7

I am writing a piece of soft science-fiction set on an alien-provided generation ship decades after the destruction of Earth (or at least the ruination of humanity) by a rogue comet, possibly sent by the same aliens that provided the twenty ships.

The book opens with the MC alone in his family pod the day after his fifteenth birthday. His parents went into stasis the day before due to limited life support capacity for active people and he will be given an interim crew classification later this morning. At the same time Ship will recycle the no-longer needed family living space, he only got to use it the prior night and this morning due to not yet having the examination that will come later this day.

He is the youngest member of the latest generation (each generation is exactly 30 people, though the 20 ships do trade people around (without any input from the humans as to who gets traded) to promote genetic diversity) and so there is now no adult supervision, only the AI that runs Ship. In many ways the AIs see the humans as a burden rather than being of any benefit, they are called 'crew' even though they have no real function aboard. There are a huge number of people in stasis that will be woken when they reach the destination planet in another 350 years or so, but they aren't actually relevant to the story.

I am just wondering if relating much of this as an info-dump of things he is thinking about while getting ready during the first chapter sounds reasonable (the one thing not related is the AI indifference, that is carefully hidden and to be revealed over the story). I can certainly believe someone in that situation would be rather introspective, particularly as the AI will not allow him to speak with anyone today until after the examination.

Laurel
  • 4,283
  • 3
  • 13
  • 42
SoronelHaetir
  • 221
  • 1
  • 5

5 Answers5

20

Absolutely, positively NOT.

This will get you rejected by agents before they finish the first three pages.

Sorry to be harsh, but I'm trying to help you sell something, and this is a deal killer.

I have been told by agents it is a common rookie mistake, and is sometimes known as a "sitting on the bus" opening, and will not sell.

As in, your character is alone and sitting on the bus on the way to work, and thinking about their life, so you can dump a ton of history.

It doesn't work.

Advice from professionals is to have your main character interacting with others before page 3 (counting about 250 words per page).

And preferably, doing something interesting in those 3 pages, solving a problem perhaps. Definitely not being a bore, or bored, sitting around waiting and thinking.

All your backstory has to be actual story, not memories.

The best way to do this is to actually write the story. You can do this like JKR did it for the first Harry Potter book: it opens with the infant Harry being deposited on his uncle's doorstep, after his parents were killed. The entire first chapter is all about the backstory, but in story form with other characters. Then Chapter 2 starts with a big time skip, like "almost ten years have passed since...".

For your story, I'd tell about the invasion from the parent's POV, as it is happening. Consider it a "short story", at the conclusion of that story, perhaps your protagonist is born and named (e.g. "Joshua".)

Then Chapter 2 can begin "Joshua was 15."

I've done this myself in a story, traumatic events occur in the life of my protagonist at the age of 7 that completely shape her future (these include the loss of her parents, and adoption), that covers two chapters, and then we skip forward to begin her professional life 12 years later.

Always keep the reader immersed in an unfolding story. You can always skip the boring bits, like growing up (as JKR did).

You want characters experiencing that war first hand, including at first confused, then desperate, etc.

Do not open with your character sitting on the bus, remembering and thinking. Ever. Or anything similar to that.

Always, by page 3, have your protagonist interacting with other characters; good, neutral or bad is your choice, but somehow interacting, be it talk, negotiation, fighting, running, whatever.

Scrap the ruminations and write a story and keep your protagonist busy, preferably with a problem they need to solve, so there is conflict and tension.

All this other backstory can come in later. I fail to see how most of this influences the plot, so leave it out. It can come in as asides later, like in response to a question he can say, "No, my parents are in stasis."

I'm not even sure why that matters, I imagine for almost everybody their parents are in stasis. You might leave it for later, when somebody he knows will be going into stasis because their child is coming of age.

The reason info-dumping doesn't work in stories, no matter how you try to do it, is that you are implicitly asking readers to memorize facts. And they do not. We don't remember written facts, we remember scenes. What you write becomes a movie in the reader's imagination.

This is the essence of "Show Don't Tell", we mean create a scene, not a fact dump. Even if the scene takes 100 times as many words: People that read for fun do not mind reading, as long as you are creating that movie in their head. They do mind reading when the reading is boring, a bunch of facts we are somehow supposed to memorize and remember.

Start your story earlier. Then Jump forward, and have your protagonist occupied by the present and what they are doing, not ruminating and waiting.

Amadeus
  • 107,252
  • 9
  • 137
  • 352
7

Your goal for the first chapter of your book is not to give your readers information. The goal is to give them investment

Dorothy Jones Heydt once described the "eight deadly words" that are the worst possible reaction someone can give to your book:

I don't care what happens to these people

These are the eight deadly words because a reader who doesn't care will put your book down, they won't pick it up again, and they won't tell anyone else about it either.

