Have you noticed how often in books (especially serial style ‘B’ books) the characters doesn’t know where they are when they wake up?  It seems like it crops up a lot, probably as a gimmick of the writer to bring the reader back into the picture, I’m guessing.  But how often in real life do we wake up unsure of our locale?  Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve only felt that once or maybe twice in my life.

What I do feel–and often–when I wake up is: Late!  In the morning there’s this pressing knowledge that I’ve got to get up–for something.  The what and why isn’t always clear, but that I should be up is an absolute knowledge–even when it’s a saturday and I have nowhere I have to be.  If I dose off during the day it’s even worse.  Then I’ll wake up disoriented and rushing off before my eyes are fully open–but to where I don’t know.

This may just be a product of our modern-day petel-to-the-metal lifestyle or my standing as a mother of school-age kids, but surely throughout time and the world people have had deadlines and known they were supposed to be somewhere.  Even if it was just bringing the cows home, watching the goats, or reporting to ones master, everyone had some task to fill their days.

In fact, it seems to me that people of other times would be less likely to wake up disoriented as to locale.  When you hop on a plane and wake up thousands of miles away some disorientation might be expected.  But when you have to walk or take a (comparatively) slow ride on horseback to get somewhere surely the miles crossed would imprint the brain as to the passage of space and one would arrive quite aware of their change in location.

The one exception might be if someone has been transported while unconcious or asleep, however in this instance I think that return to consiousness would happen slowly and ones first thoughts would be of the physical discomfort likely to be lingering. 

I guess what I’m really driving at–in my rambling way–is that having a character be disoriented and ask the question “where am I?” is a cliche and should be used only sparingly and as a last resort.  There are so many other ways to reintroduce the scene and/or tension that avoid this obvious question, and I think it likely that going a little deeper into the pov of the character would prompt alternative questions.