The World Arrives in Motion: Starting Your Story Without the Infodump
(and what we can learn from Joe Abercrombie's The Devils)
Thank you for being here at the beginning. Every story starts somewhere, and it means the world that you're here, right at the first spark. As a small token of my gratitude, I hope you enjoy this short article on worldbuilding, and how to start your novel with a bang!
Why a book stalls on page one
It's one of the biggest problems I see as a developmental editor: a well-written opening that stumbles just because the author tries to explain everything up front.
This struggle is especially common in speculative fiction, where we care deeply about the worlds we've created and desperately want to share them with our readers. But all too often, this backfires—distancing the reader from the heart of the story and draining their desire to care.
The antidote? To lean into the deep magic of storytelling: our characters, their goals, and everything that gets in their way.
It's something that Joe Abercrombie's latest book, The Devils, does in spades. So, let's take a deeper look at how he manages it, and how you can do it, too.
A note on context
This article contains mild spoilers for the first two chapters of The Devils. You don't need to have read the novel to find it helpful, but if you'd like to take a look at the opening yourself, you can download a sample through Amazon.
What's lost in the telling
Exposition creeps in whenever we pause the story to explain the background details, whether that be world history, politics, magic systems, or anything else you might find in a Wikipedia article.
Importantly, while exposition isn't inherently bad, it always comes with a cost: adding distance between the reader and your story. That's because story is what actually happens, while exposition tells us what is. It's flat, static, and more like homework than the powerful journey our readers were expecting. And when there's too much of it—especially right at the beginning—it can bring the story grinding to a halt. To understand why, we have to talk about something vital: your reader's precious supply of attention.
Reading uses up attention in many ways, including:
Understanding the sentences themselves
Keeping track of the characters
Imagining what's happening and "seeing" the world
Remembering important details
Following the flow of the story
Emotionally engaging with the characters and caring about what happens
Unfortunately, when we ask for too much of our reader's attention, it's the last of these that suffers. Put simply, overwhelm the reader, and we risk losing them altogether.
I've helped dozens of writers steer around this exact trap, making sure their stories open strong and grab the reader from page one. And Abercrombie absolutely smashes this in The Devils, so how does he do it?
A better way: three keys to starting strong
The best openings generally rest on three essential things: a character, their goal, and the problems that stand in their way. When all three come together, the magic begins. The engine of our story starts to run full-throttle, carrying our delighted readers along for the ride.
#1 Start with someone
Before our readers can care about what is happening, they must first care about who it's happening to.
That's why our protagonist (or major point-of-view characters) must be distinctive, complex, and flawed. When we present the reader with unique and interesting people, with clear strengths and weaknesses, we're already well on our way! The next step is to show the reader who those characters are, through the decisions they make and the actions they take on the page.
And the first chapter of The Devils gives us just that, as we meet Brother Diaz while he's rushing to an appointment with the pope:
'God damn it!' All that work undermining his brothers at the monastery. All that trouble preventing the abbot's mistresses from finding out about each other. All his bragging about being summoned to the Holy City, singled out as special, Marked for a great future.
And this is where his ambitions would die.
Notice how Abercrombie shows us exactly who Diaz is: ambitious, a little arrogant, and not afraid to do whatever it takes to get ahead.
At the start of the next chapter, Alex (his next major point of view character) is introduced in much the same way:
Alex nailed the jump from window to carriage-roof, rolled smooth as butter and came up sweet as honey, but botched the much easier jump from carriage-roof to ground, twisted her ankle, blundered off balance through the crowd, bounced mouth-first from the dung-crusted flank of a donkey, and went sprawling in the gutter.
That blend of skill and haplessness defines her, and we get to see that instantly, through action.
The choice of who our point of view characters are is also vital, because we see the story only through their eyes. In The Devils, because Diaz is a monk and Alex a grifter, that allows Abercrombie to show off the most important parts of his world: the power and corruption of the church, and the gritty and desperate lives of the people eeking out an existence around it. Through the protagonists, we get to see the parts of the world that the writer most wants us to see, and by showing us who they are through what they do, he immediately makes us want to know more.
