Why You Should Try Starting With The Sequel
In-media-res has shaped our relationship with literature for 3,000 years. Why not be intentional about it?
Illustration: photo by Mark Peckmezian for the New Yorker, over an old ad for the Classics Club
Why on earth would anyone start with the second book in a series, ignore where the series began, and subject themselves to a story without an explanation of what’s going on? Most stories start at the beginning, so it only makes sense for the audience to start there as well. But starting with the sequel, skipping the three seasons of a show, or even opening a book to a random page creates a wholly unique experience because of how you engage with it, and it all goes back to in-medias-res.
In-medias-res is a latin phrase meaning into the middle of things and it is one of the oldest story telling devices we have. The term originates with the Roman poet and critic Horace, but he coined it to discuss the Ancient Greek stories of the Trojan War. Specifically, how the Iliad makes for a much more interesting start to the story than the chronological beginning of the war.
To those not in the know, the Iliad is part of a much larger tapestry of Ancient Greek stories depicting the events of the Trojan War. The Odyssey is the only other surviving story, also attributed to Homer, and depicts Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan war. The rest of these stories are lost and books like Virgil’s Aeneid, where we see the Greeks win the war with the Trojan Horse and sack the city, are actually attempts by later authors to fill in the gaps of these lost stories.
As part of a larger series of epics about the Trojan War and its aftermath, the Iliad is situated very much in the middle of things. The Trojan war is nearing its end, but it's not quite over yet. Paris is still alive, Troy hasn’t fallen, and by the end of the Iliad nobody has thought of the Trojan Horse. The story begins in the middle of the war with no exposition about why Greece and Troy are at war, or who these characters are, because it is literally a side story in the Trojan War.
The Iliad doesn’t exposite this information because the audience was expected to be familiar with the stories before it where that information was revealed. We aren’t its intended audience. We are an accidental audience who doesn’t have the original context, and as a result, we experience the story of the Iliad in-medias-res.
In the text of the Iliad, the only context given were throwaway lines about how much Paris sucks, how much the soldiers wish he’d never married Helen and started the war, and references to the war made in the Odyssey, which happened after the end of the Trojan War. The inadvertent audience, such as Horace and ourselves, had to figure out what was going on in the story as the story was happening. They were forced to read the story in-medias-res and use small clues to draw large reaching conclusions that may, or may not, have been accurate. There’s no way to confirm these conclusions, but readers must operate under the assumption they are true in order to understand Iliad in any form beyond its literal text.
Apophenia, the “human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data,” means that this wasn’t just possible, but fun. As Horace commented when he coined the term in-medias-res, “Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the egg, but always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things.”1 In essence, Horace is saying the Iliad is more interesting for starting in the middle of the Trojan war, than if it had begun with a chronological account of the nine years of war prior to the Iliad. Because it became accepted to read the Iliad as a stand alone story beginning in-medias-res rather than as part of a larger story, and we can’t confirm if any particular reading of the Iliad is true, everyone is allowed to have fun drawing their own conclusions from the text.
By doing this the audience become archeologists, dusting the story for clues about the story that came before it and using those clues to better understand what they’re seeing. Today, when we as the audience read the Iliad and Odyssey in-media-res, we engage in the same act of interpretation. The patterns we see in the text are extrapolated out to become our conclusions about characters and story. Our unique experiences lead us to see different patterns from others, like a gay or straight reading of Achilies. Each person having their own unique interpretation has kept these ancient poems fresh and interesting for over 2000 years because it means they always have more story to find. Anyone can bring a fresh perspective on them, and all interpretations are equally relevant because we don’t have the rest of the Epic Cycle to prove us wrong And although the Iliad and Odyssey weren’t intended to be read in-medias-res, the fact it is how audiences have experienced them for centuries has laid the foundation for in-medias-res as we understand it today.
In-media-res, as we've discussed it up to now, isn’t a storytelling device: it's an accident. When the audience engages with a story without the proper context of surrounding stories, their lack of context leads them to draw conclusions about the story and characters from throw away lines and context clues that the author may not have intended. Because the Iliad isn’t meant to be in-medias-res, the audience is imposing it onto the story when they read it. We will call this the audience’s in-medias-res.
