AB OVO

AB OVO (Latin, "from the egg"): This phrase refers to a narrative that starts "at the beginning" of the plot, and then moves chronologically through a sequence of events to the tale's conclusion. This pattern is the opposite of a tale that begins in medias res, one in which the narrative starts "in the middle of things," well into the middle of the plot, and then proceeds to explain earlier events through the characters' dialogue, memories, or flashbacks. Horace coins the phrase in his treatise, Ars Poeticae, a treatise not to be confused with the Poetics of Aristotle. Contrast with in medias res.