#2 What do they want?
While it's important to show our readers who our characters are, it's even more vital to show what they want. Again, the very first line in The Devils gives us exactly that:
It was the fifteenth of Loyalty, and Brother Diaz was late for his audience with Her Holiness the Pope.
Note the subtle characterisation that's woven into this opening sentence. Diaz isn't just going to a meeting with the Pope, it's his meeting—hinting at his arrogance and ambition that will be developed later in the chapter. We also learn a lot about Abercrombie's world without even noticing: that this place is like our world but different, the months have different names, and the pope is a woman. But these details aren't there for show. They're important to our point of view character and vital in communicating what he wants.
This is why goals are storytelling gunpowder. Before, we had an interesting character standing static on the page. By adding a goal, we introduce a lack, something that the character wants but doesn't have. You can almost feel the potential that brings with it, like static electricity. It also prompts the reader to ask a question: will this character get what they want? Will Diaz make his meeting with the Pope? Immediately, we're glued to the page and desperate to find out.
#3 Putting a wall in their way
If a complex and flawed character is the oxygen a story needs to breathe, and their goal is the fuel that sustains it, the obstacles, problems, and setbacks are the sparks that set everything alight. They take the electric tension of a character's goal and introduce doubt—launching everything into motion.
Obstacles help us to start in a moment of action, rather than static explanation. They're where we take everything our characters are made of, and throw it into the fire. And nothing shows this better than Alex's introductory chapter in The Devils, where she's running through the streets and trying to escape from the people she owes money to.
A clutching hand ripped a loose hair from her head as she went sliding under a wagon, was almost clubbed by pawing hooves, rolled away to wriggle between someone's legs, through the chilly slather of guts and bones and slimes beneath the stalls.
'Fucking got you!'
A hand clamped around her ankle, her fingers leaving worming trails through the fish mulch as she was dragged into the light.
See all the strong verbs and powerful sensory details in this paragraph? Ripped and sliding, pawing and wriggle, those worming trails in the fish mulch on the market floor. How the foot chase infuses the story with actual movement as Alex ducks through the crowds and crawls through the market, and how, as long as she is moving, the story's moving, too. Of course, not every story needs to go to these extremes. So long as we begin in a powerful moment—a moment where our protagonist wants something, and hits a brick wall—we ensure everything sings with gratifying tension, right from the start.
Vitally, Abercrombie takes things even further: at the end of each opening scene, our point of view character isn't just in trouble, they're further away from their goal than ever. By the end of Diaz's introduction, he isn't just still stuck in traffic—he's bleeding and injured. And at the end of Alex's mad dash from her creditors, her whole life is utterly transformed.
All that leaves our readers to ask the most important question in storytelling: what will happen next?
Closing thoughts: the world belongs to the story
If you're looking for a mentor text on how to write a killer opening, you won't find much better than the first two chapters of The Devils. Obviously, the pace, stakes, and intensity at the start of our own stories will vary, depending on our genre and the specific needs of each book. But whatever we're writing, the best approach to worldbuilding stays the same: stay rooted in our characters, their goals, and the disasters that leave those goals looking further away than ever.
This doesn't mean there's no worldbuilding there at all! In fact, quite the opposite: with Diaz stuck in the Saint Aelfric's Day crowds, and Alex fleeing through the same streets, we learn more than you might expect about the Holy City and the wider setting for the story. But every single detail is there for a reason. Because it's connected to the intoxicating mixture of characters, goals, and conflict. Because, in the end, it always serves the story.
To borrow a little of this magic for your own, here are some things to keep in mind:
To introduce your world, show someone trying to survive in it
Start with a need, not a history lesson
Show everything through your protagonist's eyes. Focus on their unique perspective and the things that matter to them, and leave everything else for later
Consider: does the reader need to know all of this? And do they need to know it now?
Thank you so much for being here at the beginning of Pagewake.
I hope this small glimpse into the power of story has sparked something for you. Because this is where the real magic starts.