Here’s the thing about cliché openings
They just need to be done right
People in writing groups are terrified of cliché beginnings. And this is why writers often procrastinate starting a story or their next big novel. Because they’re waiting to start with something out of the world.
The bitter pill, however, is that the element of awesome needs to be in your writing style rather than a clever twist of events. And I’m going to substantiate this with examples from my book shelf. Let’s go:
1. DREAM SEQUENCE: Dreams are infamous for being the most cliché beginning to any novel. But they can be done right.
Here’s the opening scene from A Half Forgotten Song by bestseller British novelist, Katherine Webb.
‘The wind was so strong that she felt herself pulled between two worlds; caught in a waking dream so vivid that the edges blurred, and then vanished. The gale tore around the corners of the cottage, humming down the chimney, crashing in the trees outside. But louder than any of that was the sea, beating against the stony shore, breaking over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. A bass roar that she seemed to feel in her chest, thumping up through her bones from the ground beneath her feet.
She’d been dozing in her chair by the remnants of the fire.’
