A Lot Of Writing Advice Says ‘throw The Reader Into The Action’ And I Respect Where That’s Coming

A lot of writing advice says ‘throw the reader into the action’ and I respect where that’s coming from, but personally I kind of love an elaborate and unnecessary-to-the-plot framing device.

The credits before the grainy movie or long, dramatic anime opening; an endlessly looping videogame title screen; some hype man at the beginning of a renaissance play purely there to let the crowd know shit’s about to get real.

The following pages are transcribed from papers found in a cave thought unreachable by humans, and written in an ink whose chemical composition could not be determined. Something howls in the forest and the stranger at your campfire looks up from under the brim of their hat and strums their guitar to begin the Ballad of Howlin’ Joe. Reader, the tale you are about to read is entirely made up and every character fictitious, but each and every word of it is true.

Once upon a time! It was a dark and stormy night! Atmosphere IS story and you don’t have to cut out every moment of it to serve constant forward action. Give me a trope with absolute sincerity that sets a MOOD and gets me in the zone. I have a huge reverent soft spot for an opening that feels like beginning the ancient and intrinsically familiar ritual of storytelling, a ritual that spans the world and predates written text, endlessly iterating and evolving. Are you sitting comfortably? Let’s begin.