What Orientation Actually Means
Orientation isn’t backstory. It isn’t a paragraph explaining who everyone is before the action starts. It’s two or three specific details that give the reader a foothold, something physical, something specific, something that tells them whose head they’re in and what the emotional temperature of the scene is.
A reader who knows they’re inside a scared person in a cold room at night has enough to follow almost anything that happens next. A reader who has no body, no location, no emotional register is just watching words.
- Why it worksThe brain needs an anchor before it can track motion. In The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, even the most temporally displaced openings give the reader Stevens’s voice immediately, his specific, slightly formal, self-deceiving register, and that voice is the anchor. In Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, the first page drops Nick mid-morning on his anniversary with a specific sensory detail about Amy’s skull. The reader is oriented not by explanation but by specificity. They know the voice, they know the mood, they know something is wrong. That’s enough.
- How to do itBefore dropping into the middle of a scene, identify the three things the reader needs to feel oriented: whose perspective they’re in, where the body is, and what the emotional temperature is. Then deliver those three things in the first few sentences, not as information, as experience. Not “Jack was scared in the parking lot” but the specific physical detail that puts the reader in a scared body in a specific place.
Do
Use sensory detail to orient rather than expository summary. A cold steering wheel, the sound of something that doesn’t belong, the specific quality of the light, these land before the brain processes them as information. They just put the reader somewhere.
Avoid
Opening in the middle of action before the reader has any reason to care about the person in it. A car chase on page one is exciting in isolation. A car chase on page one involving someone the reader has spent twenty pages with is terrifying. The in medias res principle applies to scenes within a book as much as to the opening chapter.
From My Work
Salt & Bone opens with Jack already in crisis. He’s not being introduced. He’s mid-situation, mid-thought, mid-something-going-wrong. But the reader is oriented immediately by his voice, the specific dark humor, the tactical assessment of the space around him, the way his attention keeps snagging on the wrong details. That voice is the anchor. The reader doesn’t need to know who Jack is yet. They need to feel what it’s like to be inside his head, and the opening delivers that before it delivers anything else.
Dropping Into Dialogue
Opening a scene in the middle of a conversation is one of the most effective in medias res techniques and one of the most frequently botched. The botched version gives readers dialogue they can’t place, between people they don’t know, about something they have no context for. The effective version gives readers dialogue that carries its own orientation, where the tension is, who has power, what’s already been said that can’t be unsaid.
- Why it worksDialogue that drops readers in mid-conversation works when the emotional stakes are immediately legible, even without context. In A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, scenes open mid-conversation constantly. The reader doesn’t always know immediately who’s speaking or what’s been said before, but the emotional register is always clear. In Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, the opening drops directly into Frances’s voice mid-observation, and the voice itself is the orientation.
- How to do itWhen opening in dialogue, make sure the first exchange carries enough emotional information that the reader knows what kind of scene they’re in. Not who the people are. What the dynamic is. Who has the upper hand. What’s being avoided. What’s already broken. Those things communicate through word choice and rhythm before context fills in.
Do
Let the dialogue’s subtext orient the reader. Two people who are being overly polite to each other, who are talking around the thing neither of them will say, the reader clocks that dynamic immediately. It’s orientation through subtext rather than exposition.
Avoid
Opening in dialogue that requires context to understand. If the first line is a reference to something the reader has no access to, a name, an event, a shared history, without any emotional register to anchor it, the reader is just confused rather than intrigued.
From My Work
In The Death of Me, Katie’s voice drops readers into her world mid-thought. She’s not being introduced. She’s already in the middle of being herself, noticing things, making observations that are slightly sideways from what anyone else would notice. The first time Martin appears in dialogue, the reader doesn’t need to be told who he is. The dynamic between them is immediately legible from the rhythm of the exchange. He knows something she doesn’t. She’s working out whether to trust him. That’s enough to follow.
The Establish-Then-Complicate Structure
One of the most reliable ways to open in medias res without losing the reader is to establish the situation in one or two sentences, then immediately complicate it. The reader gets just enough ground to stand on before the ground shifts.
- Why it worksThe human brain is wired to follow problem-solving. Give readers a situation and immediately introduce a complication and they will follow it, almost involuntarily, because the brain wants the resolution. In The Silence of the Lambs, the opening drops Clarice mid-training run, establishes her competence and the world she’s in, and immediately complicates it with Crawford’s summons. The reader follows because there’s a question immediately open and they want to see how it closes. In We Need to Talk About Kevin, Eva establishes her situation in the first paragraph and complicates it so immediately and so specifically that the reader is pulled forward before they’ve had time to process what they’ve been told.
- How to do itWrite the establishing sentence, the one that tells the reader where they are and whose body they’re in. Then write the complication, the thing that makes that situation unstable. It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be a detail that doesn’t fit. A sound that shouldn’t be there. A person who came earlier than expected. The complication is what makes the reader lean forward.
Do
Keep the establish-then-complicate structure tight. One or two sentences of establishment, one complication, and then let the scene run. The longer the establishment goes before the complication, the more the in medias res energy dissipates.
Avoid
Complicating before establishing. If the reader has no ground to stand on, the complication just adds to the confusion rather than creating tension. They can’t feel the ground shift if they were never on it.
Trust Is the Whole Game
Every in medias res opening is a bet the writer makes on the reader. I’m going to start in the middle and trust you to follow. Most readers will take that bet if the writer gives them just enough to hold onto.
The writers who lose readers with in medias res openings usually lost them by giving too little of the right thing and too much of the wrong thing. Too much action, not enough voice. Too much event, not enough feeling. Too much confusion, not enough specific detail to anchor in.
The specific detail is everything. Not an explanation of the situation, but a physical, sensory, specific thing that puts the reader somewhere real. Once they’re somewhere real, they’ll follow almost anywhere.
Do
Read your in medias res openings and ask: does the reader know whose body they’re in, where that body is, and what the emotional temperature of the scene is? If the answer to any of those is no, add one specific sensory detail before the action continues.
Avoid
Confusing disorientation with intrigue. A reader who is lost is not the same as a reader who is hooked. Intrigue comes from knowing just enough to want more. Being lost comes from knowing too little to care.
Final Thoughts
Starting late is kindness because it trusts the reader. In medias res works when the writer gives readers just enough ground to stand on before pulling it out from under them.
Voice, body, emotional temperature. Those three things, delivered through specific sensory detail rather than explanation, are the whole job of an in medias res opening. Everything else the reader will fill in themselves.
Let them.
Extras
- Read about Salt & Bone
- Read about The Death of Me
- Sign up for the newsletter to get weekly tips
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
- The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver