Great stuff, Ted. For me, the trickiest thing about the setup is the tense. Write what happened and it's old. Write what is expected to happen and you may end up with egg on your face. Writing about why something matters, what Maria suggests, is a great way to solve that. Then the setup isn't so dependent on an action, but rather tells readers why they should care while structurally making it easy for the story to eventually be updated with what happened.
Great stuff, Ted. For me, the trickiest thing about the setup is the tense. Write what happened and it's old. Write what is expected to happen and you may end up with egg on your face. Writing about why something matters, what Maria suggests, is a great way to solve that. Then the setup isn't so dependent on an action, but rather tells readers why they should care while structurally making it easy for the story to eventually be updated with what happened.
Egg indeed. Have a nice weekend, Peter.