Mariana Reuter wrote:I've just started reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier some days ago. It immediately called my attention that this book, which a best seller back in its times and even hit the big screen, starts with a no-no. It's starts with a dream! The first chapter is completely a dream!
It's easy to understand why you mustn't start with a dream. I found myself skipping paragraphs and looking for "action" as, being the narrative a dream, I knew it was not something really happening and thus it'll do no harm if I skipped it.
My observation is because it's interesting how a current no-no didn't seem to be so back in the 1930´s, and it didn't stop the story from turning into a bestseller and an Oscar-awarded movie in Hitchcock hands.
Have today's agents and publishers become too picky?
Kiss,
Gacela
Gacela...There are a lot of clues in that first chapter that set up the rest of the book. As the reader will find out, everything that happens in the book started and ended at the De Winter's huge estate. But why dream about it? Why not write, I went to Manderley? Because Manderley was burnt to the ground at the end of the novel. The main character can't go back. She can only dream of the first time she saw the mansion that was to become her home, and where all the conflict in the novel began and ended.
Why a dream then? I believe dreaming of her former home tells the reader she's remembering, and in a dream Manderley can be presented as mystical, overwhelming the character so much that years later it haunts her dreams.
That still doesn't answer why many authors choose dreams to begin their novels. I believe it is so the reader can form an instant connection with the character. We're all humans, most of us dream, and can relate to someone who dreams, whether it's a memory, or a nightmare.
Also, we don't know why we dream or where they come from. It's a common experience, dreams can influence our lives, rob us of sleep. But still, it's a relatable event in the character's life, and as writers are taught, to keep your reader interested you have to make the reader see something that they can grab on to and say to themselves, ‘That's happened to me.'
That being said, if you must start your novel with a dream, it should pertain to the rest of the novel and not a random thing.
Movie trivia: The main character in the movie and the novel doesn't have a first name, she's always referred to as 'Mrs. D'Winter.' And in the movie you never see a picture of Rebecca.
