Chapter One and the Dreaded Waking Up Cliche

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Give yourself permission to write what ever works for you in the first days, is my advice. Then put a pin in it on about the third day when you're more in touch with what's going on and who your character is turning out to be. I've seen lots of new (especially young) writers get completely stymied out of starting because they can't think of a good opening. Sometimes you need to come back and do the opening later, when you know more.

This is spot-on, golden wisdom. Do this.
 

Helix

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Echoing the good advice in this thread.

Don't worry about the opening until much later in the process. My advice: the ending will inform the opening.

My current crime WiP starts with the detectives looking at a corpse. And I dislike those openings, because they are a) easy, and b) cliched. But I'm sticking with that until everything else is done. Then I'll revisit the opening.
 

Elle.

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Agreed of all those things are to worry about once you've got a complete first draft.
 

TannerH

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Didn't realize this was such a cliche; looks like I know what I'm going to (try to) do tomorrow
 

MaeZe

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I'll echo a couple things and add a couple.

I have been knocked out twice, both times only long enough to remember everything going dark. But I have taken care of patients in the hospital more than once who were knocked out seriously enough to require staying in the hospital overnight. Movies and books never get it right. You don't just wake up and have a clear head, even an hour later. You are sleepy, you doze off and wake up and doze off, often not remembering anything current for a few wake-ups.

Of course the readers don't know this either. ;)


I rewrote my beginning dozens of times. Definitely keep working and come back to it. You can even write the beginning more than one way and later decide which one fits.

Finally, consider starting the story just before the character is knocked unconscious, or later, after the character has awoken and is trying to make sense of things. You don't have to start with the character waking up, unless that's what works of course.
 
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talktidy

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I remember reading the first book in C J Cherryh's Foreigner series, where her protagonist, Bren Cameron, abruptly wakes up. My memory is not what it ought to be, but I seem to remember that was the first time we get a load of the MC, who seeks out the fire arm he should not own and almost hides under the bed. Someone is out to get him.

Which, I guess, is by way of saying, a writer can do anything, as long as they keep the interest of their readers.
 

Laer Carroll

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... a writer can do anything, as long as they keep the interest of their readers.
Starting a story with a character waking up is like a bajillion other techniques. It can be done well, ill, or in-between. Automatically avoiding a technique because some "authority" derides it is the sort of thing newbies do.
 
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mccardey

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Automatically avoiding a technique because some "authority" derides it is the sort of thing newbies do.
Yes, but it's not a bad thing to look at data points and learn from common errors. (It's also not at all a bad thing to be a new writer - just to cheer up the newbies, a new writer with no track record and an excellent book is an agent's dream :) )
 

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A scene showing someone waking up, like all scenes, should have a purpose. It should illuminate one of the three parts of every story: character, setting, or plot. Or more than one.

Jane wakes up amid dead bodies. If it's the first scene of the book or movie it can launch the plot: Why are they dead? Her reaction can also illuminate her character. Does she scream and run away? Does she scream but then gets hold of emotions and investigate the dead? And the surroundings. Is it a dark alley? A bright hotel room?

She wakes up in a posh room in a modern castle. Does she take the surroundings for granted? Has no memory of ever being in rich settings? Or remembers meeting a member of the nobility but only discovers they are rich when the person takes her home to meet his parents?

As for such a story beginning being a cliché: It's only clichéd if it's done in a pedestrian fashion. If the people and places in the scene are done in a vivid, interesting way the scene loses its general nature and ceases to be a cliché.
 

JJ Litke

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I suspect the reason many of us don’t really remember reading a bunch of waking-up openings in published books is because other way more interesting stuff immediately follows. The wake-up aspect isn’t what sticks in your head.

The thing I recall about waking up from unconsciousness is being able to hear what was going on around me before I could speak or respond. I’ve never been physically knocked unconscious, and I imagine that’s more painful, but even so, the wake-up part is really disorienting, confusing, you feel extremely ill, and generally it really really sucks.
 

frimble3

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I was never knocked unconscious, but I remember the last few minutes before I lost consciousness due to hyperglycemia (undiagnosed diabetes).
What JJLitke said about hearing being the first thing to come back, it's also the last thing to go. I remember being unable to see - pitch black, hearing my friends calling paramedics in, and the two groups talking. I remember arguing with one of the paramedics as to whether they really needed to bother about me.
I thought I was fine. :ROFL:

I assume this is some sort of clever adaptation so that our ancestors could tell what was eating them. Or, I suppose, about to eat them, if they were lucky.
 

JJ Litke

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:roll:

Oh yeah, now that you mention it, I recall hearing being the last thing to go, too. Maybe because it doesn’t require any muscle effort like vision does.
 

frimble3

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Yeah, unlike a lot of other mammals, we cannot close our ears.
This is an unintended effect of sirens on first-responder vehicles - the sound may annoy those not awaiting them, but it's a glorious sound when you're in bad trouble.
(This I don't know from my own medical problems, but when I was waiting for paramedics for my father, it was the sweetest sound ever. Then they stopped at the house next door, which was a regular customer, and had to be waved on to us.)
 

The Black Prince

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As others have said, any cliche can be used and reused - especially if you can manage an original twist.

My most successful book (a crime thriller) starts with a dream and segues to a psychiatrist's couch. On the face of it, that's a cliche squared, but I guarantee it's a very original story.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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It didn’t even occur to me that my second published novel starts with waking up till I read this thread! Basically, we find the narrator in bed spying on her mom out the window, and her mom is doing something shocking and uncharacteristic (using a cellphone, which she has taught the narrator to shun and fear), and this immediately becomes the focus, rather than the waking up itself.

Over its many revisions, this book had far more thrilling openings, including a botched robbery/murder and a car accident. In the end, though, all that action just distracted from what I needed to establish immediately: that the narrator’s belief system and daily routine are bizarre for a contemporary teen. It did get two starred trade reviews for what that’s worth, but I’ll probably avoid future wake-up openings unless there’s a very good reason (like Marian’s—if someone’s waking up to be haunted by a pissed-off ghost, I’m there).
 

TurbulentMuse

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I feel like starting with waking up is fine as long as you make it clear as soon as possible that it's not a normal everyday routine.
 

gothicangel

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Several months on now, and I have decided to change the first chapter. It feels better, sets up stronger story questions and has better tension/suspense.
 
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Laer Carroll

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As with most techniques, beginning a book with someone waking up is good, bad, or indifferent depending on how well it's done.

I've started several books this way. In each one the circumstances they wake up to are interesting, not something ordinary. But I recently started a story into ordinary actions (getting ready for the day) but very early on established that something extraordinary would be happening later. Thus the ordinary actions are infected with meaning, as (for instance) "Would this be the last time she ever ate bacon, drank orange juice? Would she be dead by nightfall? Or very rich? Or very poor?"
 

MaeZe

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Several months on now, and I have decided to change the first chapter. It feels better, sets up stronger story questions and has better tension/suspense.
I rewrote my beginning a gazillion times. In the end I cut out all the backstory and I do mean all and went straight for the inciting incident. It's so much better, and just this morning I cut one more thing: my character explaining the opening sentence.

As my son tells me when he gives me feedback, 'you don't need to say that.'
 

mschenk2016

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One of my drafts also started with my MC having a nightmare about the time he was in the hospital. He wakes up, then lies in bed thinking about all his problems for a couple pages before getting out of bed and getting to the incident that starts the story off. In my latest draft, I just start with the incident and it does work 100% better. The dream was exciting and all, but then the next several paragraphs didn't keep the same pace and it was too much info dumping. I moved those paragraphs into another chapter, and mention later in the book that he was in the hospital.
 
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