Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47286
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47286
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Nearly all stories, including novels and movies and even comic book series, begin with the MC in their "normal world." There is no law demanding that, other than the laws of economics: We want the story to sell!

We authors do this because for centuries, this has proven successful, and stories that try to violate this rule flop. Readers expect the beginning of a story to illustrate how the MC **has been** living, up until the incident (aka "inciting incident") that disrupts their life and pushes them in a new direction. This introduction to the MC, the setting, and perhaps other characters is the foundation upon which the story is told.

In your case, I believe the "normal world" for this MC is the post-apocalyptic world. True, that was not their normal world ten years ago or whatever, but whatever ended that world is a different story (and probably one that did not have a happy ending).

This post-apocalyptic world is now their normal, and the time that went before is in the past, something to be remembered, longed for, perhaps hated, but that is told through thoughts, dialogue, and perhaps flashback. (I don't personally use flashbacks.)

This introductory phase typically lasts 10% to 15% of the entire story length; it is rather long, and it is ALL before the story-driving inciting incident is outlined or discussed. You say the MC is looking for a McGuffin, typically the need to _find_ this McGuffin would appear around halfway through the first Act, which is 12.5% of the way into the story. In other words, right at the end of the introductory phase.

But we don't want it to be a laundry list of factoids about this unusual world, we want it to be interesting to the reader.

The easy way to do this is to start with a **minor** daily-living-problem for the MC, **not** the inciting incident. Just like all of us, daily living can present little problems to be solved, and that can be interesting. The morning alarm fails to go off due to a power failure during the night, and you wake up already late for work. Your phone isn't charged. Your car won't start. The milk for your morning cereal has gone sour. In general, something disrupts the normal routine, but it isn't life-altering, just a problem you can't ignore.

That is what we give our MC. They have some normal routine you need to imagine, and then something goes wrong. That tells us where to start the book: I start with the character's name, **doing** something in their normal world, and often introduce this "inconsequential problem" in the first paragraph or two. The reader has something interesting to follow, the MC dealing with their problem, and the author uses that to begin the introduction to both the MC and the setting.

Your story starts with an MC already accustomed to navigating their post-apocalypse world. But the MC has memories and understanding of the pre-apocalypse world, that still informs their actions today. Those come into play as needed. But as the author, you can _make_ some of those memories needed by devising the right kind of "inconsequential problem", e.g. maybe the MC is trying to find rechargeable batteries for a device, or looking for something somebody would trade food to get. perhaps he broke his blade, and is looking through rubble for material to make a new one.

The backstory may be interesting, but I'd think of this like a person's childhood: We read an awful lot of stories about adults, that have a backstory we learn almost _nothing_ about. For example, what do we know of Dumbledore's childhood? Or Captain Kirk's? Presumably they were six years old, and went through puberty, and had first romantic kisses and virginal sexual experiences, momentous turning points in their lives. But in literature and movies they come to us fully formed. **Just like in real life,** we meet new people, already adults, and judge them by their looks, words and actions _now,_ and once in awhile, we learn a few elements of their backstory.

Even in the first Harry Potter, Rowling introduces the magical setting while talking about his parents dying, then skips over ten years of childhood to get to the story.

Your pre-apocalyptic world is metaphorically the "childhood" of your MC; and we meet them in metaphorical "adulthood", the "childhood" incidents that shaped their beliefs, morality, skills, intelligence and knowledge are done deals.

To the extent those earlier times **matter** to how the MC behaves, tell us about them. Otherwise, like meeting a person in real life, let us judge them in-the-now, as we are wont to do: based on appearances, words and behavior. As readers, we will include in our judgment their thoughts, emotions, and memories.

Original score: 17