: Re: How do you deal with Chapter 2 when Chapter 1 is a volcano opening? I know the logic behind volcano openings and why they’re problematic (they set the expectation that that level of action

@Holmes449

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I would not start with a volcano opening, I think that is your mistake. A story does not start with that, a story has to start with "the status quo" world of the MC.

The reason for that is two-fold.

(1) The audience doesn't give a crap about the volcano opening because it doesn't know or care about the characters when it does. They have no connection. The impact is sharply diminished: some woman lost a patient; we don't know if "some woman" is good, bad, or the story is about them or the patient's family or whatever.

(2) The bare-bones world-building and character-building that must be done in the first chapter will interfere with the volcano.

Open with the status quo, let us know who the story is about, give us one or two reasons to care about her and like her, THEN throw her in the volcano and ruin her life. You have 10% of the length of your story to do that; you CAN get it done in 2%. In most stories the 10% mark is the harbinger of doom (something is wrong and we don't know what), which comes around the 15% mark (and no later than 20%).

This is not by engineering, btw, it is just a thing that happens in lots of stories; it is the "right amount" of setup that many professional best-selling authors have independently discovered. More descriptive than prescriptive, but you can use it as a rule of thumb: If you are doing considerably less or more than these marks, you are probably not writing enough, or writing too much, respectively, in your story.

How do you gather and maintain momentum when the story hasn’t really started yet?

I like to open (chapter 1) with an immediate problem, but a minor "throwaway" problem for the MC that will have no impact later, or perhaps a minor reference later so the reader can dismiss it. A traffic ticket because she is late, and it makes her very late. It is just a device to give us something to talk about and build some character.

If your main character is a doctor, she can be behind on some paperwork or training she was supposed to do, maybe she forgot some administrative meeting she was supposed to attend, maybe a colleague is sick and she has to cover for them on a day she had scheduled something fun to do (with a boyfriend / husband / kids / sister / friends) so she has to call and break a promise, and they aren't happy and she isn't happy.

Some plausible conflict in her status quo world that translates to the experience of a typical reader, so we can see what she's like and sympathize with her.

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