Is starting a story with dialogue bad?
(Apologies if this question has already been asked. I've looked around but can't find this specific question, only related ones.)
The general advice seems to be "don't start your story with dialogue." Readers will be disoriented from the start and feel unmotivated to continue reading since they don't know and don't care who's talking.
But what if the dialogue is woven into the opening scene like this?
"Talk, or I'll shoot."
Beads of sweat rolled down Adam's face as he stared at the barrel of John's gun. It was hard to see in the darkness of the room, lit only by a single dim lantern hanging from the ceiling. The smell of cigarettes and urine muddled his senses, and he bit back the vomit that was rising from the pits of his stomach.
"Okay, okay," Adam said, giving in. "I was there. I saw her take the money."
John's eyes were dark. "Where'd she go?"
"I don't know."
John pulled the trigger. The bullet flew past Adam's face, blasting a hole in the wall behind him.
"Fifth Avenue!" Adam blurted, trying to steady his breath. "In a red sedan—there was another man in the car. That's all I know, honest."
John lingered for a few moments, then lowered the gun and dipped his head in thought. Seeing his chance, Adam struggled against the ropes that bound his arms and legs, desperate for escape. If the smell of the room didn't kill him, John definitely would.
- Would this approach work? Will publishers frown upon my work after reading the first line?
- What do people mean when they say "don't start your story with dialogue"? Do they mean a full conversation or just any dialogue?
- Can anyone offer a better explanation why starting a story with dialogue is bad? I don't quite understand. Many great stories start with dialogue, and they definitely hook me.
As a reader, I'd rather not have a story start with dialogue, and it's more about background and voices rather than cont …
7y ago
As you say, there are many stories that work that start with dialogue. Far too much advice about writing is much too mec …
8y ago
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/23784. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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As a reader, I'd rather not have a story start with dialogue, and it's more about background and voices rather than context per se.
Why? I create particular voices for characters in my mind when I read them, and it's annoying to have to change those voices. Giving me dialogue without any details on the character 'locks in' a voice that may be radically different than the character's voice really 'should' be. Especially if this opening dialogue keeps revealing a bunch of information about motive, background, etc., then I spend a ton of mental energy just updating voices.
Analyzing your example by this metric, at first I'm forced to choose between a dark, commanding voice and a desperate, high-pitched voice for that first sentence. Voices are only settled at the end of the second sentence, since now I know which person was making threats and the power dynamics. Everything from then on is fine, voice-wise.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30916. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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As you say, there are many stories that work that start with dialogue. Far too much advice about writing is much too mechanical in nature. Dialogue is just a mechanism for telling a story. Rules about which mechanism to use are silly, and usually easy to prove false with counter-examples.
What a story must do is to establish conflict. Can you do that with dialogue? Of course you can.
But note that conflict does not mean violence. Nor does it mean confrontation or argument. Conflict, in story terms, means desire and obstacles to that desire. Bullets whizzing by heads are not exciting or gripping until we care about whose head they are whizzing by and understand what desire drove them to the place in which bullets are apt to whizz by heads.
Desire and obstacle are what you need to establish. Dialog is as good a tool as any for doing it.
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