In the Beginning...

by

Maris Soule

If you ask an editor, marketing analyst or bookseller, they'll all tell you what you already know. A writer only has a few seconds in which to hook a reader.

Gone are the days when we'd willingly slog through a 100 pages of backstory before the action began. No more long train (plane, car, boat) rides where our heroine (or hero) remembers all that led up to this moment. Our lives are too busy for that, and we're too accustomed to the instantaneous action bit. We live in an era of sound bytes.

The best way for a writer to hook the reader is to start when events have brought or are about to bring the hero and heroine together in a way that will change their lives forever. Life as it was has taken a new twist. This is often referred to as in media res. (In the middle of things.)

You, the writer, can let us know how these two people got there later. It doesn't matter if you start with dialogue or thoughts, action or description, just as long as from this moment on we are moving forward (with only an occasional short step back.)

Think of those old vaudeville hooks that came out from behind the curtain to drag the performer off stage. Only, in your story, that hook is going to grab your reader and drag her (or him) into a situation filled with conflict, especially internal conflict. Once the reader has been caught up in the drama, then you can tell more, can explain how and why your hero and heroine got into this situation.

Although many writers hook the reader with an unexpected bit of dialogue ("What do you mean I'm a father?") or with action or danger(She didn't see him in the shadows, not until too late), I also like to use descriptive scenes, each word bringing the reader closer to the action, like a camera panning a landscape then zooming in on the actors. The main thing is you don't have to tell everything, at least not all at once, and not right in the beginning.

Think of people. Who's the most fascinating: the one who tells all or the woman (or man) of mystery? Tease the reader with hints of what happened in the past and what may happen in the future. Grab them, then lure them on, deeper and deeper into this world you're creating. Tell only as much in the beginning as is necessary; get your hero and heroine together (or show them on a collision path).

If you do that, as well as give a sense of the time period, the setting and the conflict, you will have hooked your reader and made a sale.

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