In-medias-res, as it’s used today, “means telling your story out of linear order - beginning anywhere other than the beginning.”2 Recognizing how much fun it is to read the Iliad and the Odyssey in-medias-res, writers have sought to recreate that experience by intentionally beginning their story at a point of peak interest, and sprinkling context clues to help the audience understand what is happening. As this is the author utilizing in-medias-res as a storytelling device to hook readers, we will call this the author’s in-medias-res. Although the audience’s in-medias-res may look similar to the author’s in-medias-res, It's the difference of archaeologists uncovering Pompei, versus a magician burying Pompei while leaving just enough clues for the archaeologists to discover it.
As writers became more familiar with this technique, their skill with it evolved, and it became useful not just for seeding information to get the audience up to speed, but as shorthand for a larger context we don’t see.
In John Wick (2014), for instance, we’re introduced to a world of assassins with our protagonist at the peak, and John knows everyone. He gets a personal call from the head of the Russian Mafia after his dog is shot and his car is stolen, asking for forgiveness. When the police officer comes to check on him, and he calls up the body disposal specialists, they all want to know if John’s come out of retirement, and talk with him in a casual tone. John Wick knows everyone, and more importantly everyone knows John Wick. It creates a history for him, one we never get to see, but is referenced and implied so many times by all the people who know him, and from how they react to him, we can only assume it happened, just like the soldiers referencing Paris and Helen getting married.
This is the power of beginning a story in-medias-res. It not only tells us about John’s past without slowing the pace or spending time on lengthy exposition, but rapidly introduces us to all of the mechanisms that allow the world of assassins to function. From that scene forward, just as the in-medias-res format allows the audience to draw their own conclusions from John’s reputation, his casual relationship with the police allows the audience to conclude why the police don’t get involved in John’s shootouts, without actually explaining it. The same happens to the bodies of everyone he kills, we can make the assumption that body disposal was called in. Just like the Iliad, by alluding to relationships we don’t get to see in detail and showing flashes of complexity, the audience can assume there’s a larger world and story in John Wick they aren’t privy to, and can use that to draw their own conclusions.
John Wick is playing on the audience’s lack of knowledge by implying there are other stories we haven’t gotten to see, like with the Iliad. It brings the world and characters to life with a rich history that we piece together for ourselves. But unlike the Iliad, there was never a time where the audience could have seen John Wick gain his legendary status before they watched John Wick (2014). It isn’t the actual middle of the story, it's the start, and the conclusions the audience draws aren’t actually the result of knowing the rest of the John Wick story. It’s the movie delivering extremely quick visual and audio exposition using film language to lead the audience to a specific, designed conclusion.
Unlike in the Iliad, John’s reputation and abilities in John Wick(2014) are the writer’s intended introduction and first impression for the audience. We’re supposed to meet John at exactly the point we do to create the dramatic irony that everyone else is aware of his status while we, the audience, are only just learning what he’s capable of. This means the conclusions we draw from context clues in John Wick, and in other stories utilizing the author’s in-medias-res, are the writer’s intention rather than an audience interpretation.
This isn’t to say it's bad storytelling. John Wick (2014) is an excellently written movie that masterfully uses the author’s in-medias-res to achieve a desired effect. However, it does mean the author’s in-medias-res, what we consider in-medias-res today, has lost the lacunae, the gaps in the historical record, that allow for anyone to have their own interpretation of the story like we saw in the Iliad. It is the writer, not the audience, who is creating these connections and conclusions from seemingly random information. It is the magician who hit Pompei with a string of clues for the archeologists to discover, rather than the archeologists who unearthed the city on their own.
