For anyone who’s even slightly familiar with writing, there’s the classic structure: setup, development, climax, resolution.
There are plenty of people who disagree with this scheme. They call it primitive and add a great quantity of points, sub-points, and other intricately specified details. In their desire to show the truly-true structure of a book, these people, at a certain stage, build up a monstrous list and say: do it like this and no other way.
I don’t care for that complicated, detail-saturated story, because it strips the writer entirely of creative freedom and turns book-writing into something that looks a lot like filling out a form at some government office. There’s no maneuvering room. No possibility of creating something new, because everything has its own algorithm — old, and over time, uninteresting.
That’s exactly why I’m against the over-detailed plot arc. Every writer should have room to maneuver and the right both to make mistakes and to create something striking and new. So I stay in the mode of setup, development, climax, resolution, accepting it as a basic foundation but in no way as a strict instruction.
Covering all of these components in a single article isn’t going to work — too much material. So this article will be about the setup, and the other components will be opened up in the articles that follow.
And finally, an honest confession: there won’t be clear schemes here. It would be very strange to start an article about rejecting that approach and then offer you exactly the same thing. The aim of the article is to give you an understanding of how a setup is written. That matters far more, because each of you will be writing something of your own. Particular and individual. Yes, drawing on other authors, but your own. And precisely in order to realize yourself and your own idea, you have to understand how the setup is written. You have to see why it’s been written the way it has in this or that book.
Then you’ll manage to write something of your own with the understanding of a good writer — rather than just copying, having learned nothing.
The Setup Is Not the Opening
The setup is, first and foremost, the revealing of the world and the demonstration of its logic, together with the revealing of the characters or the creation of the conditions for revealing them. And only secondarily (but also very importantly) do we have to show the events from which everything that happens in the book will start. Of course, this will almost always be done simultaneously — but the first task is more important, because if the reader doesn’t believe in the world of the book, they will be entirely indifferent to what happens inside it.
I’ve already written an article about the opening. The book also begins with that — but the opening and the setup are not the same thing. The first is a bridge that catches interest and carries the reader into the world of the book. The setup, by contrast, has to introduce that world, explain its conditions, and show its defining aspects.
These two parts of the book begin to do their work simultaneously. But the opening is a brief flash with one simple task: to bring the reader into the book. The setup is the primary unfolding of the world, the characters, the logic, and the belief in everything that’s happening.
The difference is more than obvious — as are the points of overlap.
A World With Many Main Characters
So how do you actually write a setup? First, you have to determine what your book is fundamentally about. You need to concentrate on, let’s say, what’s world-forming. On what is the center of the book.
Take, for example, the work The Defective Ones. It deals with the relationships between gods and their struggle over human beings. With all of this reflected through the prism of contemporary life. People in this work decide nothing — which means the center of everything will be wherever the higher beings interact. So we’ve determined that, and now we move on to the setup.
At the start, we see a charged-up, deeply aggressive man walking down an office corridor, lightning flashing around him (a demonstration of supernatural ability), while the personnel around him try to behave very quietly so as not to draw any unnecessary attention (high standing in the hierarchy). Then he approaches an office with a sign on the door reading “God” (revealing the level of the beings involved) and storms into it, charged up and aggressive.
What follows is a conflict between God and Satan (who else can afford to behave that way in there) over the fact that the first one has decided to drown all human beings again (the substance of the conflict revealed). The conversation that follows reflects the balance of forces and the status of each of them.
A perfectly working start to a setup, which opens before the reader an interesting world, signals the existing conflict, and slowly begins to pull the reader into the swirl of events. A setup like this is built when the task is to show a complex world with many participants existing and acting inside it — tying everything into one tight knot directly at the climax of the book.
A Contradictory Protagonist
A different approach can be used when the world is built up around one person, and that person is the single source of perception that builds the picture for the reader.
A vivid example of this is the setup in the book Superhero.
At the start of the book, we see in front of us the protagonist, Zhenya, who lives in an unkempt, dirty apartment (revealing the character through the surroundings around him). He looks deeply unpresentable, but at the same time he carries some kind of mission in this world (a play on contrast, where the mysterious mission and the disorder bring out the protagonist’s mystery and power).
The need to go online is the trigger that sets the events of the story in motion. It looks itself not particularly serious — which the protagonist himself understands, complaining that he, “the great one,” has to deal with such trifles.
