OPENING HOOKS

by Lois Winston

I’m currently teaching an adult school course on “Writing the Publishable Novel.” One of the topics we covered the other night was opening hooks. I’m a firm believer in dynamic openings. I believe the first sentence of a book should make the reader want to keep reading. The hook doesn’t have to be defined in that first sentence, but that first sentence should lead into the next and the next until you have a paragraph that becomes a hook that grabs and won’t let go.

Your first paragraph should do for the first page what your first sentence did for your first paragraph, and the first page should do for the subsequent pages what the first paragraph did for the first page.

Openings should be filled with interesting action and/or dialogue that intrigues the reader and makes her want to continue reading, not filled with paragraph after paragraph of back-story and/or description.

A good book will often begin by throwing the reader right into the middle of a conversation or event. Dynamic openings avoid head-to-toe descriptions of the characters, movie camera eye-view narratives of the setting, and AccuWeather reports.

One of my favorite opening lines is from Kiss an Angel, an early romance by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

“Daisy Devreaux had forgotten her bridegroom’s name.”

How can you not be intrigued by that opening? Doesn’t it make you want to read further?

Here are some other favorites, from both classic literature and contemporary novels. All are quite different, but the one thing they all have in common is that they contain bits of information that pique reader curiosity. What you don’t see is all sorts of needless prose, just enough information to ground the characters in a hear-and-now and give a hint of things to come.

See if you recognize the books attached to these openings:

“It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

“Until she was twenty-six, Jody Linder felt suspicious of happiness.”

“July 1st. The most dangerous day of the year.”

“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”

“All children except one grow up.”

“Between the parishes of Shepfold and Martlake in Somerset existed an area of no-man’s-land and a lot of ill feeling.”

“I hate whiners. Always have. So I was doing my damnedest not to become one in spite of the lollapalooza of a quadruple whammy that had broadsided me last week.”

“There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself -- not just sometimes, but always.”

“There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me -- not forever, but periodically.”

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. The first book, Assault With A Deadly Glue Gun, was a January 2011 release and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Death by Killer Mop Doll was released this past January. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.