Are you dying to have a muscled man-eating scorpion with six-pack abs invade your hero's town? Don't worry, that's cool. But don't toss him in after twenty pages of ordinary suburban life.
Set up your world so the presence of man-eating scorpions with six-pack abs is assumed from the get-go, rather than changing your world from a realistic setting to one that is not, twenty pages in. Establish what your world is like early, especially what is allowed (e.g. using swords to slay scorpions) and what isn't (e.g. magic).
Your readers will thank you. Believe me.
If you want an example, check out Kafka's Metamorphosis. Guy wakes up one morning and he's a cockroach. No beating around the bush. Now, think about how we'd have felt if he'd turned into a cockroach fifty pages in. Not so believable, huh?
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The Things I Learned in Fiction Class
Non-FictionI learned so many great things in Fiction Writing, and it seemed like a waste not to share them. This book contains tips for both advanced and beginning writers, with examples!
