The first page of your novel or the first scene of your screenplay is really important--it can make the difference between somebody immediately being hooked or breathing a sigh of 'been there, done that.'
At the same time, being weird just for the sake of being weird won't work, either--if the first thing that happens doesn't have a strong connection to what follows, the reader will feel like how we all feel when we fall for click-bait on the internet. Cheated.
It's easy to get hung up on what the first scene should be, which is why it's a mistake to assume you have to get this right in your first draft.
For the first draft, do the best you can but know that you will come back to it when rewriting. It's much easier to come up with a powerful first scene when you've written the whole work. Often, a new opening will be inspired by something that happens later in the story.
DEAD MAN TALKING!
One of the most memorable opening scenes is from "Sunset Boulevard." It shows the street sign, Sunset Blvd, and police cars and speeding somewhere. Cops and reporters rush to a swimming pool in which floats the body of a dead man.
That's already an arresting image (no pun intended), but it gets better. In voice-over, a man describes the scene...and then we realize that it's the dead man himself, setting up how it all got to this point.
It was a daring move, it could easily have been considered funny, but it was done so smoothly that it worked, an integral part of one of my top ten movies of all time.
Can you think of an equally daring start to your novel or screenplay? It's worth giving a lot of thought!
