I’ve had this happen more times than I’d like to admit.

You write the opening to something… a novel, a story, whatever you’re working on… and it feels fine while you’re doing it. Nothing jumps out as wrong. The sentences work. The setup makes sense.

Then you come back to it later and something feels off. For a long time, I tried to fix that by adding more. More context, more backstory, another paragraph to help things land better.

It never helped. It usually made things worse.

What I eventually realized is that I was starting too early, before anything had actually begun to happen, and then trying to make that early setup feel more interesting instead of just starting later in the story.

That’s the idea behind in medias res. You start in the middle of something instead of easing into it. The reader drops into a moment already in progress and has to catch up as they go.

You see it everywhere once you start noticing it. Breaking Bad, Forrest Gump, The Iliad and The Odyssey, LOST (my personal favorite)… stories that just throw you into things with no lead-in.

It works when it’s handled well. But it’s also easy to push it too far and lose the reader if you’re not careful.

How to use in medias res without confusing readers

Starting in the middle sounds simple until you actually try to do it.

At first, it feels like the answer to everything. “I know… I'll just skip the boring, slow setup and get straight to the good stuff.” I’ve done that more than once… and more than once it didn’t land the way I thought it would.

There’s a balance here that’s easy to miss. You want the reader to feel like they’ve stepped into something that’s already moving, but not like they’ve walked in halfway through a conversation they can’t follow.

Here are a few hard-earned tips that'll help you strike that balance.

1. Start with something that’s already moving

One thing I started noticing when I went back and looked at my own openings is that a lot of them technically “started,” but nothing had really kicked off in them yet.

If you can lift your opening and drop it ten pages later without breaking anything, you’re probably still too early.

You want to land at the point where something has already begun to shift. A decision’s been made. Something’s going wrong. There’s already a bit of momentum, even if it’s quiet.

That’s exactly what the pilot of LOST does. You’re not eased into the situation. You wake up with Jack in the jungle, and within seconds things are already unfolding around him.

It doesn’t have to be as loud or dramatic as a plane crash, of course. (Since the pilot aired 20+ years ago, hopefully that wasn't a spoiler for anyone.) But it does have to feel like a story that's already in progress.

2. Give the reader something to hold onto

This is where I’ve seen a lot of in medias res openings fall apart (including my own).

You jump into the middle of something, but there’s nothing stable for the reader to grab onto, so instead of leaning in, they start trying to figure out what’s happening.

You don’t need to explain everything, but you do need to anchor them somewhere. Usually that means a clear point of view, a situation they can picture, and some sense that something isn’t quite right yet.

Again, LOST handles this well. You don't know Jack yet, but you see him help person after person on the beach as chaos abounds. Jack's your anchor while you process everything that's happening.

3. Hold back information, but don’t hide it

There’s a difference between creating curiosity and just leaving things out.

I’ve definitely crossed that line before, trying to be clever with what I reveal and when, and then wondering why the scene felt harder to follow than it should.

When it works, the reader can tell there’s more coming, and that’s what pulls them forward. When it doesn’t, it just feels like something important is missing.

If someone has to stop and reread to understand what’s going on, it’s usually because the scene didn’t give them enough to work with.

4. Let context catch up naturally

This is the part that’s tempting to rush.

Once you’ve started in the middle, there’s always that urge to pause and explain what the reader just walked into. I’ve done that too… usually in the form of a paragraph that tries to catch everything up at once.

And it almost always kills the momentum.

What works better is letting context show up in pieces. A line of dialogue that hints at something earlier. A reaction that doesn’t fully make sense yet. A detail that lands differently once you’ve seen more of the situation.

LOST's “flashbacks” (this is the last LOST reference, I promise) are great examples of this. With each flashback, readers got more and more of pieces of the puzzle. Granted, the puzzle was still clear as mud, but each one made things slightly (or so slightly) clearer.

5. Don’t try to perfect the opening too early

This one took me a while to learn.

Openings feel important, so it’s easy to get stuck there, especially with something like in medias res where there’s more pressure to get the balance right.

What I’ve found is that the opening usually gets easier once the rest of the story exists. When you know where things are going, it’s a lot clearer where you should drop the reader in.

When this works (and when it doesn’t)

In medias res is one of those techniques that can make an opening feel sharp right away… or make it harder to follow than it needs to be.

It really depends on what kind of story you’re telling.

Where I’ve seen this work best is when there’s something inherently interesting happening early on. A situation that raises questions on its own, where the reader naturally wants to understand how things got to that point. You don’t have to manufacture tension because it’s already there.

That’s why it's such a favorite story structure. It's why it shows up so often in things like thrillers, mysteries, or anything built around a strong central problem. Dropping the reader into the middle of that problem gives them something to latch onto immediately.

Where it tends to struggle is when the story relies more on slow buildup or emotional context. If the impact of the opening depends on the reader already knowing who the character is or why something matters, starting in the middle can work against you. Instead of curiosity, you get distance.

I’ve tried forcing it in situations like that before, mostly because I liked the idea of a stronger opening, and it usually ended with me adding more and more explanation just to make the scene make sense.

At that point, it’s doing the opposite of what you want.

The other place this can backfire is when the opening is busy, but not clear. There’s a lot happening, but no real sense of what matters quite yet. That kind of confusion tends to push people out more than pull them in.

If you’re not sure whether it’s working, a simple test is to step back and ask what the reader is supposed to be curious about in that opening. If there’s a clear answer, you’re probably on the right track.

Why in medias res works on modern readers

Most readers don’t give you much time.

They’ll open a book, read a few pages, and decide pretty quickly whether they want to keep going. Sometimes it’s even faster than that.

Starting in the middle works because it shortens the distance between “I just opened this” and “something interesting is happening.”

You’re not asking the reader to be patient while the story gets going. You’re showing them that it already has.

There’s also something else going on. When you drop someone into a moment without a full explanation, their brain starts trying to fill in the gaps. What’s happening? How did things get here? What did I miss?

That small amount of uncertainty is usually enough to keep them reading, as long as they feel like they’re getting closer to understanding instead of drifting further away.

Finding the right place to start

In medias res is one of those techniques that looks obvious in hindsight. You see it done well and think, “Yeah… that’s a better place to start.”

Figuring out where that place is in your own story is the harder part.

It’s not always the most dramatic moment. And it’s not always as far into the story as you think. It’s just the point where something shifts enough that the reader has a reason to care.

That usually takes a bit of trial and error. I’ve moved openings forward, pulled them back, rewritten them entirely… not because the writing was bad (well, okay… sometimes it was bad), but because I hadn’t landed in the right spot yet.

That’s really what you’re doing here…

Finding a better entry point into the story.