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Q&A What are the pros and cons of starting a novel with internal dialogue?

I've read several stories where this sort of technique is employed. The most memorable had something to do with the character pondering their own death, and the rest of the story consisted of the e...

posted 10y ago by jschabs‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T03:27:05Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10649
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar jschabs‭ · 2019-12-08T03:27:05Z (over 4 years ago)
I've read several stories where this sort of technique is employed. The most memorable had something to do with the character pondering their own death, and the rest of the story consisted of the events leading up to it. It started with something like

> I hadn't expected to die so young.

I admit this might have worked purely because of the shock value of the first sentence, but I don't think that it was just the shock value. It was neat to be inside a character's head starting at the very beginning. The reader gets to know the character very quickly that way.

The main difference between this example and what you proposed is that your example is in third person and this example is in first person. I think you might have to play with the structure more to have it be a strong hook in third person, and you'd have a lot of quick introduction to make, but it could definitely work.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2014-04-02T15:37:21Z (about 10 years ago)
Original score: 4