-
Content Corner: What question do you pose to your reader in the opening page?
I am a sucker for a hooky beginning. When I open a new book, I want to be gripped from the first page and not let go until the end. So, how do the best writers do that?
They pose a question. This can be something they are deliberately and outwardly withholding from us, or it can be a scene so out of the ordinary, that we wonder how on earth they came to be in that situation.
For example, one of my all-time-favourite opening lines is from Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle: ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’ Not only does this pose the question; ‘why are they writing in the sink?’ – it also gives us a wonderfully immediate sense of tone and character, all in a single line.
So – what’s the question you pose in the opening of your book?
-
10 Replies
-
Definitely a sense of loss, place, fear, and expectation – not that I’m trying to cover all the bases, but that it was how the cookie crumbled, this time. 🙂
-
Principal character being beaten up. Who is he? Why is he being beaten up? By whom?
-
Mierda! Awake again, pain, lean half-way up against a wall… What am I wearing? Shreds of blue stuff plastered against my skin? Blood? Mierda… my silk gown… the explosion… those soldiers… Oh yeah, I got to the dance before he did.
-
What nature of dilemma is the MC facing that sees her feeling forced to secretly abandon her own family? And why will she ‘not remember how this day ends’?
-
Can Mauve O’Connor win a photo contest that will win her a full scholarship to to The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan or will she be forever stuck with her family of eight in New Jersey?
-
Will Walter’s mother allow him to take his pupils on the school trip?
-
Why is Will Dillon “glad to have his mind distracted” by the call to skipper the lifeboat and risk his life battling a raging sea?
-
My main character is about to start a new life. He’s been in and out of prison and is walking up the drive of a large house to start a job as a gardener. He’s going to have some experiences there, but not all what he might expect, good and bad will open up many questions about his will to better himself and find friends and a family. All the main four characters in the book are introduced in the first three chapters then things start happening….
-
Just my opinion, but I think the idea that your *very first sentence* has to be this incredibly clever, irresistible hook is massively over-stated. My sense is that it matters much more to agents, editors and other publishing pros who grind through hundreds of manuscripts a year than it does to actual readers. (I can’t blame them either. I’d probably be the same way.) On the other hand, your actual book-buyer typically selects a novel on the basis of genre, author, or premise–basically the all the stuff on the cover. If they’re interested enough to pick up your book based on that, they are going to at least read the first few pages before they make any big judgments. (Especially if they already bought it) So, is it important to hit it out of the park with sentence/paragraph one? Sure–if you are a debut author trying to get an agent and a publisher–because at that point, success is all about impressing industry pros. Your readers–if you ever get any–will be much more forgiving. Personally, I read at least the first chapter (and usually up to three) no matter how bad it is, before I give the thumbs up or thumbs down.
-
Yes, I’m struggling with the hook idea too, partly because it’s a bit at odds with the ‘setting up the normal’ phase which we also supposedly have to do in chapter one.
I’m doing a rewrite now and I went for the hooky beginning in version 1 and now have to decide whether to do the same in version 2, though that would probably mean taking things out of sequence (for MG readers – perhaps too confusing?). I do start to think that there’s rather too much pressure on authors nowadays to cram a lot into the first chapter: the normal state, the hook, a few choice character pointers, and perhaps hints at setting too, conflict/tension, then the inciting incident, phew! Can’t we just all chill out and simply write a bloody good chapter one?
Having said that, yes, I do like the idea of the question being posed 🙂
-
