Bad to start story with VR/non-real scene?
I'm coming up with an outline for a cyberpunk story. I want to establish (at some point) that the main character has marksmanship proficiency by starting my cyberpunk story with a VR sequence, in which the character is firing arrows as an Elf/Orc/some other fantasy race (akin to World of Warcraft).
At first I thought this would be a fun, from left field way to establish this as opposed to simply making my character a mercenary or such, but I'm concerned it may be jarring to the reader.
QUESTION: Is starting a novel with a non-real scene too jarring or confusing for readers?
I plan on going from this VR sim to the "regular, Cyberpunk world" after the first chapter, and basically never returning to that specific game.
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3 answers
I don't think it's a good idea; when a reader opens a book they expect to learn some things about the characters in their normal world. If you open with a VR, the reader will assume that IS the normal world, and real. Orcs and other fantasy beings are only known because in some fantasy (like Lord of the Rings) they were real, how are readers supposed to guess the VR is a game?
The jarring aspect of finding out it is a video game will most likely cause disappointment, not delight, and turn your story into something different than they thought they were reading, and perhaps put the story down.
At best, they might re-read knowing it is a game. I wouldn't do it, the opening of a book is to show the actual normal world of your Main Character, and quickly (like within four pages) have them interacting with some one else, even a walk-on we won't see again. The point is to know their normal world and have the reader sympathize with the MC, at least understand something about the MC, before you put the MC into a meat grinder and change their normal world.
I think you can fix this with a single line.
Jake put his goggles back on and un-paused the game.
Better yet, leave the marksmanship for later, show us Jake in some way doing what he does every day in his normal world, interacting with real people, perhaps getting ready to play a game, or getting into a "pick up" game while visiting someone else.
Playing a game may indeed be a daily occurrence in his normal world, but tricking the reader into thinking the game is reality is not a good idea. And even your MC does not think it is real, because nobody playing a game thinks it is real. So your narrator is intentionally lying to the reader by narrating as if it were real.
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There's nothing wrong with starting your story with a fantasy VR sequence. This is known as a Fake-Out Opening (TV Tropes link warning!).
What you want to avoid - and what you do seem to be concerned about - is confusing the reader. The last thing you want is them picking up your cyberpunk novel, getting a few pages in, and putting it down because they don't realise what's going on and think you lied to them in the blurb. "I came here for cyberpunk, not World of Warcraft!"
I'd say you have two options:
- Make it immediately obvious that the scene takes place in a VR world (up to you how to do this).
- Make the scene short enough that it ends before anyone becomes convinced that your story isn't actually cyberpunk. I understand that the intent of the scene is to set up the protagonist's aiming skills, but devoting an entire chapter to that, in a VR setting that will never be mentioned again, seems a little excessive.
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I think this would work great -- in a movie. But books are not movies. VR is a visual experience. It engages the sense of hearing and sound, and essentially turns everything else off. It is a world without affections or worries, a setting aside of life and its concerns. Watching a character play a video game, we learn precisely nothing about them.
In a movie, this is minor concern. We go to movies, first and foremost, for a visual and auditory feast. We go to have our adrenal glands stimulated without the unpleasant necessity of getting sweaty. Throw in a few quips and a little cleavage between the sound and light show sequences and the average movie goer is happy as a clam. Starting with a VR sequence would assure them of what they principally care about: that there is going to be lots of explosions (and hopefully a little cleavage) in this movie.
Books don't work like that. Books cannot engage with sound or light or cleavage. (Though there is a rather debased genre that seeks to remind the reader of the sound and light and cleavage that they remember from the movies.) But books, books that are going to work as books, don't run on sound and light, they run on character and story and language.
The opening of a book, like the opening of a movie, should contain a promise of what is to come. A VR sequence can deliver a promise of that is to come in a movie (sound, light, cleavage). It is hard for it to deliver a promise of what is to come in a book worth reading because it is an environment in which those things are not present. The character of the protagonist is unknown. The nature of their world and their place in it is unknown. The nature of the challenges that they are likely to face in this world are unknown. None of what the opening of a novel should establish, therefore, will be established by this opening.
It won't stimulate those parts of the brain that would be stimulated by the same scene in a movie -- the parts that respond to sound, light, and cleavage. And it won't stimulate those parts of the brain that respond to story, character, and language, because those will be absent. (At least, it is inconceivable to me that it is possible to create evocative and moving prose about a video game.)
Nothing is impossible in a novel, of course, given sufficient skill and inspiration, but if you feel the need to ask, then I think the answer is no.
(Yes, there are movies that are about more than explosions and cleavage, though fewer and fewer of them these days. But yes, there are some that deal with story and character. But no, even those are not as good as the book. You simply cannot go a deep with sound and light as you can go with words.)
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