: Re: 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

@Gonzalez219

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Of course you can start your story with dialogue. It happens in many books.

However, it is true that the reader will feel disoriented from the get go, so you should do your best to clarify everything (through dialogue or otherwise) as early as possible. Nobody drops a book completely in the first chapter, the absolute worst thing that could happen is people not liking the first chapter because they just don't know what is happening.

The problem with starting with dialogue is that dialogues are usually character focused, and in the first lines of your book, you usually don't have a defined character. The reader will be forced to imagine something you haven't given him juts yet. What if the character is actually an old man, but the reader imagines a young adult? What if the protagonist is actually the guy with the gun, and not the other way around? The reader interprets as he wants, because dialogue is, most of all, a way to deepen what has already been established.

However, that doesn't mean you CAN'T start with dialogue, you just have to paint a clear picture of what you want to establish using only dialogue. The example you gave does this absolutely perfectly. You know from the get go that Adam is the victim, you can also make out where he is, based on the description of the room right on the second paragraph. Everything paints a picture, and that is all happening during a dialogue. But now imagine this:

"Talk, or I'll shoot."

"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. "In a red
sedan—there was another man in the car. That's all I know, honest."

You can clearly see the difference. You have no idea what is Adam position in relation to anything. Nor do you know what he has to say, where he is, what is his personality, what he is feeling, nothing.

But, it's a dialogue, and it's not a bad dialogue. Maybe if you put this in the middle of another scene, in a later part of the book, it wouldn't be so bad. But since this is how the book start, and nothing is established yet, this basically doesn't give the reader to go on, and he is left guessing.

TL;DR

Yes, you can start a book with dialogue, but establish the setting and the characters as soon as possible, or the reader will have to do a lot of guessing.

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