: Re: How do you drop a reader in the middle of nowhere at the beginning of a story? My story begins with a little girl waking up in a creepy and probably very haunted house in the middle of

@Kristi637

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Some of my favorite books have started in essentially this way, with a protagonist who doesn't know who he or she is, not to mention where or why -- these include Raw Shark Texts, Nine Princes in Amber and Dhalgren. For me, I think it works because it's often the experience we have in dreams, or occasionally in the first minutes after waking up. There's a burst of energy from the setup of trying to solve a mystery without even the most basic information. So this is a solid idea for a start to a book.

The bigger challenge, however, is making sure the book pays off on the setup. Is it going somewhere that makes it all worthwhile? Each of the books I mentioned above pays off its premise in a different way. Raw Shark Texts gradually explains and justifies its mystery, the Amber series solves its initial mystery quickly, but opens new ones as fast as it solves the last one, and Dhalgren is ultimately about going on in the face of the insoluble mysteries of life.

Just remember (to borrow a concept from Mark Baker), your opening pages of your book create a contract with the reader, a set of implicit and occasionally explicit promises about what the book will hold. It's your job as the writer to fulfill those promises by the end, if you want readers to go away satisfied. A beginning is nothing without an ending.

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