The opening battle scene

Over the last few months, and partly because of looking for new stuff to critique for the critiquing marathon on the OWW, I've noticed another thing that writers do that doesn't get published. They start their first chapter with an epic battle scene.

I don't understand why they do it. Acutally shouldn't say that, I know why they do it. It's because people have told them their first chapter lacks suspense. So they throw in something huge, that half the time it doesn't have any suspense because it's thrown in afterward and therefore necessarily has little or nothing to do with the plot. And their original first chapter might have been fine to start with. The other problem is, even if the battle scene is suspenseful, the following chapters can't maintain it and end up anticlimactic. And I see it over and over, it's not just because I saw one or two people do it recently. It's like it's become the default response to realizing the first chapter isn't engaging enough.

To me, battles aren't a beginning, they're a climax.