If you have lost consciousness, as opposed to sleep, you will wake up disoriented, confused, vague. You won't wake with a gasp, even if you were on an adrenaline rush when you lost consciousness.
I'm getting so annoyed with not having an opening line for this scene I'm about to do what my lady friend told me and scream "IT'S FICTION!" and toss the dang logistics out the window.
I groaned, my face scrunching up as pain drummed in the back of my head. What happened? * * * that is how i picture a wake-up from knock-out scene. They do not immediately know their surroundings and obviously feel crappy. Short and sweet! as the surroundings come into focus, then add the adrenaline.
Just write what you got now, move on, return to it later and see if you have something better at that point. I bet it's no deal-breaker with your readers if your character doesn't react like, I duno, 90 % of people? I bet most readers don't even stop there to think "is this realistic?" they just wanna know what's happened, where she is, who knocked her out, why is she tied, or whatever. I do understand why you're stuck with this though. I'd be too cos I want stuff to be realistic and logical (I do want it to make sense from the logistics point-of-view too. How did she get there, etc.) despite it being fiction -_-
That's exactly why I referenced the LOST opening scene. "People don't wake up from unconsciousness like that!" said no one ever, they just wanted to see what was going on. Though in that case, he was dead? In limbo? I have no idea, by the end of that show, I couldn't figure out what was going on. And then there's this humorous little article snippet:
The guys I've seen wake up from a KO swinging, they're still groggy, they've even tried to punch the judges/doctors etc. hovering about them, but the punches are so weak and slow, the guys tending to him have easily just brushed them aside and pinned him down, so there's no explosive movement, nothing that could harm anybody, so I'd argue even if you wake up moving, things are still slow, languid, groggy, and very, very confusing if the KO was bad enough to shut you down for more than a blink. If it's just a blink, you don't necessarily even fall down and can even keep on fighting (unless the other guy gets in a few other licks and puts your lights out properly). Waking up with a gasp... I dunno, maybe if the KO was drug-induced and the drugs (like codeine) inhibit the body's ability to drive oxygen to the brains, but I've never seen anyone wake up with a gasp as if they'd just stayed under water for a long time.
I don't know why I'm so hung up on this. It's this sense to want to avoid cliche' or boredom like the plague I/E: "she awoke, stirred to consciousness, roused to consciousness, drifted back to consciousness" and the ever present "Groaning, MC stirred/roused/awoke/drifted." Yet my brain refuses to come up with anything besides the above mentioned which has left this scene sans an opener since January.
The you're on the right track. Put that inability to get your thoughts moving, and the attendant frustration, into words, and you'll be golden.
What I've noticed to be another cliche' (in some fan fiction and novice stories anyway) is the usage of dream states during unconsciousness. "So and so was in a serene world with all their loved ones when a giant hand pulled them back to foggy reality, oh my god their head hurts!" I dunno how that works, if you can dream during a long KO. I know from personal experience you can have weird little hallucinations and stuff during general anesthesia, but the brain hasn't been damaged in that event. Another (maybe odd) brainstorm I've been kicking around is noticing the nausea and lightheadedness first, then progress to headache, hearing, eyes opening, and trying to get up.
Maybe something like this? "Numbness. Confusion. Headache. She opened her eyes to darkness, black as a moonless night.. " You know very clipped like that to give a sense of confusion and disorientation. On another note, they always say read, read, and read some more to help inspire you. Any suggestions on unconscious wake up scenes written in THIRD PERSON? I've found quite a few books, but there seems to be some fetish toward first person for wake up scenes, and it hasn't really helped to give me any ideas or inspiration.
The two times I was unconscious for a longer time (drug-induced unconsciousness), I didn't dream or see anything. The paranoia-induced false scenarios kicked in when I started waking up but wasn't fully conscious yet. In the third one (the only one caused by a punch in training) just had me black out for an instant, no dreams or anything.
The REM state, during which dreaming take place, is only a component of normal sleep, not unconsciousness from trauma or interrupted oxygen flow or circulation lapses.
I'm laughing at myself now. I obsessed over this for so long, and in the grand scheme of the plot, it was so much easier to just say "know what, she's on her knees, surrounded by hostiles with her arms tied behind her back and a bag over her head s**t's about to hit the fan." I can go back to to HOW exactly she got there later on.
Seems like to be medically accurate you might want to start it it with her waking up while being dragged. With a short period of unconsciousness. People waking up from this are piecing things together including how to move. It would be no problem to tie up someone who was still coming to. You could maybe start by describing the sensation of being dragged. The voices. You don't think 'where am I?' Because you can really even put that thought together. So maybe just start describing those sounds and physical feelings first and then the thoughts those things would cause. She could struggle with her assailants. But the struggles would be ineffectual. Anyway, I like the idea of starting off with no explanation because then the reader is there with the character trying to piece it together.
I'll tell you my personal experience. I suffered a pretty significant concussion (cracked skull and all), but was only out for what I'm told was a few seconds. Not even half a minute. There is a blank area of time that I don't recall whatsoever (couldn't be more than two seconds), which began at impact, I assume. There is no way to properly illustrate a character going from conscious to unconscious in a first-person video. There is no transition. I do remember my mind waking up before my body. I was still out, but I could think to myself, which I began doing immediately. Stuff like "What the hell happened?!" But I'll say that the scene in movies where characters wake up and see a bunch of strangers' heads looking on from all directions...that's exactly what happened to me. It was confusing because that's all I could think of, haha. I felt no pain. I wasn't dizzy, and stood up and walked under my own power. Still, everything had an intangible feel to it, like I was living a dream. I had all of my mental faculties in working order and was able to speak normally. I felt more tired than anything. I think a 4-year old could have beat me up without half trying. I wasn't afraid at all. This was in the mid 1990s and I still remember the day vividly.
