The Common (But Easy-to-Fix!) Manuscript Mistake that Makes Agents Stop Reading
The novel-writing misstep I see over and over again, and how to check if you've made it
When you read enough manuscripts as a book coach, editor, or (I imagine) as a literary agent, you start to see there are common patterns that writers make time and again. This is especially true for first-time novelists. I’ve written before about common mistakes I see in manuscripts and how I work with writers to prevent these. Today I want to delve deeper into one specific manuscript mistake I see frequently: starting your story too early. What exactly does it mean to start a story too early? It means you’ve begun the narrative too far before the story kicks off with your Inciting Incident.
I’m zeroing in on this one misstep in particular for two reasons: (1) because this happens in your opening pages, it can prevent a literary agent or acquisitions editor from ever reading further and (2) it’s a relatively simple fix. The trickiest part is detecting whether or not you’ve made this misstep, so I want to share a few tips to help you figure it out.
A Quick Story Element Primer: Set-up + Inciting Incident
Many of you will know this but sometimes these story elements might feel only vaguely familiar. Or perhaps you remember learning about them waaay back when, but you don’t recall exactly what they mean, so I want to be sure I’m clearly defining terms.
As humans, we use story all of the time to make sense of the world around us, so we understand it on an innate level. We’ve been analyzing story and talking about unified story structure for literally thousands of years ever since Aristotle’s Poetics. Somewhat more recently Freytag created his famous pyramid in the 1860s, which has influenced so many modern story structure ideas. And, although it’s not always called this term, a typical story structure has an Inciting Incident that sets the story in motion.
(Before you’re all up in arms about experimental fiction and whatnot…yes, you can break from story structure when writing experimental fiction. However, I’m a firm believer that in order to break the rules well, you need to first understand what they are. But also…as I work with women’s fiction, upmarket and book club fiction writers, and story structure is essential to these genres, that is the focus of my Substack.)
To determine if your story starts too early, you need to be clear on your Set-up (or what Freytag called Exposition) and the Inciting Incident. Set-up shows you the main character’s status quo life before the event that changes it and kicks off the story, i.e., the Inciting Incident. Sometimes a writer might take this too literally and believe they have to provide all Set-up before we ever get to the Inciting Incident, and that’s simply not true. In fact, please, please don’t do that. That is often how we end up with a story starting too early.
The Inciting Incident is the moment when everything changes for the main character—when their life is permanently altered—and it kickstarts the story. To determine if you’re starting your story too early, you’ll need to pinpoint your Inciting Incident and when it occurs in your story timeline.
Once you have those elements identified, here are a few things to check for to determine if you’re starting your story too early…
Info-Dumping and Orientation Tours
Info-dumping is a common misstep especially with newer writers, but I’ve seen more experienced writers fall into this trap too. And one of the most common places to spot info-dumping is the beginning of all chapters, especially those opening pages. I’ve dubbed this the orientation tour.
When we brought our first newborn home from the hospital, my husband walked into the house with him and very sweetly took him around and pointed out all the things in our baby’s new home: “Here’s our living room, and here’s our kitchen, and here’s our backyard, and here’s where Mom and Dad sleep, and here’s your bedroom...” We laughed about how he was giving him the orientation tour. As charmed as I was (and still am), our 4-day-old obviously didn’t have any use for an orientation tour yet. And, frankly, neither will your reader.
An overly simplified manuscript version of this reads like: “This is the main character, Jane, and here’s all you should know about her. This is where Jane lives and what her house looks like. And over here you’ve got Jane’s best friend, John. And over here…” But the reader simply won’t care about all of the minutiae of Jane’s life right now because they haven’t had the opportunity to care about Jane yet. A skilled writer weaves this info into the story rather than dumping it on the reader all at once.
Too much orientation tour and info-dumping can create a Set-up that goes on far too long and doesn’t engage the reader. Remember the reader only needs as much info as is necessary to understand the story right then.
Manuscript Self-Check: Writers often hear the advice to “open in action,” which doesn’t mean a high-speed chase, but rather opening with a dramatized scene rather than a lot of exposition by the narrator or protagonist. Exposition often gives way to info-dumping so if you’re opening in action, it’s a good indication that you’re avoiding an opening orientation tour. Another easy trick is to highlight all of the exposition (or telling) passages in your chapter (i.e., those that are not dramatized in scene) and ask yourself if this is info that the reader needs to have right now to understand the unfolding events.
Too-Long Timelines
Sometimes we see a story that goes beyond a long Set-up to dramatize many events that rightfully belong in a character’s backstory. For example, if I see the Inciting Incident and bulk of a story takes place years after Chapter 1 opens, this is a potential red flag to me that the story may be starting too early. Or sometimes I see a story that opens months before but then the Inciting Incident and all of the plot points that follow unfold over a single week. That’s a good sign the story may open too early.
Manuscript Self-Check: Check your story timeline and where the Inciting Incident falls in it. If you have a story that opens far before the Inciting Incident, then that’s a strong indication you may be opening your story too early.
Inciting Incident Math
I often map out my writing client’s foundational story elements with a little math by identifying where the Inciting Incident and other key plot points fall. Not because there’s an exact formula, but there is a rhythm to story and this gives us another perspective for evaluating it. Sometimes something can feel off in the reading but it’s not until you see where a plot point falls that you pinpoint what’s wrong.
So one easy way to determine if you’re opening your narrative too early is to do a little math on where your Inciting Incident occurs relative to the rest of your story. A good rule-of-thumb is that it should occur in the first 10 percent of the narrative, so if you have a 75,000-word manuscript, you want it around 30 pages in at the most. Again, not a formula, but you only have so much time to hook a reader (or agent), and you need to get to the Inciting Incident that kicks off the promise of your premise because this is the whole reason they’re reading; otherwise, you may lose them.
