Writing Which path should I take my story in?

[Deleted member 128077]

So I'm working on a story about a party of 4 traveling around the world together. The party consists of 2 nobles, a farm girl, and a powerful lich. The lich is evil to morally gray, while the rest of the party are good characters. One idea is that the party has to keep the lich from doing evil stuff, like, “No, Sir Lich, you can't burn down this town because a peasant didn't bow down to you.”

The issue I'm having is how to start the story. Originally, the story heavily focused on the Lich, but as the story has grown from the first idea, the farm girl has become more of the MC than the Lich.

Anyway, the first option I have is to start the story like in the original idea, where the Lich awakens in the first chapter and meets the farm girl in the first arc. These two team up and start traveling together. The two nobles would not show up until the start of the next arc.

The second option is to have the two nobles arrive in the farm girl's village in the first chapter. Together with the farm girl, and through a series of events, they awaken the lich. Now the three must keep a watch over the lich, more or less.

The only issue with option two is that the lich wouldn't show up until halfway through the arc. However, the pacing of the arc would be much smoother, going from calm to slowly ramping up as the arc nears its end.

The first arc has the issue of a lot of action in the first chapter, then the second being quite dull by comparison, and the pacing doesn't feel as smooth.

Any advice you can give would be great.

 

[Jun_Sakazuki]

Imo the first option is better if the MC appeared in the second arc. I don't think he can be called the Mc.

Edited: I mean halfway through the arc

 

[Arch9CivilReactor]

You’re too focused on the middle part. A story needs to work towards an ending. Figure out how everything will ‘end’ and just make steps to get that. If you’re too focused on the ‘next event’ you’ll run into writer’s block significantly more.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

Imma just say that, at least have an idea of how you want your story to end. From that alone, you can know which 'path' to take, and not rely on others for direction.

Why do I say this? Because technically, it won't be your story anymore. And once it's not your story, you'll have a hard time finishing it.

As for the pacing, well, there will be times where your story will slow down, especially when you take extra care on building tension and characters. It's part of story writing. Just make those slow parts you included count; like you have to put those in your work because it is important to the narrative.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I would say make the party itself the MC and have the focus shift between characters as fits the current story situation. Start in medias res with the group of four traveling between two locations, then have the first few chapters include flashbacks explaining how they met and got to the first location while the "current" story takes them to and through the first location and on to the next.