This difference narrows the scope of how you can interpret the story because the author’s in-medias-res is “perfect”. Nothing is there by accident, the only references made are ones relevant to the story, or which somehow feed into how the author wants the story to be perceived. The author’s in-medias-res doesn’t have contradictions the way there can be with historical literature, and the audience’s interpretation takes a back seat to the author’s carefully curated story. Our modern age of social media only further quashes audience interpretation because of how easily an author can reject or promote an interpretation. It creates an environment where each story has one “correct” interpretation, the one the author intended. This means that although similar in appearance and bearing many of the same storytelling elements, the audience’s in-medias-res and the author’s in-medias-res have distinct differences in how they engage the audience, and allow for interpretation of the story.
How are these two kinds of in-medias-res relevant to starting with a sequel? The audience’s in-medias-res has been discussed as an accident up to now, something we can’t control unlike the author’s in-medias-res, but ther is a way to make it happen on command. By choosing to start a series in the middle, you can recreate the circumstances surrounding the Illiad, and force a series to start with the audience’s in-medias-res.
Someone with passing familiarity to the Metal Gear video game series will tell you the first game is Metal Gear Solid. Someone who plays the series will tell you the first game is Metal Gear (1987), the second is Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), and the third is Metal Gear Solid (1998), but that you can skip the first two games. This isn’t a case like the Iliad, where we don’t have the original stories surrounding it, or one like John Wick, where it’s the creator’s intention to begin in the middle of things and the story is written with that in mind. These first two games play pivotal roles in the titles released after them. Character deaths in these stories serve as major dominos in the chain of events for Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 4, and certain characters in Metal Gear Solid 3 and V have their last chronological appearance in these first two games. A major plot twist in Metal Gear Solid V exists to explain how the character Big Boss can still be alive in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, when he died at the end of Metal Gear. These first two games serve as the foundation for all future stories, and anyone buying the HD collections of the series today will get these games along with all the mainline games and spin-offs. Yet, they ”are voted the most optional by fans”, who deem that they “are not necessarily needed to enjoy the story to its full potential.”
When players ignore these first two games, they are intentionally ignoring the first two entries in the series and lose some amount of context for the wider story. They impose an audience’s in-medias-res onto the Metal Gear series that isn’t necessarily intended. Why would they do this? There are a few factors.
While these games aren’t lost today, they were hard to play for a very long time. Their initial release was on the MSX2, a computer system that was only somewhat popular in Japan, and “the U.S.’s bigger market where low-end computing was in a particularly competitive price crunch” meant there wasn’t much of a market in the U.S. Additionally, the translation was “rushed with dreadful spelling and a severely cut down script which left almost half of the radio conversations out all together.” As a result, only a small audience of players would have been familiar with these first two games before the release of Metal Gear Solid. While the games were eventually rereleased in 2005 as part of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, and again in the HD collection in 2011, by that point actual decades had passed since their initial release, and players had experienced at least 3 or 4 mainline games without having played Metal Gear or Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
They might be pivotal for the story, but players either didn’t know they existed, or weren’t able to access them. As a result they experienced most of the Metal Gear series in-media-res. Any parts of the story they didn’t get were filled in with context clues, or assumed to be information deliberately withheld from the player. This shaped how players understood the story of the Metal Gear series. Because their experience excluded the first two games from their understanding of the story, it meant they would assure newcomers they could skip them without missing anything. And once they actually could play these games, they chose not to, because the version of events they had imagined based on references and throw away lines was more interesting than whatever these games could provide.
Metal Gear Solid brings us back to the unintended nature of the Iliad’s in-medias-res, but with a new twist. What if we found all of the lost stories surrounding the Iliad? Would we allow ourselves to fully and completely immerse ourselves in this renewed context at the expense of reading the Iliad as a stand alone work, or would we continue to read the Iliad and interpret it as a stand alone work even though we had the stories that came before it? Newcomers are told they can skip Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, because the prevailing experience of Metal Gear players is playing the series without those games. If you’re desperate for more, then these games can serve as an extra experience or additional context, but fans don’t consider them essential for the experience they had with the series.
It might be the same for the Iliad if we discovered the stories surrounding it. We cherish the Iliad as a stand alone story. The additional context might be welcome to some, and interesting to historians, but the primary experience for readers would still be one that starts with the Iliad, because that is the version of the Trojan War we have read and cared about for hundreds of years. We can see this in action with the self-imposed in-medias-res of the Metal Gear series, which demonstrates that by ignoring specific entries or parts of a story, the audience can change the experience they have with it, possibly even improving it by allowing for more interpretation.
