Last weekend I attended a terrific writing conference sponsored by the Orange County Public Library System in Orlando, Florida. It was one of the most interesting and helpful writing conferences I’ve ever attended—and it was online, open to anyone, and free.
I have never even been to Orlando. But thank you!
Among the many things I learned: the term “wake-up scene.” Which apparently is a deeply unoriginal way to begin a book or a chapter, according to author Michael Mammay. It’s uninteresting. It slows the pace. It’s the mark of an amateur writer. Skip the wake-up scene and get to the conflict, he advised.
I had never heard this term before, and I still cannot think of any books that begin with such a scene. (Perhaps because agents and editors never allow such manuscripts to be published.)
I emailed a friend who’s a freelance editor—he’d never heard of it either.
So I decided to pose a question during the last session of the conference, the Ask the Agents panel. Is a wake-up scene a Thing? A Bad Thing?
Yes, two of the three agents said. They see it all the time. It’s a cliché. Please don’t.
I was amazed.
Personally, I’m fascinated by the fact that we spend so much of our lives—a third of it, at least—in an altered state. Unconscious, paralyzed, hallucinating. Telling ourselves one weird and shapeless story after another. Filming it, more like. Participating in it.
We travel to this bizarre, alterative story-world every night. And yet every morning, our memories are wiped. Almost entirely wiped. Maybe there are just a few fragments of what you did during your final moments in the story-world. But if you don’t write your memories down right away, they dissolve.
To me, the transition from that world, to the “real” world, is not at all boring.
And is it really true that there’s no conflict? If your protagonist is a teenager (as mine is), a wake-up scene—especially on a school day—is rife with potential conflict.
Yes, of course, my YA manuscript begins with a wake-up scene … maybe.
Here it is.
**
I’m still half-asleep, trying to linger in my dream world, when I realize what that smell is. Cinnamon. My mom is making her cinnamon French toast again.
Mrs. Emerick, my English teacher, told us once there are only two words in the English language that end in “gry”: hungry and angry.
Mom makes it with stale slices of her homemade cinnamon raisin bread. She soaks each slice in egg and milk for what seems like much too long, then fries the almost-mushy slice in butter. Each piece comes out blistered brown on the outside and custardy-soft on the inside. Once it’s on the plate, she sifts powdered sugar on top through a stencil—maybe a V for my name, or a picture of violets, or something seasonal. My mom has a lot of stencils.
It was my favorite breakfast food when I was little, a treat breakfast, but I haven’t wanted to eat it since the fourth grade. I have my reasons.
I’ve told Mom this so many times, and she never, ever remembers.
She knocks on my bedroom door. “Breakfast, kiddo.”
**
Is it a wake-up scene?
And even if it is, does it work?
Carrie Golus 