes awhile for the main plot to be discovered and it just wouldn't be realistic to have it be known so early, nor would it be enough time to care about the main plot.

However, you asked if it's okay to not have plot of the story starting at chapter one, which is a slightly different thing. Plot in its broadest sense is the characters making choices and going through events that impact them. Stuff happening to the characters, forcing them to make choices, is what makes a story interesting.

As a result, the answer to "can I not have a plot in chapter one" is no— you have to have something, anything at all, that grabs interest and makes us care for the character right off the bat. You can start off slowly, and you can rely on an interesting voice to carry you through for awhile, but you have to have something happen that's out of the ordinary enough, or revolutionary enough, that it grabs us. This introduction can carry us through to the main plot and be a subplot once the main plot takes over, or it can fizzle out in favour for the main plot once it comes around.

But chapter one has to have some kernel of plot in it to be passable. Whether or not it's the main plot is what you've got to determine.

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Okay, I'm going to turn this question a little on its head:

The spirit of your question is: if it's okay to have the main plot of the story start later on than the first chapter. The answer to this is "yes", for reasons outlined— it happens a lot in stories, and sometimes it takes awhile for the main plot to be discovered and it just wouldn't be realistic to have it be known so early, nor would it be enough time to care about the main plot.

However, you asked if it's okay to not have plot of the story starting at chapter one, which is a slightly different thing. Plot in its broadest sense is the characters making choices and going through events that impact them. Stuff happening to the characters, forcing them to make choices, is what makes a story interesting.

As a result, the answer to "can I not have a plot in chapter one" is no— you have to have something, anything at all, that grabs interest and makes us care for the character right off the bat. You can start off slowly, and you can rely on an interesting voice to carry you through for awhile, but you have to have something happen that's out of the ordinary enough, or revolutionary enough, that it grabs us. This introduction can carry us through to the main plot and be a subplot once the main plot takes over, or it can fizzle out in favour for the main plot once it comes around.

But chapter one has to have some kernel of plot in it to be passable. Whether or not it's the main plot is what you've got to determine.

Thank you for some deep explanation! I was really talking about the main plot here. Of course there is a storyline in the first chapter, but the "big idea" just doesn't happen until later. I was just wondering because recently (on the internet especially) I've read a lot of stories and BAM the main plot is introduced during the first chappie.

There are two broad types of beginnings— hooks and slow burns.

The type when the main plot is introduced in chapter 1 is a hook style beginning. That is when you're basically relying on the main plot being interesting enough and the characters compelling enough to dive right in. Also covers in medias res beginnings, where you start in the middle of the main plot. This isn't something that works with all stories, because you do need to have the main plot be something we care about.

The other, the type you're talking about, is slow burn. These ones have something odd, something interesting, something generally Strange right at the start that isn't necessarily the main plot, but it's good enough, interesting enough, odd enough, just generally enough to keep us turning the pages. Again, this type of beginning doesn't work for all stories, because sometimes massive amounts of setup are boring and you don't have anything strong enough but the main plot to carry the story through.

Both types of beginnings work, and can be used in combination where you're maybe majority of one with a dash of another (my novel, for example, appears to be a hook because the start of the primary conflict shows up in the first scene, but the way I've structured the plot it'll end up as more of a slow burn than anything else) or even introducing multiple plots at once. It all depends on what type of story you're writing.