Unlike the author’s in-medias-res, which is intentional and deliberate, the audience’s in-medias-res is based entirely on their own understanding of the story. It can be done deliberately, like with the Metal Gear Series, or accidentally, like how we read the Iliad in-medias-res because we lack the prior stories. Either way, the burden of understanding the story rests with the audience instead of the author because the audience has chosen to engage with the story outside the intended narrative. The author can’t be responsible for the audience’s first impression of a character if they don't see the first appearance of that character. Instead, the audience is responsible for any confusion, misunderstandings, or narrative letdowns that occur because they experienced parts of the story before they were supposed to, or skipped parts of the story they were supposed to have seen.
However, this isn’t a bad thing. While the burden of understanding rests with the audience, it also means the audience’s interpretation of the story is elevated above the author’s. We have to take responsibility for how we experience the story, but we also get to take responsibility for the story we read. By choosing to start with the second book in a series, we invite confusion into our experience, and get to figure out how we got here. The answers we come to are elevated above the author’s until we engage with the surrounding stories, because there’s nothing to contradict our understanding of the story. We don’t see the complete picture, so we create our own story out of another person’s story in order to make sense of what we can see. As archeologists, we get to interpret what happened based on the clues left behind.
The Author’s in-medias-res, or aspects of it, are common today. You will see it with extreme regularity in movies like John Wick, to the point we might just consider it good storytelling because of how well it hooks an audience. But the audience’s in-medias-res hasn’t enjoyed the same widespread acceptance, and that’s a shame because it offers the audience a shocking level of control over the story and characters. As we saw with the Iliad, dusting for clues is an exciting and engaging activity for the audience, and with the Metal Gear series we saw how the audience’s interpretation and engagement with the story is heightened by choosing what parts of the story to experience. Not every story will be better under an audience imposed in-medias-res. It's almost impossible for that to be true. Not every story is designed to be someone’s first, and many stories will be confusing or difficult to understand without the intended context, but sometimes you might become the first archaeologist to find the Iliad, or play Metal Gear Solid, and get to enjoy stories in a new, unintended way that elevates your own experience and validates your interpretation of the story. The next time you’re looking for a book, scrolling through Netflix, or browsing game deals, I’d implore you to try starting with the sequel, because you’ll be surprised how many first stories a series can have, and what a unique experience it can be.
(2025, May 7th) In-Medias-Res: First use of the Phrase. Wikipedia.
Horace. (2025, May 7th.) Horace: Ars Poetica. The Latin Library.
(2025, May 14th) In Medias Res: Definition, Tips, and Examples. Jericho Writers.
 | A guest post by
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The talk of 'audience medias in res' makes me remember when I'd turn on the TV, encounter a show at a random episode, and if it interested me start watching. Many of my first anime that I saw on Funimation were not encountered through their first episode, so I'd simply piece together the plot based on context clues, and sometimes I'd realize I was wrong about my guesses. Not sure if it was just me, but I feel like that's simply how you watched TV shows with ongoing stories before streaming took over.
And I read the Artemis Fowl series starting at Lost Colony, far from the first book, then read the others including the first, but ended up not reading two that included some key events. Which in a way are fitting because those are the two that concern Artemis losing and regaining his memory.
Dracula Daily does not fully count for this since it has the same beginning, but I feel what it ends up doing is adjacent to what is proposed here, in that it ends up remixing the order of some entries to create a new effect.
My own writing has led to an interesting case of author medias in res. I decided to try writing out the story for a game that is a crossover between some of my writing which was already set in the same world, none of which are published yet. But I ended up publishing it as a serial while those original stories are yet to be published.
For some characters this is genuinely their first story, some are written as an interquel, others as an epilogue. Interestingly the most popular group of characters thus far are the ones for whom it is an epilogue. In hindsight I feel my efforts to cover their backstory were misdirected, but it appears to have worked out for some readers at least.