In Medias Res in Fiction
Quick answer: In medias res in fiction: what starting in the middle of things really means, classic and modern examples, and how to open late without confusing readers.
In medias res is the technique of beginning a story in the middle of its action, with the situation already moving, and supplying the earlier events later or not at all. The Latin means into the middle of things, and the phrase comes from the Roman critic Horace, who praised epic storytellers for refusing to start at the egg. In other words: arrive late, and trust the reader to catch up.
The device governs openings, the most expensive real estate in fiction, and it has become the modern default in short stories, thrillers, and screen writing, where slow ramps are commercially fatal. It is a structural decision made at the outline stage and enforced in revision, usually by deleting the first page a draft thought it needed.
Homer's method, and the modern cold open
Horace's exhibit was Homer. 'The Odyssey' does not begin with the fall of Troy or the fleet setting sail; it opens near the end of the tale's chronology, Odysseus already ten years lost, his house full of suitors, his son setting out for news, and the war's aftermath arrives later as a story told at a feast. The structure is the point: by starting amid consequences, the epic makes the past a treasure the audience wants, rather than a queue it must stand in.
The modern short story sharpened the same instinct into the cold open. Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' (1915) begins with Gregor Samsa already transformed in his bed, no approach, no explanation ever; Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' opens with the village assembling for a ritual the reader must decode mid-scene. Screenwriting institutionalised the move, and contemporary judges and editors, reading openings by the hundred, have been trained by it: a first page with the situation already in motion buys attention that a first page of preparation must beg for.
What arriving late buys you
Immediate stakes, first: the reader lands inside pressure instead of being marched toward it, and curiosity about how did we get here becomes a second engine running alongside what happens next. Economy, second: beginning at the middle deletes the weakest scenes a chronological draft contains, the waking up, the travelling, the introductions. And dignity for the backstory, third, because context delivered on demand, once the reader wants it, reads as revelation rather than homework.
The costs are disorientation and its ugly cousin, indifference. A reader dropped into motion must be given handholds within paragraphs, who to watch, what to want, or confusion curdles into shrug; openings can be too cold. There is also a structural debt: starting in the middle means the beginning must still be paid for somewhere, through dialogue, memory, or inference, and clumsy repayment, the second-page flashback that stops the story it just started, is the device's characteristic failure.
Opening your own story in the middle
Find the latest moment at which the story can begin and still make its ending inevitable, then open one beat before that moment tips. Anchor the reader fast with three facts inside the first paragraphs: whose scene this is, what they are trying to do, and what resists them; mystery about everything else is welcome, mystery about those three is fog. Repay backstory in coins, a clause here, an exchange of dialogue there, and only when a reader has been made to want each coin.
The trap is the boomerang opening: two paragraphs of action followed by a long flashback to the true chronological start, which announces that the writer did not trust the technique. If your story needs its past early and at length, consider whether it wants a frame or a retrospective narrator instead; if it truly wants in medias res, hold your nerve and keep the past on rations.
Neighbours and opposites
Flashback is the standard repayment mechanism for the skipped beginning, useful in exactly the measured doses the boomerang opening exceeds. The cliffhanger is the complementary cut at the other end of scenes, leaving early as in medias res arrives late. Narrative time is the parent subject, since starting in the middle is an operation on the order of events, and the frame story is the stately alternative, formally seating the past inside a present telling.
The opposite is ab ovo, from the egg, Horace's phrase for beginning at the absolute chronological start. It is not a fault, sagas and biographies of invented lives thrive on it, but it is a choice, and the writer who begins at the egg should be able to say why the queue is worth the reader's standing in it.
What poets can take from this
- Open one beat before the situation tips, at the latest workable entry point.
- Give the reader owner, want, and obstacle within the first paragraphs; ration everything else.
- Repay backstory in coins, on demand, never in a second-page slab.
- Delete your draft's first scene and see if anyone misses it.
- If the past demands early space at length, choose a frame or retrospective teller instead.
Try it yourself
Write a story that opens with a character halfway through climbing out of a window, in formal clothes, holding a cake box. No flashback is permitted until the midpoint, and the eventual explanation must be both stranger and sadder than the one the opening invites the reader to assume.
Questions
What does in medias res literally mean?
Into the middle of things. The phrase comes from Horace, who praised Homer for plunging listeners into the story's midst rather than beginning at the earliest event, which Horace called starting from the egg.
Is in medias res the same as starting with action?
Not quite. It means starting with the situation already in motion, which can be a quiet breakfast after a catastrophe as easily as a chase. The essence is skipped preliminaries, not explosions.
How do I avoid confusing readers when I skip the beginning?
Anchor the essentials immediately: whose scene it is, what they want, what resists them. Readers tolerate large mysteries about context if those three are clear, and backstory can then arrive in small, wanted doses.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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