: As a rule of thumb: If a accident makes a character’s life worse, you can put it anywhere in the story, because it becomes just one more challenge for the character to overcome. If an

@Lee1909368

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As a rule of thumb: If a accident makes a character’s life worse, you can put it anywhere in the story, because it becomes just one more challenge for the character to overcome. If an accident makes a character’s life better, then putting it anywhere but the beginning of the story weakens the story, because it feels like cheating.

So, for example, you can begin a story with a character receiving a winning lottery ticket, and then the character’s wealth is the backdrop to the other events (or perhaps, the story can be about some challenge associated with all this new money). But if your main character spends a hundred pages trapped by financial difficulties, you can’t introduce the winning lottery ticket on page 101. (Unless, perhaps, the money leads to even more intense problems, showing the reader that the main character’s problem all along was something other than poverty.)

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