But here's the thing - a reader who has picked up your story for the first time starts out uninvested, because they know nothing to be invested about. So your goal is to get readers invested as fast as possible, before they decide that they won't get invested and put the book down.

What invests readers? Mysteries. Emotions. Action.

The classic trick to an opening chapter is to open with a paragraph that is specific and interesting, but missing context needed to fully understand it. Now your reader is interested in learning the context so that they can understand your intriguing first paragraph! So you slowly dole out the context over the course of the chapter, while at the same time developing on the interesting things that were happening in the first paragraph, so by the time the chapter is over their curiosity about the first paragraph has been replaced by real investment in the characters and plot.

A different way of looking at it is this: Before putting any exposition in your book, identify why your readers want to know that information. Not "why will they want to know this information", but "why do they want to know it now". Especially early on in the book before you've built trust with the reader, it's just not worth the page space to provide readers information that they aren't already asking for. So if you have information that you want to give the readers, you need to figure out how to make them ask for it.

For some examples, consider this list of opening lines. What questions do they make you ask? What will you read further, in your search for answers?

Arcanist Lupus
  • 11,474
  • 22
  • 46
4

Look at other books in your genre written for your target audience. How do they do this?

What you write sounds like a YA adventure story. The most popular YA bestsellers today slowly reveal the backstory over the course of the narrative. Read the beginning of The Hunger Games or of Twilight. Both are excellently executed in this respect and good for learning how to do this.

You mostly find characters endlessly ruminating in YA love stories. There, interiority is something readers seem to enjoy.

Ben
  • 19,064
  • 1
  • 16
  • 72
3

NOTHING works for an Info-Dump

Info dumps just don't work, because good scenes need conflict, tension, and character decisions, and an info dump precludes those entirely.

Fantastic Opportunity

Even if there was some edge case where an info dump did work, it would be a terrible choice in this instance.

OP's setup is a fantastic source of tension for an opening chapter, and doing an info dump just ruins the mystery.

We could do something like this for an opening:

They froze Fred's parents on his fifteenth birthday.

He walked the empty halls in a daze, emotions swirling so hard he'd gone numb. His feet brought him to the party without any input from his conscious mind. The thumping base was a siren and he Odysseus without a crew to save him.

Without a family.

Jen thrust a drink into his hand as he walked through the door. The Freeze Parties had grown more rowdy as the number of adults declined. With Fred's parents gone, no authority figures remained.

Except Ship.

Fred breezed through the party. He gave half hearted replies and brief smiles to the revelers. Everyone knew what his was feeling, and he could be as rude as he wanted. All his sins were forgiven in advance.

What Fred wanted was to know what had happened to Mika.

He took Jen by the arm, and angled her to the bathroom. Leers and shouts followed the pair. Let them think he was trying to get lucky. He wanted the privacy for another reason.

The bathroom was the only place in crew quarters that Ship didn't monitor, and the sounds of the party would drown out their conversation. Fred needed access to his father's files, and Jen could get him that access. Whether Ship liked it or not.

[Fred and Jen argue about her helping him get the files]

Evaluation

The first line here is great - it raises so many questions. Who are they? Why did they freeze his parents? How? It's an instant source of mystery, adding some tension to draw the reader in.

The next few paragraphs resolve some of that tension; we learn that apparently this happens often enough that there is a social ritual for it. But we get a new mystery: why are all the adults gone?

And we get an ominous introduction to Ship as the only remaining authority -- AND we learn that Ship is surveilling everyone all the time. That's interesting.

Finally, we set up the main conflict for the scene: Fred wants to know what happened to Mika (more mystery! What did happen to Mika?) and he needs access to his father's files to do that (why is Dad hiding this!?!)

The actual conflict with Jen is where we will learn something meaningful about Fred. Does he sweet talk her? Blackmail her? Pay her? This conflict will help establish who Fred is, so we can see him grow and change over the course of the story.

Effect

An opening like this pulls a reader in. We:

  • Introduce a mystery
  • Give a partial resolution (payoff for the reader)
  • Introduce more mystery

By stringing your info dump out over the course of a whole chapter, you trick the reader into finishing that chapter to try to figure out all the mysteries! By that point, hopefully they're hooked and finish the book.

Don't info-dump, build a hook using all the questions that you know the reader will have.

codeMonkey
  • 2,204
  • 5
  • 9
-1

It could work. It really depends on what kind of character your MC is. Is he the kind of person who will be thinking about this? Is he more devil-may-care or more intellectual? Try not to overwhelm your reader, either. Include him perhaps thinking about his parents being in stasis, and why. Later, you can have something happen that perhaps jogs his mind to think of the other things you wish for your readers to know. Put simply, yes, it is perfectly reasonable to include all, or at least most, of this information in the first chapter. Just be sure you do it in a way that feels natural to your writing style and to the characters personality.

Talbot
  • 149
  • 1
  • 6