A setup of this kind puts the emphasis on who’s going to be at the center. The starting contradictoriness of this figure carries the reader, in that same mixed state, all the way to the end — and that, in fact, is the basic idea that will be present throughout the entire book. It’s a correspondence between the start of the book and everything that comes after.
And it’s this same contradictoriness in the figure of Zhenya that becomes the source of an unexpected surprise — when it finally turns out what mission he’s been carrying. There’s a starting logic, which fully reveals itself, in the same style, at the end of the book — preserving the stylistics and the substance.
The Center of the World Isn’t a Person?
The setup of the book Cherished Dream places music at the center of the entry into a new world. Rozher Frykov is a remarkably gifted musician who breaks into the life of the orchestra’s conductor. He fills the entire space of the office, while at the same time, against the background of his own cello, he comes across as a young man who is still only beginning his life’s journey.
The protagonist, of course, is him. But the principal matter is precisely the music. The story begins from it, and it ends with it. The substance of the setup, in this case, lies first and foremost not in showing this or that event, but in defining for the reader what is the chief value in this world. Only the awareness of music’s importance will make it possible to understand the rather complicated finale.
The Limitlessness of a Book’s Beginning
There can be many more variants of a setup. Creativity is limitless. Even on the example of my own small library, I show different variants. And that’s within the range of a single author. That’s why I emphasize it again: what’s needed is understanding, not a scheme.
One of the examples of why understanding is needed, not form, is a common mistake among many of those who try to move within fixed schemes. Very often, in such cases, the beginning writer at a certain point starts asking the question: where, exactly, am I supposed to end the setup and start writing the main body?
The answer is paradoxical: nowhere.
Objectively, in any more-or-less large work, there’s a chain of events that give rise to (set up) the events that follow them — events that will influence and create everything foundational, all the way up to the resolution. Deep thoughts and conclusions will be born on the basis of the climax, which is the center of the book, with the highest temperature. That’s also a kind of setup, but already for the reader, who only at this moment begins to truly think and to load themselves into the book.
The whole book can be a setup for the next book in the series. You just have to understand that the setup, oddly enough, doesn’t end anywhere — until you yourself decide that it does. And no schemes are going to help with that.
References
Of course, someone might object that I’m an experienced writer, and like any professional, I can speak with ease about complex things. To some extent, that’s true. But I, too, in my time was writing my first book — feeling out the text and understanding books on the basis of the works I had read up to that point.
That’s exactly what I’ll recommend to you as well. Make use of the examples and explanations I’ve laid out for the setups in my own books. Specifically from the position of understanding.
If they don’t work for you, then find the book that inspired you, look at the setup there, and try to understand what is the center of the work and how a good writer tied around that center everything the reader will see — both the first thing and the second.
If, however, you haven’t read anything, then the chance of writing your own book on your own is fairly small. Of course, you might have a remarkable talent, but even superpowers don’t reveal themselves immediately, since experience matters no less. And if there isn’t any… Well, then it’s worth turning to a professional writer for help and writing your first book together.
In Closing
So now, to sum up, I’ll lay out maximally concrete advice — leaving the freedom of creative work to you.
You have to understand that, regardless of what you’re writing about, the setup has to reveal the world of the book that the reader will dive into. So you have to determine what the center of the world you’ve created is, and start by revealing precisely that.
Indicate the time through some action or some object that can convey it. Flying cars for the future, a wooden spear and clothing made of animal hides — these aren’t shown to us by accident. These are characteristic features that immediately set up the appropriate perception.
The specific nature of certain relationships should be revealed at the start when those relationships themselves create the specific world and produce the consequences. A slave-owning world demands a manifestation of dominance of some over others. A world full of love will demand a manifestation of tenderness and of pleasure taken in it (if there is any).
If, however, the center of everything is a person and their perception of what’s around them, then that’s precisely what has to be revealed at the start. Climb into the protagonist’s head and pull out the most hidden thing in there. Let it be some particular relationship to things that everyone else takes for granted. A set of emotions and an inner struggle. All of this will reveal the character and build, in the reader, an understanding of why he acts exactly the way he does, and what consequences will follow from that.
And on this, I have almost everything. Although the topic itself is limitless. From here on, everything depends on you and on your understanding. And this isn’t a motivational speech. This is the essence of writing. Don’t look for schemes — try to understand how all of this works. Then you’ll come up with your own.
Possibly even something no one has ever done before.
— I write fiction on commission. If you have a story you want to see told, here’s how we can work together. More on writing and the craft of books — in the blog.
Vasyl Kovalchuk, 30.04.2026
