: Starting Out a Novel Would it be more effective to the reader to start out a novel explaining the setting and scenery or, introducing the characters?

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In response to SaberWriters comment, I'd like to raise the question what a story is. As a a trained physicist, the answer to me is easy: Change, or, in the pysical setting, d/dt. Anything that is different at the end of the story from what it was at the beginning of the story can possibily maintain a story.

This element - the aspect that changes - is what you should introduce at the beginning of your story. In my experience, this is essential, because you need to establish a benchmark that allows your reader to judge the wonderful changes happening in your story. If you take away this benchmark, you remove the context of the entire story.

Coming back to SaberWriter and incorporating the change idea means that, as SaberWriter pointed out, you need to know what your story is about. Is it about the transformation of a single character? (This usually is a Hero's Journey.) Introduce the character and stress the character traits that will have changed in the end. Is it about a societal change? Show the society in question. A country? A landscape? Well then, go ahead, and show your reader the status quo, before everything changes.

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This question is analogous to the painting artist asking, should I use light blue, medium blue or dark blue for the sky I am painting?
The answer is: use the color that the sky appears. You might say,

"Well, the painter just looks at the sky and paints it the color he
sees so that is a different thing."

But the best painters do not only paint what is there, but instead paint what they want you to see.
Paint What You Want the Reader to See
That should also be the way you, the writer, should paint your scenes. Paint what you want the reader to see.
If setting is extremely important as it is in, All Quiet On The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque -- amazon link.
If that setting were changed, since the book is based upon World War I, the entire story would be changed.
Meanwhile, a book like, John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, (amazon link) is a character-driven novel with events occurring because of who the main character is and his outlook on life.
Read the beginning of each of those and you'll see how different they are and how fitting the beginnings are for each book.
In conclusion your answer can be obtained by asking yourself:

Am I writing a character-driven book?
Am I writing a book that comes from a story concept I have in mind?
Am I writing a book which richly describes some setting / historical period?

The one you seem to gravitate toward is the answer to your question.

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I would say it's better to start with neither; start with the story. Both setting and character should be introduced bit by bit, as the story begins to unfold. If you start with setting the scene or introducing the characters then the reader has to wait for you to finish before they get to read the story.

Many publishers will only read the first few lines of a piece, and many readers will only read the first page or two, before deciding whether to continue. If your piece doesn't set the stage for the story (better to be left after page one wondering who this is and what that is, than to know but not know that it's important) people will get bored.

This is where prologues are especially useful; if you know you have to set the scene and the character start with a prologue that gives the reader a taste of the action. Get the reader hooked before you start filling bits out.

And as a final note, it's worth remembering:

If you stop to describe the scenery, the story stops to wait for you.

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