Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A How to invest readers in a story that (initially) has no clear direction?

What I would personally do in this situation is a "How We Got Here" scenario. Start off towards the climax of your story, with the protagonist facing down (or preparing to face down) whatever the ...

posted 6y ago by F1Krazy‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T21:42:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33929
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:12:11Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33929
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T08:12:11Z (almost 5 years ago)
What I would personally do in this situation is a "How We Got Here" scenario.

Start off towards the climax of your story, with the protagonist facing down (or preparing to face down) whatever the final antagonist happens to be. This will solve your problem of introducing the antagonist and the long-term objective, and also provides an additional hook: how did the protagonist get into this situation, and how will they get out? Then, you flash back to the chronological beginning, with your character on the run from the law, and proceed from there.

A good example is the video game _Persona 5_. It takes a couple of hours of set-up and gameplay before you actually get into a Palace and start fighting Shadows, and quite a bit longer before the protagonists decide upon their long-term goal of forming the Phantom Thieves and reforming criminals.

So to signal immediately what the storyline actually is, the game starts off several months in the future, with the protagonist getting betrayed and captured during a Palace heist, and uses the framing device of the protagonist relaying the preceding events during an interrogation. Since you know from the beginning that the protagonist gets betrayed, this also adds the underlying driving question of who betrayed them, which isn't answered until the story catches up with itself towards the end.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-03-02T10:54:55Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 4