Why is starting a chapter/story with dialogue or the protagonist waking up seen as a bad thing? I understand that it's pretty tropey, but...
First off, let’s talk about tropes. Tropes are neither good, nor bad, it is just a term that denotes “commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.” Just about any notable element of a piece of fiction could be described as a trope if you’re lining it up against comparable elements from other pieces of fiction, again, trope doesn’t mean good, or bad. It means repetition across texts.
Why is starting a story with dialogue generally seen negatively?
Well, in many cases, starting with dialogue requires an amount of familiarity and investment that most of the time is pretty difficult to generate at the opening moment of the story. If the reader is coming in halfway on a conversation between two characters, they had better be saying something that is instantly interesting and understandable to the reader, and something that is going to hook them into continuing reading.
Problem 1: I just don’t get what they’re talking about.
“Jimmy hooped that, he really done it loopy.” Pete said, chewing his thumbnail.
“Yeah but he’s a jammy winkler, he’ll bring it through.” Sarah sighed.
To start off with a conversation where the characters know what they’re talking about, and it’s something specific that is developed in the world of the story, but which the reader right now has no context to understand, is to begin by alienating the reader. Give us a sense of how the world works and where these characters are coming from before you toss us into the middle of a conversation with them.
Problem 2: They’re just explaining the set-up.
“Hey Charlie, welcome to your new home! I know that it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment moving into a weird house with your step-mother and me, but it’ll be great, really, you’ll get used to it in no time. And you’re going to make plenty of friends at your new school. Chin up, son.”
An exposition dump in dialogue is still an exposition dump [LINK], and it still doesn’t work, with the bonus issue of it sounding like a badly written advertisement or bot. Show the situation that’s being set up instead of having a character explain it as though no one else in the conversation has been aware of the current events of their own lives.
Problem 3: It’s just boring sometimes.
No example for this one, because it isn’t so specific, but similar to problem 1, sometimes a really deep, compelling, and interesting conversation can be really dull if there’s no context. So starting with a gripping interpersonal drama hinging on some key information about the world of the story loses some of its impact when there’s no context and the reader doesn’t know anything about the characters or the world.
Give the reader something, anything, else to help piece together what is going on, and then get into the conversation.
Why is starting with the protagonist waking up generally seen negatively?
This is more a question of narrative tightness. Of course, there is an issue with repetition. So many stories start with a character waking up that it gets tiring to see yet another one. But there is a more pressing issue.
When does the story actually begin?
Why is it important to see the character wake up? What interest is there in it? Have they been literally jolted out of dreamland by the inciting incident?
If you find yourself simply writing so that we know how they got to the place where the story starts, skip it: most people are familiar with the process of rolling out of bed, getting dressed, staring at their reflection and marvelling at their own bright ________ eyes and icy blonde/ raven/ vibrant red hair [LINK]. We know how it goes.
If the character wakes up in such a way that it informs us of something that we would not reasonably assume already, and there’s no more interesting way to inform us of that point, then sure. Start with waking up. But it had better be very well done, because as we said at the top, it’s been done so many times.
Now. Of course there is nothing inherently bad with either of these things. There are plenty of great stories that start with these approaches. But there are plenty of stories that could have a much better start if they took another approach.
Is starting with dialogue something that you think can be done in a really awesome way for your story? Then great, do that! If you can make it work, then make it work.
Likewise, if you think that a ‘waking up’ start is the best way to kick off your story, then go for it!
But you should be making these narrative decisions with a mind to how it shapes your story, what your purpose is in doing so, and knowing that for some folks who’ve seen it too many times it’s going to be a turn-off. You can’t please everyone!
Know what you’re doing, know why you’re doing it.
