What the F*ck is “In Medias Res”
Writing techniques: Plot. Plus some reading recommendations.
If you are looking for writing advice or even in creative writing classes you have read or heard about this term. The thing with it is… its rather hard to grasp the meaning of it unless you have a very clear example and an understanding of plot. The official definition of the latin term is:
The Latin phrase meaning ‘into the middle of things’, applied to the common technique of storytelling by which the narrator begins the story at some exciting point in the middle of the action, thereby gaining the reader’s interest before explaining preceding events by analepses (‘flashbacks’) at some later stage.
Oxford Reference
The story is not always in the order that we will narrate it.
Plot and story are two separate things. While the story is the whole series of events from beginning to end, the plot is how we will tell those events to our audience. In other words, plot is what makes story-telling interesting.
If we told stories, as the poet Horace said, from the egg, there is a great chance that we will bore our reader with details that are not necessary. As readers we want to know things, that much is true, but we crave something happening. Here is where in medias res becomes a great technique to spare the inactive bits of our story and throw our audience head on the important…
