In Medias Res Examples in Short Stories: 6 Openings That Start Mid-Action
Quick answer: In medias res examples from Kafka, Bierce, Crane, Poe, Chekhov and Mansfield, showing how a short story can begin in the middle of things and still tell us everything.
In medias res means beginning in the middle of things: the story opens with the situation already under way and fills in how we got here afterwards, or never. The reader arrives late and has to catch up, which is the point. Curiosity about the past does the work that an opening summary would otherwise do badly.
Short stories use the device more than novels because they cannot afford a slow first page.
Six stories that begin in the middle
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka opens with Gregor Samsa waking to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. There is no lead-up, no explanation, no dream. The first sentence is the event, and everything that might have been exposition becomes Gregor's practical worry about missing his train.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce begins with a man standing on a railroad bridge in Alabama with a rope around his neck. We do not know his name, his crime or his side. Bierce holds all of it back for a whole section and lets the noose keep the reader in place.
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane starts with four men already in a dinghy, already exhausted, watching waves. The shipwreck that put them there is barely mentioned. Crane understood that the wreck was the end of another story and the boat was the start of this one.
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe opens with the narrator halfway through an argument, insisting he is nervous but not mad. He is answering an accusation we never heard. The reader is dropped into a defence and must work out the charge.
Sleepy by Anton Chekhov begins at night with the girl Varka rocking a cradle and singing while a baby screams. Nothing is explained about whose house this is or why a thirteen-year-old has not slept. The half-dream that follows fills in her past while the present keeps rocking.
The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield opens with the word 'And', as if the reader had walked in on a conversation about the weather. The party preparations are already in motion and Laura is already carrying a piece of bread and butter. The story never stops to introduce anyone.
How to use it in your own story
An in medias res opening is a promise to pay off the reader's confusion. The confusion must be small and specific, and the payoff must arrive before patience runs out.
Common mistakes
The false start is the main hazard: a dramatic opening line that the next paragraph immediately abandons for a history lesson. Another is the disorientation that is merely confusing, where the reader does not know who, where or when and has no reason to care. A third is starting so late that the reader never sees the character before the crisis and so cannot measure the change.
Where readers meet it today
Readers meet the device in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Ernest Hemingway's The Killers and Hills Like White Elephants, Raymond Carver's Cathedral and George Saunders's Sticks.
What writers can take from this
- Open on a condition already in progress, stated plainly.
- Withhold one fact, and pay it off within the first third.
- Fill in the past through what the character has to deal with now.
- Never follow a mid-action opening with a backstory dump.
- Read your first paragraph and ask what question it makes the reader ask. If none, start later.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story that begins with a character already halfway up a ladder, in the dark, in someone else's garden. The reader must learn why by the end without a single sentence of summary about the past.
Questions
What is an example of in medias res in a short story?
Kafka's The Metamorphosis, whose first sentence reports that Gregor Samsa has woken as an insect. There is no build-up; the story starts inside the event and lets Gregor's worries about work supply the background.
How do you identify in medias res?
Check whether the first paragraph shows a situation already under way, with some fact deliberately withheld, and whether the story later supplies that fact. If the opening is the beginning of the action in time order, it is not in medias res.
Does every short story need to start in the middle?
No. Chekhov often opens with a calm scene and lets the disturbance arrive on page two. But if your first page is summary, moving the opening to the first moment of trouble is usually the right fix.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
Enter a Writory story contest
Enter the Writory Short Story Contest and have your own story read and scored out of 100. Entries close 25 November. That first entry makes you a Writorian.