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@steward-of-the-pen

I didn’t feel like the action punched me in the face because it didn’t start with the super intense action—it started with a smaller action (Ariella running away) that built up to the super intense action. (I think if you’d started with the dragon attack, that might have been a bit much.)

Really? That’s good to know. (And yes, the story originally began with the dragon attack until I turned back time. :P)

The thing is, many of the characters that I introduce in the first quarter of the book don’t appear again until later in the series. I still want readers to be able to recognize them and understand why they’re important. In one of the earlier drafts of my book, I had a lot more backstory, but I dropped most of it in favor of a more fast-paced, streamlined version. The result, I think, was a host of characters who (aside from a few instances of foreshadowing) had no purpose in the story.

Additionally, I felt like I was being melodramatic with the way Ariella and her friends mourned Karis. Readers couldn’t fully understand what they’d lost unless I showed a contrast. That is one of the many things that was bugging me with my book.

So, I think my suggestion would be to keep the high-action first scene or two, but to weave a few quieter, reaction scenes between the action after that to slow (but not drag) the pacing a bit. The quiet scenes can show as much about a character as the intense action scenes (at times, maybe even more), and those can be great times to hint at backstory.

That is a very good suggestion! Reading your post last night made the gears in my head start turning. Instead of adding a few chapters of backstory to the beginning (as I was planning to), what if I added some brief “flashback” chapters in between the current chapters? There’s a lot that could go wrong with this idea, but I have something in mind that could work.

Thank you so much, Steward!