How do you deal with Chapter 2 when Chapter 1 is a volcano opening?
I know the logic behind volcano openings and why they’re problematic (they set the expectation that that level of action and excitement will continue; they’re a hard act to follow; they make a promise you can’t possibly fulfil; etc.) but it is the natural place for my story to start: the moment my protagonist’s life changes forever. She makes a mistake and someone dies. It’s not a volcano opening as such; no helicopters explode, but it is fraught with tension and action as they fail to save the patient’s life.
I’m now struggling with Chapter 2 and the natural lull after such an exciting opening. I introduce my characters while my protagonist deals with her mistake and I thought it was okay to give the reader a bit of a breather. But my editor and agents both have issues with this particular chapter (they think my protagonist is too depressed/has no fight and the whole setup is a bit boring). I’m not sure how to fix it.
It may offer some inspiration to hear what you all do with your Chapter 2s:
After you have hooked your reader with your opening, what do you set out to do next?
How do you introduce your characters without boring the reader?
Do you try to keep your beginnings brief and punchy and get on with the story?
How do you gather and maintain momentum when the story hasn’t really started yet?
In short, once you have cranked the engine (and it started with a bang) what tips do you have to stop it stalling right away?
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I've been reading a book about a related topic and the author touches on this. They refer to James Bond as the example of this type of opening: the opening to every movie is a fast paced action scene, the ending to his most recent case.
And that's followed by the next goal, right away, him seeing M and having a new assignment.
Chapter 2 should anchor the MC into the next goal, right away, a goal which I believe is carried at least through Act I and maybe through the book.
In my own story, which is my first and I am a complete novice, Chapter 1 has a hook and a bang, and incites the character to a new course in her life. Chapter 1 is not the end of Act I, but it is a small inciting event. And i think that's what you need - the action in Chapter 1 to incite the events of Chapter 2. This means your MC may need to be more proactive in Ch 2 than s/he currently is. If your MC is going to be depressed, that depression cannot translate to the reader. It needs to be communicated without depressing anyone and in such a way that it serves a purpose to the next goal. There are things we do when depressed - make that work in your favor.
I just re-watched Inside Out with my daughter and Sadness is great at being utterly dejected throughout the entire movie and making us laugh at her depressed antics. So ... there are ways to show depression without being depressing, although a cartoon probably isn't what you are aiming for.
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The classic approach is to go into the events leading up to the volcano eruption via a 'one year (moth/week/day/hour) earlier' chapter.
Make sure that you are not merely describing the events but are enabling the reader to live them with you by means of vivid imagery and realistic dialogue.
Make it clear that this section is contributing towards addressing the mystery that you must have planted in the readers mind in Chapter One, i.e. 'why did the volcano erupt?' This will maintain interest.
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I would not start with a volcano opening, I think that is your mistake. A story does not start with that, a story has to start with "the status quo" world of the MC.
The reason for that is two-fold.
(1) The audience doesn't give a crap about the volcano opening because it doesn't know or care about the characters when it does. They have no connection. The impact is sharply diminished: some woman lost a patient; we don't know if "some woman" is good, bad, or the story is about them or the patient's family or whatever.
(2) The bare-bones world-building and character-building that must be done in the first chapter will interfere with the volcano.
Open with the status quo, let us know who the story is about, give us one or two reasons to care about her and like her, THEN throw her in the volcano and ruin her life. You have 10% of the length of your story to do that; you CAN get it done in 2%. In most stories the 10% mark is the harbinger of doom (something is wrong and we don't know what), which comes around the 15% mark (and no later than 20%).
This is not by engineering, btw, it is just a thing that happens in lots of stories; it is the "right amount" of setup that many professional best-selling authors have independently discovered. More descriptive than prescriptive, but you can use it as a rule of thumb: If you are doing considerably less or more than these marks, you are probably not writing enough, or writing too much, respectively, in your story.
How do you gather and maintain momentum when the story hasn’t really started yet?
I like to open (chapter 1) with an immediate problem, but a minor "throwaway" problem for the MC that will have no impact later, or perhaps a minor reference later so the reader can dismiss it. A traffic ticket because she is late, and it makes her very late. It is just a device to give us something to talk about and build some character.
If your main character is a doctor, she can be behind on some paperwork or training she was supposed to do, maybe she forgot some administrative meeting she was supposed to attend, maybe a colleague is sick and she has to cover for them on a day she had scheduled something fun to do (with a boyfriend / husband / kids / sister / friends) so she has to call and break a promise, and they aren't happy and she isn't happy.
Some plausible conflict in her status quo world that translates to the experience of a typical reader, so we can see what she's like and sympathize with her.
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