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Sometimes, writers can be a bit ''too'' eager.
We begin [[In Medias Res]]. We're in the middle of a fight scene, or some other action-packed sequence, and we have no idea whose side we're supposed to be on or even what they're so worked up about in the first place. The writer has no mercy
And then they forget to leave the hints.
Characterisation usually suffers from this most. Perhaps the story has [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], and they've all been named within the first five minutes with no time taken to "flesh out" or even caricature their personalities and roles. This can be ''lethal'' to a work if many of the characters look similar to each other and [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]] isn't employed. If you've introduced Character With [[Tall, Dark and Bishoujo|Long Dark Hair]] #1, Character With Long Dark Hair #2, and Character With Long Dark Hair #3 in a fight sequence without telling us anything about their background, personality, or allegiance, then you will find that we can't tell the three of them apart when they reappear twenty pages or one episode later. People are often disinclined to continue when they have to spend ten minutes working out just ''who'' is speaking and why they should care.
Falling afoul of this can turn a perfectly lovely [[Plan]] or game of [[Xanatos Speed Chess]] into a [[Mind Screw]]: what good is your ability to see through Bob's complicated plan if you cannot remember which character is Bob?
This trope is not related to ''[[Lost]]'' [[Recycled in Space|In Medias Res]]. [[It Gets Better]] is the other extreme, where there is too much exposition.
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== [[Anime]]
* This criticism has been levelled at ''[[
* ''[[
* ''Boy Princess'' is a story of [[Gender Bender|gender bending]] and [[Wholesome Crossdresser|cross dressing]] set in a world of complex political intrigue...so it's a pity the writer doesn't take the time to fully "set up" this political intrigue before starting the story, instead seeming to make it up as the plot moves along. In addition, [[Only Six Faces|the characters are visually similar to each other]] (even people on opposing sides look alike) and personalities aren't clearly defined at the start, making it nearly impossible to keep track of the hero, let alone anyone else...as if the disguises didn't make it difficult to keep track of who's who anyway.
* This is the main problem with the ''[[
* The ''[[Fate/stay
* ''[[
* The anime adaptation of ''[[
* The manga version of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'' starts with Jaden in the middle of his first year at Duel Academy, and already a classmate and friend of Syrus, Alexis, Chazz, and Bastian. It's implied that his early encounters with these characters, along with his entrance exam, happened much like they do in the anime, and seeing as the manga as a whole is ''nothing like'' the anime, it seems likely the author simply omitted them to avoid slowing the story down.
== [[Film]] ==
* About the film ''[[Elizabeth (film)|Elizabeth]]'' (starring Cate Blanchett), a critic wrote that we can't tell "which conspirators are on which side, or even who ''is'' a conspirator."
* This is one of the reasons that ''[[Primer]]'' is so confusing. What's unique in this case is that you don't even learn the movie started [[In Medias Res]] until a ways into the movie (assuming you realize that at all the first time you watch it), and you're probably already lost by then.
== [[Literature]] ==
* If you can make it past the first hundred pages of ''Game of Kings'' in the ''[[Lymond Chronicles]]'' without giving up in confusion, you might possibly survive until the end. It's possible to make it through to the third book of six without understanding the first thing about what's going on - it's an excellent read anyway.
* Every chapter of the ''[[
* Robert Adams ''[[Horseclans]]'' series suffers horribly from this in combination with [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], further complicated by the fact that a lot of those characters have names that are fairly similar (the Ehlenee names are particularly bad), and by the fact that the series stretches over a timespan of ''decades'', so genealogies sometimes come into play as well. You need an excellent head for
* Good luck understanding what is going on in ''[[Dune]]'' for the first few hundred pages.
* Writer Steven Erikson claims to have done this deliberately in the forward for recent editions of ''Gardens of the Moon'' (the first book in the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' series), in order to weed out readers without enough patience to enjoy the series.
== [[Live
* ''[[
* While the first season of the ''[[
* It can be said that ''[[Kamen Rider Blade]]'' starts on the tenth episode.▼
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[X
* ''[[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Nine out of every ten readers have no idea what's going on in ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130809011807/http://xawu.thecomicseries.com/ Xawu]''. Of the remaining ten percent, most are people the creator knows and has described the story in great detail to.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The first few episodes of ''[[
▲* It can be said that ''[[Kamen Rider Blade]]'' starts on the tenth episode.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Pacing Problems]]
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
[[Category:Beginning Tropes]]
[[Category:
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