How quick do we need to start?

[SciFrac]

I'm thinking of making chap 1 a prologue, which should hopefully hook the reader. Then, I can afford to slow things down in chapter 1 and introduce things properly.

What would this change? It's the same story order with different titles. People who skip prologues would start at the backstory, so you might end up losing more readers.

I want to know a character too, but I prefer to learn by watching them act in their world. You might consider what else they could do in Ch2 to keep things interesting.

 

[James Coote]

There might be an aftermath of the events in ch1? Often it's how people react to an event that can tell you the most about their character (whilst also moving the story on)

You can leave characters "un-backgrounded" for quite a while. I think in Treasure Island, one of the characters only gets fleshed out post-mortem!

 

[SciFrac]

Right. For me, I need to care about the character before I care about their background. Some people may prefer to hear a short history of all a character's tragedies up front, but sometimes that feels forced. I'd recommend keeping the image small when starting, and let the sea of background trickle out as the story unfolds.

 

[Bonnie Milani]

Syd Fields (the screenplay guru who taught an entire generation of Oscar winners their trade) taught me that a story begins with the event that starts the plot rolling. So whether that event happens in the context of your protagonist's daily life (Harry Potter, anyone? Or Jane Austen? Or...) or whether it's a spontaneous worm hole that propels your protag into an entirely new universe, it's THE incident from which all other events in the story derive. As a lot of folk have pointed out above, whether that event is explosive or deceptively mundane depends on the kind of story you're telling.
How's that? Help?

Bonnie Milani