A masked man in loose clothing. He was standing next to a console and was armed with weapons Ford didn't recognize. An elderly gentleman behind a large desk. It was covered with numerous gadgets, also unrecognized.

As everything here is detached - we have no POV to speak of, no indication of where he expected to wake up, what the lasyt thing he remembered was, etc - things feel static, almost cinematic.

And, of course, the "waking up" is a difficult cliche to overcome.

And with the addition of others in the room, he would not notice computers and websites. Waking up to someone unexpected in the room is a real-life nightmare for all agents. He would launch into 'Fight or Flight' mode. Either figure out how to get out of the situation as quick as possible, or ascertain what the men are doing and if they arent allies how can he overcome them.

Otherwise, I suggest you either speed up or slow down. If an agent was to scan a room, I would imagine he'd get an immediate head count and then go straight to risk assessment. The guy with all the guns would probably be the first concern. The doctor (guessing) would probably be the easier to overcome. Formulate plan and engage.

I do agree with everyone else, though, about his reactions. I want to know his taught, his panic, etc. I'm thinking something along the lines of:

When FBI agent Robert Ford awoke in a strange room, he was dizzy, and his vision blurry. Two shadowy figures were slowly coming into focus. He was confused and unsure of what was going on as he managed to rise from the floor onto his knees. Then a vague memory crossed his mind of being grabbed from behind and a sharp pain in the neck.

He felt his neck, which was still tender. Drugged. He reached for his gun and his heart raced when he realized it was missing, stolen, taken from him. Watch, badge, and communications device, also stolen. His sight focused, and when he caught a glance of the foreign weapon in the masked man's hand, his mind began to formulate a plan.

At two and three o'clock, the masked man and an elderly man behind a desk. The masked man was the threat. At eleven o'clock an office chair, heavy enough to do damage. He rolled behind the chair, gripped it, and tossed it at the masked man's face.

I just wrote this on the fly, but slowing down the scene to take the time to show his thoughts and everything is good. I could have described his panic a bit more as well. Perhaps sweaty hands, or that fear sensation in the gut.

Of course his first instinct is to react. But he has to assess the situation before he can decide what to do. Alas, what a trained, experienced federal agent can assimilate in a split second takes a writer a paragraph to reveal and readers a paragraph to discover.

The bodyguard, the strange weapons, the console, the mask, the loose clothing are all there for a reason. Namely to neutralize threats from Ford. Being in law enforcement, Ford should know this. The bodyguard and the scientist know they are in the same room with a law enforcement officer who fights terrorists for a living. Either they are pathetically stupid or supremely confident. Everything in the room suggests the latter. Ford would realize all this too.

What all the above suggestions don't take into account is the last paragraph. The information on the screen are a message to Ford. "I know your most cherished secret." Meanwhile, he's not bound or wounded, no one is threatening or attacking him, no one is asking questions or giving orders, and no one is displaying pictures of family members or cooworkers. Then there are the gadgets on the desk and the fact that the scientist is in a casual position. Everything about the scientist suggests he wants to talk rather than harm.

Ford is disturbed that the scientist uncovered a closely guarded secret. He has to know who this scientist is and how he obtained such sensitive information. Of course, there's potential danger, especially if the scientist doesn't get what he wants from Ford. But for the moment, his need for information overrides his instinct to attack. For the hero of the story to seize control of the situation or fight his way out of the room is pretty typical. I'm aiming for something different.

As he controlled his heart rate, he studied his surroundings. It only took a quick glance around the room to see that he was out powered. He'd have to wait for an opportunity to present itself. The masked man with strange weapons was the real threat, and he was confident enough to leave Ford uncuffed. No doubt, he knew Ford was a trained fighter, too. The elderly man behind the desk stacked with unrecognized gadgets, looked equally calm.

However, a reader only has the words on the page (or screen). The reader MAY try and "fill in the blanks", and indeed the writer may WANT the reader to "fill in the blanks". However, different people will fill in the blanks in different ways. It's always a fine line as to how much the writer sould state explicitly, and how much the writer should rely on the reader's ability to infer. All readers are not alike, so different ones will infer more or less, and in different directions.

This is why some readers really like what other readers really hate.

This comes back to the Style Police. Ultimately, whether a certain technique or scene should be used is determined by whether it's the most effective for this particular story.

Now, whether a certain fiction strategy has been overdone recently, whether the current consensus among current editors is against a certain technique or a certain scene, whether you should prostitute your fiction until you get established, that's another issue.

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Second, I would like to suggest that when a character wakes up in a strange room, something pivotal has already happened to put the character there, and perhaps the story should start with whatever it was that happened.

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On the other hand though, we're often told to start after the important stuff has already happened...in the middle of something, rather than really begining at the begining. To me, the waking up in a strange room is a form of in medias res or however its spelled. It intrigues because it makes you wonder why they are there, and because you figure the story will tell you.

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Maybe the reason so many writers use the waking in a strange room technique is that it's a good technique

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This is pretty much why I also reject the notion that "cliche"="bad." Things become cliches because they resonate, they touch, they interest.

And I also tend to feel that trying to avoid or "subvert" certain cliches is itself rapidly becoming "cliche."

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So the Market Police might or might not be right. But the Style Police,

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While I agree conceptually with what you're saying, I have to mention that here, these two are somewhat intwined because most of the folks doing the "policing"...many of the folks most active here...are or at least to me seem to be mainly thinking in terms of a relatively small selection of markets and the styles/structures/story types those markets tend to buy. Some times they just tend to forget that WOTF and the "big three" may not be the audience everyone is shooting for...

