Act One: All Setup or Does it Need More?

By Janice Hardy

How much goes into setting up the beginning of a novel?

Novel beginnings don’t make it easy on us poor writers. We have to introduce characters, set the scene, ground readers in a new world (real life or one we made up), and we have to do something compelling to entice those readers to keep reading.

Story structure gives us a proven path to take after that first sentence is written. Our opening scene leads to the inciting event, which leads to end of act one. 

That encompasses "the beginning," and act one is essentially the part of the novel where the story is established. We introduce the protagonist, put them on the plot path, and turn them loose to resolve the story’s conflict.

And that’s where the trouble starts for some writers.

They have the opening scene down pat. They know what the inciting event is. But after that it gets fuzzy, and they wonder…