: Re: How can I reconcile the exposition of the three act scheme vs. starting out with a bang? I am a few thousand words into my newest draft and starting to question if I picked the right beginning.

@Bryan361

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I believe this is one of those questions where, if you knew the perfect answer to it, you would never get another form rejection again. Unfortunately there is no perfect answer.

You are right, the two concepts are in conflict with each other and in many ways the opening of your book is going to be a balance between them. Too much exposition and the opening is bland, to little and you don't care much about the characters.

Now keep in mind, novels are allowed to start a bit slowly, you can spend a chapter or so setting things up before getting to the a major event of the story. As long as you can keep it interesting people will read it, and the best way to do that is to make it about the characters and how they interact with the world. It also lets you show what is 'normal' before things start going to pot.

If you really feel you want to show the action right away, maybe start with a prolog show what is going on before it involves the main characters. Then you can start that out with the bag, get the ball rolling for a page or tow, then jump into your main characters with chapter one. The upshot of this is it adds some tension as to when they will be involved in everything that is going wrong while letting you establish everything.
Starting with a big bag is more important for a short story, where you don't have the time to set things in motion, but have to hit the ground running.

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