World, Rules, Naked & Afraid
How to Open a Novel: The Will of the Many, Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Chainsaw Man
I’m working on a new novel project called Ronin Trash, and during the writing process I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve also been thinking about how to pace and plot the novel, considering everything I’ve learned recently. And of course, I’m toiling away on the first few chapters. You really have to nail those, or else all the work you do on the other 100,000 words is for nothing (because no one will read the book, you see).
Doing a lot of research, I came to a realization about how a lot of media (books, video games, and manga) I enjoy tend to begin their long-form stories. I’m calling it World, Rules, Naked and Afraid. Not the catchiest phrase, but it fits.
I’ll share some examples with you here.
In The Will of the Many, Chapter 1 finds our protagonist, Vis Telimus, working at a prison. He used to be a prince, before the brutal imperialists of the Catenan Republic invaded his home and killed his family. Now he’s biding his time, waiting for his chance for revenge, splitting his days between the orphanage where he lives, his job at the prison, and nights spent bare-knuckle boxing.
We discover in Chapter 1 that the prisoners Vis oversees are strapped to “sappers,” cold marble slabs that drain their Will and leave them zombified, in a nearly-sleeping state of living hell. The Catenans use Will to strengthen their upper classes, making them strong as twenty men, in addition to powering the world of Hierarchy’s versions of airplanes and cars.
A mysterious visitor arrives and asks to speak with a prisoner. We learn his rank, and through this, we learn how hierarchy works in this world in general. The Roman-sounding titles do a lot of heavy lifting, allowing us to assume these people are dressed like Russel Crowe in Gladiator, or some variation thereof.
We have the world. We have the rules. Now it’s time to make our hero naked and afraid, which he does by getting literally naked during his bare-knuckle bout with someone 20 times stronger than him.
The way I’m using “naked and afraid” here doesn’t have to mean your hero is literally naked, or literally afraid.1 Vis is naked, but not afraid. In some cases, your character might be afraid, but not naked. It is a vibe through which the reader is able to see the bottom of the well from which the hero begins their journey, the odds that are stacked against them, and their will to overcome.
Recently I’ve been thinking this is a perfect way to begin a story. I’m only a quarter of the way through The Will of the Many’s 240,000 words, but I’m loving the experience. I’m hooked on the book. It got me right from page one, where I was immediately introduced to both the World and the Rules. The Naked and Afraid bit came two short chapters later.
I have more examples. At the beginning of Dark Souls, we’re treated to a cutscene that briefly touches on the lore of the world. If you’ve played DS, you know this is as close to an exposition dump as we’re going to get:
In the Age of Ancients the world was unformed, shrouded by fog. A land of gray crags, Archtrees and Everlasting Dragons. But then there was Fire and with fire came disparity. Heat and cold, life and death, and of course, light and dark. Then from the dark, They came, and found the Souls of Lords within the flame. Nito, the First of the Dead, The Witch of Izalith and her Daughters of Chaos, Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and his faithful knights. And the Furtive Pygmy, so easily forgotten.
With the strength of Lords, they challenged the Dragons. Gwyn's mighty bolts peeled apart their stone scales. The Witches weaved great firestorms. Nito unleashed a miasma of death and disease. And Seath the Scaleless betrayed his own, and the Dragons were no more.
Thus began the Age of Fire. But soon the flames will fade and only Dark will remain. Even now there are only embers, and man sees not light, but only endless nights. And amongst the living are seen, carriers of the accursed Darksign.
Yes, indeed. The Darksign brands the Undead. And in this land, the Undead are corralled and led to the north, where they are locked away, to await the end of the world... This is your fate. 2
The game then opens. You are an Undead, and you are rotting away in a pit. A knight (?) or jailor (?) opens your cell, and you’re off on your adventure. We have the World, and now we are learning the rules in real time. You’re picking up a weapon, learning the basics of combat, maybe (hopefully) finding some cheap flimsy armor. Then, as you are running around (naked, if I remember correctly), the floor drops out beneath you and you are faced with this guy:
The Asylum Demon isn’t easy at this stage of the game, but then again nothing about the game is easy.
World, Rules, Naked and Afraid (you’re actually both naked and afraid in this one).
Sticking with the From Software example, Sekiro opens in a similar way. We open on two samurai fighting it out. It’s brutal and gives a good example of the types of fights in store for you. We’re introduced to Wolf, our protagonist, a child orphaned on a battlefield. His adoptive father points his katana at the boy, and Wolf grabs the blade by the pointy end. So we know he’s being adopted by a powerful shinobi, and that he’s tough.
Then, the game begins and Wolf is (you guessed it) in some kind of prison at the bottom of a well. There’s no Asylum Demon equivalent, but the Naked and Afraid feeling is exacerbated by the game’s excellent chilly winter quality, the puffs of breaths and sheets of ice.
Here’s a video of me being pretty decent at Sekiro for no reason. I couldn’t get the jump timing down, but overall not bad (got the Corrupted Monk eliminated in one try this run through the game).
Now that I think about it, this is a lot of video games. Manga, too. Chainsaw Man does it. In Chapter 1 we’re introduced to Denji living a life of indentured servitude to a gangster. He lives with his demon chainsaw dog, so we know demons are real in this world. Then we see our hero betrayed and torn to pieces, only to have the demon chainsaw dog merge with him and turn him into the Chainsaw Man we were promised in the title. World, Rules, Naked and Afraid (or in this case, dismembered and afraid).
It seems to me that these three elements are the most important to start off with in your story. I used to believe that character came first, that we really needed to get a firm grasp on who this complex person really is before the action starts, but now I’m beginning to think that “outnumbered, outgunned, but determined” is a perfectly solid place to start. Characters can develop complexity over time.
It’s possible I was pulling too much inspiration from film, which only has two to three hours to tell a story, whereas introducing a character quickly and sometimes wordlessly doesn’t necessarily translate well into a long-form word-based medium.
There is one hugely important aspect to keep in mind. We don’t want to do big exposition dumps. The goal of Chapter 1 should be to establish the world, the rules of that world, and the protagonist’s (more than likely lower-class) position within that world and its rules, but I don’t think it’s a great idea to literally say “here’s the world, here are the rules.” Although I suppose you could do that if you wanted to.
As with everything in writing, making something good takes practice and beginner’s mind every time you approach the page. A strong understanding of how to tell a story has to meld with a keen eye for cleverly inserting relevant details at just the right moment. That’s why this is so much fun. I get excited to sit down and write every day the way I used to get excited about turning on the Playstation. It’s a game.
Have fun with it.
All right, enough writing about writing. Back to writing about demon slayers and magic. This new book is gonna be a lot of fun to read. World, Rules, Naked and Afraid.
“Outnumbered, outgunned, but determined” gets close to what I mean, as well, but it’s more words than “naked and afraid.”
https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Opening_(Dark_Souls)