SI/isekai authors: In Medias Res

Friends, Questers, Countrymen, lend me your ears: Stop making chapter 1 of your SI/reincarnation/isekai stories about dying and then getting their bearings in a new world. Every time I read someone go "hm this doesn't seem like my bedroom, where am I" for the thousandth time I just instinctively either skip to chapter 2 or nope out of the thread. It's not even an intentional thought anymore. Your first chapter, your first paragragh, needs a hook. Explain what your MC is actually DOING in this new world, then circle back later to the explanation about dying already and whether any ROBs gave you a cheat power (if your ROB's explanation is "you weren't supposed to die so here's me making it up to you" or "teehee, entertain me" and then they're never going to be relevant again, we don't even need that conversation). I tried to read a time travel fic a couple weeks ago that spent multiple chapters with this dude lost in the wilderness looking for people- some man vs nature finding water and scraping tree bark to eat, and not "attacked by a panther and learning to use my magic" for a fight scene. A few sentences saying "I was lost in the woods and it sucked" would have covered it. Because I don't know about you, but when I read "sent back in time to Jamestown" I'm looking for interactions between a 21st person and 16th century people, not a in-depth examination of whether to risk eating unidentified berries.

I know this is so far a slightly unhinged and critical rant, and for that I apologize. But it's happened to many times.

My suggested alternatives are simple. For a reincarnated character, you might start with the POV of an older character saying "hm, that kid has always been a little odd". For a drop in isekai, you could do the same except about "this stranger who showed up in town". If you want to start with your MC's POV, start anywhere but "wait how did I get here". If you write a Theon Greyjoy SI, start with being nicer to Jon Snow, coaching Bran in archery, then Ned Stark either agreeing to or turning down your request to learn to sail somewhere. And then talk about "since I woke up as Theon I've been trying to prepare and make some positive changes". Just skip the set up. We get it.

And please please with sugar on top stop writing chapter 1 as the MC being born, figuring out he's a baby again, and shitting his diaper.

Awesomepossum15 said:

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Agreed. Further observation, recommend beginning said story with companions/acquaintainces to prevent "lost in their own head" issues, either "offscreen" befriended or immediately encountered within Chapter 1/2, thus soft-enforcing the MC to interact with local surroundings at temporary expense of wide-ranging meta-observations of "canon". Have the Outworlder and the locals ping off of each other from the start.

Give the the Isekai a tangible reason(s) to invest in the world.

I don't know isekai all that well. I had to google what ROB and SI stood for. But I did actually write an isekai story one time (or at least I started to). I opened it up with the main character telling his story under hypnosis, in lieu of what would have been a voiceover narrative if it had been an anime. Then I described the people who were listening to the story, and their reactions to it, and then the rest of the context of where he is and what's going on. I took the opening to the first Godfather movie as inspiration. "I believe in America..." You know the scene.

Openings are important. You never get a second chance to make a first impression with the reader. It's like playing a hand of cards, you have a lot of information the reader needs to know, and you have to be strategic about what you talk about first, and what you spend space on the page describing at the cost of other things. So it helps to map out dependencies, like if you're going to describe a scene with two characters interacting, the reader has to also know who the fuck those characters are, and that might require you to have a scene before that where you introduce them one at a time. Or else, you have to keep descriptions light until the action is over, and then do your introductions and detailed descriptions. It gets even more complicated if you're bringing in magic or aliens or other unexpected aspects of the world, because then you have to explain how all of that works before you can start building scenes around it.

So it helps to structure the story so that only one new thing appears in each successive scene. Take for example Star Wars, the opening shot is a pair of spaceships shooting lasers at each other over a planet. So the audience says, "Wicked. We got some space ships and lasers". Then the next shot is inside the ship, with guys in the hallway trading blaster fire with stormtroopers. So the audience says, "Wicked. We got some pew pew guns and some dudes in white plastic armour". Then Darth Vader shows up, looking cool. Then Princess Leia, looking important since the storm troopers are deliberate about capturing her alive. Then the droids. Then Tatooine and Luke. Blue milk, moisture vaporators, power converters. Some talk about the Empire. Nothing about the Force until way later, when we meet Obi'wan. The script draws you into its world bit by bit, showing you something new in every scene and giving you time to understand each bit before moving on to the next, so that by the time Vader and Obi'wan have their lightsabers out, the stakes of the scene are well set and everyone knows the importance of it.