There is an often reflexive opinion “out there” that opening a story with a dream is not a good thing to do. Ever.
I’d rather subscribe to the “no rules” rule—there are no rules in writing fiction if what you write works to engage the reader and tell the story. I’ve read dream openings that failed miserably—primarily because they went on for a long time and seemed to be the real story, and then came a rug-pull.
And I’ve seen some that worked just fine. There’s a poll after this:
I
offer here the opening page from my novel, We
the Enemy. The first few lines are a dream. The dream is slowly revealed
through the course of the novel and relates directly to the character’s inner
conflict.
I don't have a poll for this opening page, but please comment if you have a thought.
The young woman laughed and swung the child back and forth.Words came from Jake, but he couldn’t make them out because they were muddied and slow, as if made of molasses.
The woman frowned at him. She pulled the child in and said underwater words that made no sense. The look on her face was angry. Wild.
A nasty mechanical buzz blasted him—his alarm clock yelling at him. Jake groped and turned it off, then realized that he was holding his breath, his jaws clenched.
Why?
As he did every morning, he turned to a snapshot in a plain black frame on his nightstand—Amy in her favorite flowery party dress, forever five years old. He touched the tiny silver crucifix hanging from the frame by its chain. Amy wore it in the picture.
Why could he see her face in the photo but not in his memory? The crucifix glittered, and he couldn’t look at her picture any more.
He swung out of bed and his foot came down on an empty wine bottle. God, his head hurt—the price of self-medication. He scowled at all the damn sunshine coming in the window.
Should he blow off his meeting with the attorney general of the Unites States? After she’d come all the way to Chicago so she could keep the meeting secret? Should he stiff a (snip)
How do you feel about opening a story with a dream? You can make more than one response.
Ray
© 2013 Ray Rhamey