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The protagonist in my story decides to research a topic. Naturally, I wanted her to encounter some obstacles first, so I arranged the starting chapters like this: First frustration > Second ...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T04:22:11Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17767 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Alexandro Chen
·
2019-12-08T04:22:11Z (almost 5 years ago)
The protagonist in my story decides to research a topic. Naturally, I wanted her to encounter some obstacles first, so I arranged the starting chapters like this: > First frustration \> Second frustration \> Third frustration \> Success (She researches on the Internet and fails, researches in the library and fails, tries at her university's department and fails. And finally, just as she's about to give up, she finds someone who helps her.) I did this because I wanted to 1) show her frustration 2) show that no one was taking her seriously. But the majority of my readers are saying that they are _dead-end_ chapters, that maybe I should delete them. Should I? Or maybe they think this because they haven't reached the fourth chapter yet? **EDIT (based on Monica's answer):** It's not about the research all the time. For instance, in one of the chapters she encounters an "ex-lover", in another she gets fooled by a librarian, and in the last she is laughed at in class. And I reveal some stuff about her and her thoughts. Not sure if this is enough to keep the reader interested, though.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2015-06-17T15:08:20Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 7