Frankly, these days even 10 percent might feel like too long for some readers. It used to be more common that genre fiction such as thriller or mystery had an early Inciting Incident, but I think we’re seeing this more in upmarket, book club and women’s fiction now too.
A couple examples of this…
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Inciting Incident (p. 7 or 2%): Tova encounters and rescues Marcellus the octopus when he becomes entangled in cord during a nighttime escape from his tank thereby spurring a new dynamic between the two.
Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman. Inciting Incident (p. 9 or 3%): Ten years after Chani’s first infamous interview with celeb star, Gabe, an interview that turned into an intimate weekend together, their agents insist on an anniversary interview to stoke interest in Gabe’s new movie.
Here’s something else…although an Inciting Incident can come too late, it doesn’t come too early. You can have a page 1 Inciting Incident (with Set-up woven in as backstory), and you can even have an Inciting Incident that happens before the story begins, such as in Happy Land, which I read earlier this year and loved!
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Inciting Incident (before story opens): Feeling unmoored in her own life in D.C., Nikki receives an invitation and request for help from the grandmother she doesn’t know who lives in North Carolina’s mountains. The Inciting Incident actually happens off-page before the story begins as the story opens just before Nikki arrives at her grandmother’s house for the first time.
Sometimes writers like to point to classic texts, which might contain a lot of Set-up, as a reason they, too, can do this. But I have to remind you that you’re writing now for a modern audience and current expectations have changed.
Manuscript Self-Check: Pinpoint your inciting incident and use Word Count to check where it falls in your story. If it’s greater than 10 percent, that’s a pretty strong indication you probably want to tighten things up.
Misused Prologues
A prologue doesn’t necessarily mean you’re starting a story too early, but it can mean you’re starting your story in the wrong place, so I thought it important to address. There’s a lot of controversy around prologues, but if done right, prologues can serve a story well. Misused, however, prologues not only detract from the story but can also put the reader off it entirely.
One of my pet peeves is using a prologue to show a flash-forward moment of an exciting part of the story to try to entice the reader with a juicy bit. But this often feels like a cheap trick to the reader rather than enticing. Frankly I think using it like this is one of the reasons prologues have gained a bad rap.
However, prologues can work great when they are used well and serve the story. If, for example, the prologue takes place long before the story opens and it’s essential for the reader to view the unfolding scene to understand the story’s opening, that’s serving the story. Or perhaps the prologue offers a POV that differs from the main POV character and—again—this is essential to the reader’s understanding as the story opens.
The key in both of these is to remember the reader! A prologue works if it’s going to help ground the reader in understanding. If you’re only using it to try to lure the reader, then you’re misusing it for your own needs, i.e., you’re worried the story opening won’t entice the reader long enough to get to the exciting bits so you’re trying to rely on a bit of trickery.
Manuscript Self-Check: Does your prologue serve the reader’s needs? Does it meet one of these criteria? (1) It happens long before the story present (i.e., the main story timeline) and shows a scene that the reader must witness and can not merely understand from backstory and is essential to the reader’s understanding of the story from the beginning. (2) It shows a different POV than the main narrative’s POV, which is necessary for the reader’s understanding of the story from the opening. If this is how you’re using your prologue, then it’s likely serving your story well.
How Do You Fix a Story that Starts Too Soon?
Of course, most of these are merely guidelines. (I say most because info-dumping is never a good thing.) When I review a manuscript I’m not checking off boxes or suggesting cuts immediately. I’m noting the items that are potential red flags, and then, once I complete my review of the entire manuscript, I’m evaluating the manuscript as a whole and determining if these are actually issues.
As an aspiring novelist, you know you must wear two metaphorical hats: the writer hat during story drafting and the editor hat during revising. And “editor you” might need to delete some things “writer you” wrote. Yes, the dreaded writing adage: kill your darlings. So prepare yourself.
If you realize (or suspect) your story starts too soon, you’ll need to pinpoint your Inciting Incident and work backwards to determine how much info the reader actually needs in the Set-up to understand the unfolding plot, and yes, you will need to cut. I say “cut” rather than “delete” because I think the best way to do this is to paste this text into a new document so you can determine what you might weave back into the story. I think this also makes it psychologically easier to cut text because you’re saving it.
Once you have that text cut and pasted, review it and highlight which information the reader may still need so you can determine where to thread that back into the narrative. There are certain elements we want to see in the story’s Set-up, which could make for another post, so I won’t go into too much detail. But here are a few key ones that sometimes get missed: We want to have understanding of the protagonist’s worldview and story goal. We want to have at least a hint of the primary story question. We want to understand their status quo life in multiple spheres (e.g., work, family, love). We want to have understanding (or hint) of the main story conflict and stakes for the protagonist. We want to have the context of when and where this story takes place.
Of course, sometimes it’s still tricky to see this clearly on your own. When you’ve lived with a story for so long, it’s hard to view it with a fresh perspective, and there’s no shame in that. That’s exactly where a book coach or developmental editor can help. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed about revising on your own, I provide women’s fiction, upmarket and book club fiction writers manuscript evaluations and private coaching. Take a peek at my private coaching services here!
Are you revising? You might also want to check out A Simple Trick to Detect If Your Manuscript Is Actually a Hot Mess, or Plot, Character or Situation: Your Story’s Entry Point Determines Next Steps, or 6 Common Manuscript Mistakes, and Strategies I Use with Writers to Avoid Them.
Very helpful
This got me thinking. I’m wondering if I’m using a bit of trickery by having a child disappear in opening pages, then going back six months to show what leads up to it. I also have a parallel story with an inciting incident that begins in chapter 2. There’s a lot to think about. Thanks for your help.