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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2864
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Starting a speculative or fantasy story with a vision is a venerable tradition. As the words "venerable" and "tradition" imply the tricky part is making yours stand out and not seem cliched.

The absolute top a-number-one way of doing this is to not make it seem like a vision to the reader at first. On this your opening fails. Even though you told me I was about to read a vision I didn't really need to be. The last time I started a fantasy novel with a vision I did it like this:

-Right away I made it seem that someone was in mortal danger. They were being hunted by wolves which seemed outlandish but the context of the prologue which had featured the summoning of spirits meant that it could still be the truth.

-The protagonist was chased to a familiar place but certain little details were off from her recollection. This could be panic, or it could be some further magical weirdness, or it could be a dream.

-Immediately I put in a character who back referenced the mythology utilised in the prologue. This took us straight from dream into proper profound vision.

However, at the point at which the reader knows it's a vision we both know and understand why the protagonist believes it to be no more than a dream. At the beginning of the description we believed it was reality. We then were allowed to know it wasn't and at the same time the protagonist was lock stepped in with us as readers. Everyone knows it's a dream. I then dropped information which let the reader know it was definitely a vision but without making them think the protagonist was a total dumbass.

And that comes to the problem here. This guy seems to have blacked out and had a very specific vision in the street. I presume you are then going to go on to tell us that he is going to shrug off his blackout as nothing out of the ordinary. Unless he is, at the very least, going to seek a medical opinion on whether he has a tumour I would think this guy was a chump.

Also, I don't really get the geographical logistics of the vision. Why is the dude floating if there's ground beneath his feet? I can count the number of times I've floated about like a steadicam in a dream on no hands.

If I were framing this I'd make it a proper dream while sleeping, not a blackout. Makes it easier for the character to shrug it off (unless you want them heading of to the doctor's in which case: strike that, reverse it). Second, I would always tend to try to convince the audience that what is happening is really happening at first. The minute you can tell from sentence one it's a dream you have a tendency to switch off or skim unless you feel that there's some compelling reason not to just get to something "proper" happening.

If this makes you question whether you even want to introduce dreams or visions so directly then that wouldn't be surprising. If you remember Close Encounters Spielberg didn't really get heavy handed with the dream sequences instead Richard Dreyfus became obsessed with a shape and he didn't know why, kept seeing the symbol everywhere.

If your main character rather than dipping into 3d sensurround just kept getting distracted by bright blue lights and arrangements of matter that looked like ranks of jagged rocks that might add a sense of mystery which intrigues the reader instead of ramming exposition down their throat.

Either way, I think rather than being ethereal the key to an effective dream sequence is to make it hyper-visceral. The key to visions I would imagine is to make them symbolically strong but contextually vague.

Original score: 4