Writers have to grab readers, but it’s
hard to literally reach out and grab someone from the pages of a book or the
computer screen your blog is on. You have to do it with words.
Great titles (books and stories) and
great headings (blogs and articles) are a start and may catch the reader’s eye.
The first line(s) will give them a reason to read. Give your readers just
enough in your opening lines to pique the interest and give them a reason to
want to know more.
Start with a conflict, a paradox, or
something that speaks to the reader’s fears or desires. Some great opening
lines are: “In 1996,
I killed my father.” (Charmaine Gordon — Reconstructing
Charlie); “My life
changed after I died.”
(Chelle Cordero – Karma Visited); and
“The sound of a single gunshot
rings through my mind every time I think of her” (Neva Squires-Rodriguez — Lilianna). Each of these examples gets the
reader’s curiosity going.
Okay, now that you’ve got the reader
hooked, keep it up, otherwise the reader will feel tricked. Keep throwing
questions in, use conflict to make the reader need to know the outcome,
introduce a twist, and keep the story flowing along. Don’t let your reader get
invested in the story just to have it fall flat. The shorter the story, the
less hooks you might need; if it’s lengthy, you are going to have to throw “hooks”
in at regular intervals.
Starting your work off with a long
diatribe about a villain/politics/morals or an info dump is likely to bore your
reader to tears. If there is a back-story that you, as the writer, feel is
important to introduce to the reader, do it in bits throughout the story. One
more way to keep the reader invested is to make sure your characters are
three-dimensional; think of the real people in your life, are they all good or
all bad, do they react to everything by rote or do things “affect” them, do
they get emotional or excited? Still another way to keep your reader interested
is to make sure your story makes sense, cause and effect — if you are writing
fantasy, science fiction, or paranormal you can introduce a “not-real” thing
into the story, but make it make sense.
Pick up five nearby books and read
the first page of each — which book(s) made you want to keep reading and why?
Writing Exercise: Set your timer for 15-minutes and write. Make
sure you include emotion, goals, surprise, details that are necessary for your
story, cause and effect, possibilities, and conflict(s) that your main
character is confronted with.
Writing Prompt: Choose a book you recently read and flip through
it again. Write down the key places that woke up your interest. Try it with a
second book if you want.
Challenge Assignment: Pick up a recent WIP of your own (it can be a
partial) and with an impartial eye, read through while making a list with two
columns — in one column list all the places that piqued your interest; in the
second column list all of the areas where you felt bored. If it helps, pretend
you are reading someone else’s work.
