A story keeps Victoria initially awake (5)
I believe the answer is:
alive
'awake' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a story keeps victoria initially' is the wordplay.
'story' becomes 'lie' (I've seen this before).
'keeps' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'initially' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'victoria' is 'v'.
'lie' enclosing 'v' is 'live'.
'a'+'live'='ALIVE'
(Other definitions for alive that I've seen before include "operative?" , "Vital, vibrant" , "Existing - vigorous" , "Aware" , "Teeming (with)" .)