Today’s discussion topic comes from QSFer Alicia Nordwell:
Dynamic beginnings are important to hook readers, but if there’s too much to absorb it can be hard to visualize and relate to the setting and characters.
Do you feel it is better to draw them in with a familiar setting and point of view at the beginning of a story, or do you prefer to drop them into an immediate fantastical world?
Example: A human piloting a spaceship is recognizable as a pilot even with more advanced technology versus an alien species on an unknown planet viewing the human piloting the spaceship through the lens of an unknown–but possibly fascinating–social construct that may or may not be xenophobic, primitive, more advanced than humans, etc….