: Re: Do I need to start off my book by describing the character's "normal world"? I know a lot of books do it (Harry Potter, LOTR, Wheel of Time). It's even part of the "Hero's Journey". However,

@Vandalay250

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A critical point that other answers skip over is: Where you start writing and where the finished story begins aren't all that related.

Pick a point within your storyline, and being testing the story. Read it to yourself. Have others read it. Have others read it to you if you can.

Then keep asking if the story works. And it really doesn't matter if this is done with 'final draft' quality writing, or just napkin scribbles of ideas for a story outline. But I will say that the earlier you start getting into this kind of mindset, the easier it is to spot and correct problems.

While not the easiest 'answer' to a question, the honest truth is that you answer this question by testing against your story, and you can't effectively answer it by polling random strangers for highly out of context opinions. Answers here can give you a lot to think about and consider, but ultimately it will come down to what works for your story, and its style, feel, and flow.

Does the reader know enough about the characters and the world at any given time? If not, look at how to address that.
Does the reader get bored with info dump and excessively mundane content? A chapter about a Main Character sitting on the toilet dreading the upcoming work week [Possibly followed by a few more chapters about said work week] might work for one story, but utterly fail for another. Advise that is 'true in general' may not be true in a specific case.
Does the book as a whole actually work at all? The greatest beginning to a story won't help it if the thing as a whole just falls apart into a useless mess.

Your readers should have an understanding of normal for your world, but how you introduce that will depend on your story, pacing, and characters.

Starting with some normal is typically a safe point to begin, but it doesn't need to be dragged out to excess, however it is not a strict rule written in stone. [But still be prepared for things to 'not work'.]

Characters can reflect on normal or otherwise reference normal through dialog.
Flashbacks to normal can be used to "fill a reader in" mid way through the story as needed. [But this can be difficult to do well without descending into a tangled mess.]

In short, you can 'establish normal' in far more ways than "starting off the book with how dull and boring things are before suddenly getting exciting" if it works for your story.

The key takeaway is to be wary of judging too much of a book before it is written, and be careful with writing to excess before you start evaluating it. While that sounds like a conflicting message, it is really mostly about aiming for a balance.

And remember that it is often easier to decide a beginning 'needs more' than it is to acknowledge that the opening needs aggressive trimming.

Frame up the beginning of your story, but don't finish it till you're finishing the whole story.

[It is far easier to let go of bad ideas if you haven't invested too much time in polishing them before you're in a position to judge how bad they really are...]

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