I have around 45 chapters of my serialized fantasy story, which i separate into arcs and subarcs. I have a time frame where not much "dramatic" stuff happens but lots of the world is explained through day-to-day life. There's still conflict and many relationships are being established and discovered. It plays during the childhood of the protagonist whereas the main story begins in her teen years.
I could tack an in medias res at the beginning and then jump five years back to the beginning, especially to explain relationships with her surroundings and to explain where certain traits come from. but my question is:
How can I tell or who cant tell me whether the "childhood arc" is too boring and/or too long as an introduction and how much I should cut?
How long or boring can my introduction be?
theenngee Depends on the reader I guess. Tolkien got away with 150 pages of nothingness before the story began.
StenDuring Thanks for your answer, but I guess here on webnovel we have a reader with a typically shorter attention span than the literature fanatics of the 60s. Even my dad's old fantasy novels from the 70s and 80s generally opened with an entire creation myth, something no one would get away with today.
theenngee Speaking of creation myths, honestly the only way to have a whole/unique world cosmology, language, species/racial/biological, political, and historical landscape or etc. to be accepted/delved into enthusiastically is through movies these days. In terms of modern fantasy stories, I think of Game of Thrones. In general, what the author might consider necessary and "brief" is too long and or irrelevant to the story as a reader. <--someone told me this once and it was very on point.
This also might be a reason why movies are more popular than literature. A picture is worth a thousand words, so how about a "series of pictures which move"?
Then again, it's also a stylistic and preference thing in writing. I don't know. Either way, this is a different era.
Less spoiler
theenngee Given your answer, then you cough have your answer.
Action every page. Always remove at least a body part from someone every chapter. Logic and narrative pacing should never be allowed to stand in the way of more blood and gore. Stuck between the need to develop or take action a character should take action, and fluffy crap like allowing the reader to actually experience the setting can be cut away since it occupies space where more blood could be inserted.
If you write romance, replace blood with love/intercourse.
A long introduction that has great content can feel short and leave the reader wanting more. A short introduction that has crap content can feel too long and leave the reader wanting to get on to the action faster.
That being said, the attention span of a typical serial webnovel reader is shorter than someone digging into a print book/Kindle story. Without reading the specific content, as a reader, I may expect a typical mini-arc to maybe be around 3-8 chapters depending on the genre and 'intensity' of the arc?