Ok so I have two possible ways of starting my story. 1. The main character is informed by police that his friend has gone missing, he and his friend each take their friends disappearance in different ways including, covering their fear with optimism, believing it is somehow their fault, trying to help others work through the tragedy but ignore/cover up their feeling and try to live life as though nothing's wrong. After a chapter or so they decide to go on a road trip to a small town in the dessert when going for a walk after arriving the main chater is knocked out and taken to an unknown place where he is interigated and finds that the suite phase he had been carrying with him the whole time was handcuffed to his wrist though he dosen't remember doing it. His captors then cut off his hand and he passes out. 2. The main charater wakes up in a place he dosen't recognise covered in blood and vomit and missing his left hand which has been replaced with a hook. He then escapes and meets up with the other three main characters who reveal that the main characters face has been scared giving him a perminent grin. Once they are a safe distance away they discover the main charater seems to be suffering from short term memory loss as well as everything else and fill him in on the road trip plan but none of them remeber past arriving in the town. These are very breif summaries of the two beginnings and yes I'm aware they probably don't make much sense but I haven't slept since yesterday and am very tired. If you have any ideas for other openings let me know
I think this is something you're going to have to work out for yourself. You're the one who knows where your story goes, so you're the one who knows where it should start.
I generally have a personal preference for beginnings that have a little shock value. It seems effective at forcing me out of my own world and into the author's world. So I would lean toward the 2nd opening. But this is more personal preference than a perception of superior story writing.
Definitely all about where the story is going... do you want to give more emphasis to the emotions and interior struggles of the characters? Then probably the first one. If you're looking for a more shocking opening, yeah, the second has more of that, though you could potentially make the first as hooking (of course, I don't know anything about your writing, but assuming objectively...). Always a tough question, where is the "beginning"?...
I agree that the second beginning seems more interesting and would grab me right away. Really though I would suggest making rough drafts of both. See how the characters play out in each, you may find that you don't like where they go/what they do. So long as your sequences flow and are engaging you could start with either
The hook hand grin thing sounds like a lot more fun, but I really loathe an amnesiac protagonist. It reeks of deus ex machina from the outset because you know that later on he'll just remember something he needs and then everything solves itself.
I have to ask, why the hook hand? I mean I understand that they cut his hand off to get the brief case, but then they attached a hook to his wrist? Are they fans of Peter Pan? I like the smiley face, but it is a little Dark Knight.
I'm inclined to go with version 2, if only because version 1 has the massive plothole that it's the police who tell his friends that this guy is missing...how did the police know that? Who reported him missing? Why would the police bother his friends, except to question them about when they last saw him? And why would they bother trying to find a missing adult? Unless he's suspected of something, he's free to do whatever he wants. And why do the friends have to "work through the tragedy"? He's not dead, he's missing. So, who pissed him off so much that he's just taken off on his own?
Okay, this is probably not going to be what you want to hear. But you need to finish the story before you know what the start should be. The start of a story propels the reader toward the end. Until you have arrived at the end as a writer, you won't know what you need. It's not as if you're changing the events that lead up to the situation you're describing. You're only changing how much of it you're telling. So keep going and get yourself all the way to the end. Finish your first draft. If I had one single bit of advice to give new writers, its Finish The Story First. Other people can't tell you what choices to make at this stage. All the kinds of issues you're concerned with here will become clear once you're done. Heck, my own Prologue was the very last chapter I wrote. Turned out, my first beta readers needed to have that information at the start of the book, rather than having it revealed at the end. Trust me. You won't know what your beginning should be till you're done. Please. Just keep going. Don't get sidetracked just now.
In the first opening the missing characters wife is the person to report him missing and the police question them because they where the last people to see him before his disappeared.
Hehe yeah I didn't put this in the origonal post but this is a fan fiction based on The Youngblood Chronicals (a seris of music videos) and welcome to night vale. Both the hook and the smile are put in because it is what happened in the source material.
The ending doesn't actually revovle around what he remembers I'm fact the only thing he remembers is why exactly he agreed to go to the town and why the breifcase is so important
That in and of itself is annoying, because those are the only pertinent details to the story at hand. Who cares if he still can't remember his high school gym teacher? He remembers enough, when he needs to remember. Amnesia is tired, cliche and overused.
