Recently, Lev Grossman, Time Magazine critics, some predictions about the publication. Among his predictions was about the novel as follows: "The novels are competing to hang in the first paragraph and then hang on the cost of living.
I agree, except on one point: it does not come. It is already there.
A new first paragraph, or "hook opening," has always been important, but it has never been as important as it is now.
Agents and publishers are always the hook as a means to evaluate the performance of the input sought a manuscript. Consumers looking for a solid entertainment value for their money often turn to page 1 and start reading. If hanging is not the beginning, go the back of the book.
Some people argue that the writer no less than five pages to grab a reader. It could have come true once, but no more. I believe that today, you need to run a reader in the first sentence of the novel or danger, for ever to get involved. Here are eight tips to achieve that feat, with examples.
Ask a question in the minds of your readers.
The desire to know more about what the first sentence may move the reader. Tell us more. addressing a problem. Create a mini-mystery.
If the first paragraph of the suspense novel by Joy Fielding, See Jane Run:
One afternoon in late spring, Jane Whittaker went to the store for milk and eggs and forgot who she was.
As you may not want to know what that means?
Signal that something has changed radically.
Critical Robin Cook medical thriller begins like this:
In the course of a week in March and April 2007, a serious adverse event in the health of the three foreigners, two of whom died, was determined to improve the lives of hundreds, even thousands of people in a complex network of causality.
It is clear that significant changes will take place shortly. Readers want to know more.
Enter a change of routine.
Make it clear that action is not your first sentence is the norm. Here is the first sentence of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.
If it is conservative, we assume that belongs in a museum, but why is it amazing? Of course, all that happens is not routine.
Presenting a fascinating person.
This is the technique used by Margaret Mitchell for the first set of Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but rarely realized, if men were the twins of her charm caught Tarleton.
What kind of charm, we wonder, could put these two men? This woman is very special. Who is she?
Presenting a fascinating place.
In the key of the street, Ruth Rendell, described the park will play an important role in history:
Spikes of each of the goals to overcome in the park, twenty-seven of them at about eighteen or eleven.
What is this place that is protected in this way?
Presenting a fascinating object.
Here are the first line suspended from my detective novel Hannah
There were doubts in her salad, orange blossom between spiny chicory.
My main character, literary agent Jane Stuart, lunch with a customer in a restaurant in Manhattan particularly arrogant, and give me all the flowers in the salad.
Present an interesting situation.
Here is the first sentence of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best, it was the worst case is the age of wisdom of the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief was, it was the time of disbelief, the season of Light, it was the season of darkness was the spring of hope, it was in the winter of despair, we had everything we have before we had nothing before us, we all go straight to heaven, we were all going direct the other way, short was the time as far as the present time that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its reception, for good or evil in the superlative for comparison purposes only.
What, we wonder, is it time for these contradictions? And we read in the know.
Give your readers something unexpected.
Ken Follett, The Key to Rebecca began as follows:
The last camel collapsed at noon.
What is it about? What about the other camels? We read to see what happens.
No matter which method you choose, you must give your novel a real killer of a first sentence. These days it is the only way to ensure that reading all the other sentences.
condition at PIRATATOONET
14 years ago
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