7 / 26
Mar 2024

No, but I started with narration. If we're gonna talk about cardinal sin clichés, I think that one tops anything else haha :laughing:

I think starting with waking up is a go to if you want to start your story with a walk through of your MCs ordinary life before the catalyst that starts the story, but it's kind of equally cliche to have it start in the middle of a scene, especially an actions sequence.

My story "Damsel in the Red Dress" does not start with a character waking up, but in the middle of a sequence of events that the reader is then left to figure out through the leads conversation. But "Hushabye Prince," I admit, I had planned to start with a walk through of his day from the time he wakes up (though given the character, knowing what his daily life looks like is essential) however, I ended up skipping the beginning of his morning to cut straight to breakfast time, simply because starting from the moment he woke up would have been a lot more for my partner to illustrate, making the episode too long. I do also fear that (as much as I would probably just watch the interesting visuals of someone's morning routine) it would bore my readers who would drop off before the story got "moving."

Well, the story in my comic starts with an entire tribe marching further away from hostilities. All they see behind them is their village on fire from a very far distance burned down by the enemy. Unfortunately, they didn't travel far enough....

As for the main protagonist, his story starts by climbing a pike mountain to retrieve a goat that escaped from one of the MC's neighbor's farms. :sweat_smile:

Oh, the beginning of the story!
I was going to say yes, but not in my case, my story starts with my main jumping out a window.

Started a chapter with protagonist waking up...

Not mine but one of my favorite video game franchises starts with the protag dreaming + waking up :joy:

Huh, I think it‘s literally the easiest way to start off a story xP
(Gosh, that screenshot is old), but for my current protagonist, it fit the best to have her sleep through her class in the beginning of the first chapter. And if the reader came from the Introduction right before, it does give a little feel that what just happened might‘ve been a dream or something lol

I did!

However the complaint about characters waking up - the legitimate one - has always been confined to the protagonist waking up normally in the normal world, in their normal bed at the beginning of their normal day, grabbing their normal breakfast and going along their normal routines. The reason for the complaint is because this much normalcy usually has no conflict and no stakes yet, and since this our first meeting with the character, we don't care. There is no connection between this waking up scene and the rest of the plot.

However, swap out even one of those normals - like, maybe the character wakes up in a bed they don't recognize, or maybe they're woken up by a dragon tapping on their window... And suddenly, we have a story, and a reason to keep reading.

Otherwise, characters really only have two states - awake and sleeping, and if we eliminate the sleeping, then... what? Every story MUST begin with the character being awake? That's preposterous. Some stories lend themselves better thematically to starting awake, others, waking up makes more sense.

Of course! :blush: he also stares at a mirror to assess his appearance.
The next chapter he eats his breakfast with his uncle
He also goes to school and meet his friends in the next one.

Thank god he isn't going to be sold to a (insert popular and attractive public figures here) because his uncle lose a bet! But I almost made it that way

Well, I started my latest work in a similar way.
It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the protagonist's memory is all fuzzed out.

Hope you give it a try! Thanks for your time!

Till we meet again

I didn't know this was a trend for comics 🤣 it makes sense when I think about it lol I feel like it's a good starting point to show off what a day is like for the main character. My comic also starts like this but to be fair it is about dreaming

The waking up beginning is almost on one level (for me) with the "to be continued" end.
There are exceptions for this like a story about waking up and being the only human
on earth kind of story, but there would still be more creative options for it

I did a couple of hundreds of those when I was a kid. My brother and
me were drawing comic pages every day and there was a 9 out of 10
chance that the main character was waking up in his bed in the first
panel. The other option was the main character walking down the street.

I don´t want to insult anyone, but for me personally the waking up first
panel is a sign for not having a creative idea

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