NEVER START WITH A DREAM

When I was at school I wrote a story that ended with the character waking up. It was all a dream. For a ten year old I thought it was pretty good. The teacher was not impressed. Why?

When we use devices like dreams or waking up at the start of a story we’re using clichés. The first time someone did it, it was fantastic, original and exciting. Now, we’ve heard it all before. He wakes up from a coma or sleep and something is different, the world has changed, it’s a trope. If this is your plan you’d better have a humdinger of a storyline following and by that I mean, one that has never ever been done before.

The same goes for dreams. When a story starts with a dream as a prologue or first chapter once we get past it we can be confused as to what’s really happening. We can feel cheated that it wasn’t the real beginning especially if it was well-written and exhilarating and we thought that this device was the real story.

And don’t start with lots of back story, explaining who everyone is and what they look like and where they fit. Jump right into the action and weave the characters and their dreams into the story as needed.

So why was my teacher not impressed? She was short-changed. She was led to believe that this was a story and then it wasn’t. She felt let down. She wanted to believe I’d been abducted by aliens. She wasn’t impressed, and now I understand why.