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we're often told to start after the important stuff has already happened...in the middle of something, rather than really begining at the begining.

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You mean "in media res" (in the middle of things), right?

I believe we've discussed that with respect to other kinds of "things," such as in the middle of a fight scene and in the middle of a chase scene. One factor relevant to those kinds of beginnings that could be relevant to the "waking up in a strange room" beginning is whether or not readers are able to determine why they should care about what's happening, and whom they should care about.

For my part, I believe I have always recommended that people think about doing what Damon Knight used to suggest: start the story when the story starts to happen, not before, not after (paraphrased, of course).

Another way to look at it could be inferred from OSC's M.I.C.E. structure discussion in his book, HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, where he talks about how the beginnings of some kinds of stories are when the main character decides to become involved in the problem (also paraphrased).

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But the Style Police, they can send their rules back to the depths of Hell COD.

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So I'm not sure how to critique this now. I fear that expressing an opinion is going to result in my being shouted down, and what with me being an emotionally fragile type is probably why I even hesitate to post this question. But I'm sure you posted the fragment here for some type of feedback. So what do you want from your post?

I note that a couple (1, 2) of the posts in the intro forum have gone invisible, I wonder if they might help explain where we're all coming from?

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I note that a couple (1, 2) of the posts in the intro forum have gone invisible, I wonder if they might help explain where we're all coming from?

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Bleh. Okay, I'll go "bump" them up again. (Grumbling as she walks away that she wishes this forum had sticky options, at least for administrators.)

Edited to add:

I've "bumped" all of the topics in the PLEASE, READ HERE FIRST area. Please, any and everyone, read those topics if you haven't already.

It might not hurt for some to reread them, come to think of it.

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But the Style Police, they can send their rules back to the depths of Hell COD.

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I'm not sure from this remark who you consider the Style Police to be.

You will ALWAYS get some advice/suggestions/critique on style. It is entirely up to you whether you want to take them or not. In general, if one person highlights somethng, it may or may not be an issue. If ten people say the same thing, it's probably a significant issue. I have seen newcomers revise openings based on one critique, then revise again after the next, and so on. This, I think, is unwise. Always listen to a set of critiques, analyse what they are saying, and decide then whether their advice is appropriate for your particular position. You don't HAVE to listen to anyone. But if you don't WANT to listen to anyone, don't post in the first place (and there have been people, quite honetly, who have just come to this site to post things in the hope that everyone will tell them how great their stuff is - usually because family/friends have told them this already and they assume it will be a universal tuth. They are usually unpleasantly surprised, and rarely take it well).

BANG! He shoots the man.

The robber points his gone at another nearby man and asks him "Did you see my face?"

The man replies "No, but I think my wife did."

1. You're right, there are no rules. You can start a story with the line It was a dark and stormy night if it suits your fancy. You can use and abuse punctuation and grammar until you turn into Cormac McCarthy. Seriously, no rules. You won't be carted off to Style-catraz for hackneyed dialogue, and no one will shed a tear if you use a horribly blatant deus ex machina, either.

2. What we are giving you are (honest to God they really are) our suggestions and our feedback. Maybe I've submitted a story that had a character waking up as the first scene and had it dismissed summarily by editors due to that fact, and I'm sharing that experience with you. Maybe I've read advice from other authors saying "here's a list of the things that new writers do that hurts their chances of getting published" and I'm passing that advice along to you. Maybe we're just being argumentative and dickish. Regardless, what you are hearing here is our opinion.

3. I wrote something on here a long time ago (actually, here's a link to my post) that had one real gem in it - know who to listen to. Some people are helpful, some aren't. Some people write in a style that is similar to yours (and in your case, I think Merlion and yourself are kindred spirits) and some people are light years apart. Learn to differentiate between what is helpful to you, what pains you to fix, and what is essentially useless.

4. As usual, the best response to a critique is Thank you.

I was reading Tolkien a few weeks ago, and I was astounded at how many "rules" he broke. He switched between viewpoints paragraph by paragraph. He told instead of showed at various places, etc... Of course, part of it is that he wrote decades ago and style was different, but I think there is more to it than that. Yet he was wildly original. I found myself wondering if he could be published today, I would bet he couldn't. At least not easily...

I would venture to bet that most writers are not good. Many people who fancy themselves writers can't do a lick of good narration (that's one reason I like this forum. The professionalism of the contributors seems a cut above the norm.) So I would propose that the "the rules" are guidelines that should be followed, and that they are created because EVERY MANUSCRIPT IS IN COMPETITION WITH EVERY OTHER MANUSCRIPT, NOT because it is inherently wrong according the secret style police, the plotting gestapo, or the prose gods.

When an editor sits down to a pile of fifty manuscripts, and 50% of them start with a character waking up, the ones which don't will automatically stand out as different from the rest. Thus, the "rules" of "good writing" are those things that authors have found over time which tend to be unoriginal, cliche, overused, etc. How have they found this? Writing WHICH STANDS OUT is more likely to be published, and more likely to be bought by readers who could gladly fork over money to watch a movie instead.

If there were no competition in writing, there would be no "rules."

Edited to add: please regard the CAPS as italics for emphasis, not shouting. My skill with words hasn't developed to the point where I can always say exactly what I want without relying on fonts for emphasis. Sigh....