“You’ve gotta have a hook!”
“Make sure you work hard on your first sentence, it’s the most important part of your book!”
“Yeah, I don’t read books that don’t grab me right away. It all comes down to that first sentence, you know?”
Everyone
A lot comes down to that first sentence, doesn’t it? I’ve given my thoughts on stories as a whole before, but the little details can make or break a book. A traditional publisher isn’t going to sit down and read your whole manuscript when you submit it. Do you have any idea how many query letters they get? I’ve talked to agents and acquisitions editors who will throw away a manuscript that doesn’t immediately grab them. And I mean immediately. No pressure or anything. So, how do you do it? How do you hook people? Well, I have a few creative writing tips that might just boost your odds.
So what are these magical creative writing tips? Well, think about what makes a good sentence. Using active voice helps. Avoiding adverbs can keep things concise. Sticking to one adjective per noun is a rule that goes right back to Mark Twain. But these are all general. You’ll want to do more than that, yes? After all, most of the sentences I’ve written meet those exact criteria. So what gives? It must be about more than just sentence construction. Let’s take a look at some particularly notable opening lines.
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.”
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
“Mother died today.”
What stands out from these opening lines? What creative writing tips can we take from them? I think a good pattern might be that each of them poses an implicit question. In the first, Tolkien immediately hits us with this random word we’ve never heard before—and it bids us to ask, just what the heck is a hobbit? When Brandon Sanderson introduces us to The Stormlight Archives, he creates a sense of intrigue. Who is this Szeth guy, and why is he killing a king? Heck, what does wearing white have to do with anything? It’s all about the questions. More than the sentence construction, more than the phrasing, it’s all about the intrigue. The mystery.
A good opening sentence doesn’t just set a scene, it poses questions and demands answers. It says something bold, something you just can’t ignore. How is it both the best of times and the worst of times? What does it mean that the clocks are striking thirteen? Whose mother is dead and why? It’s not enough to just say “My name is Sally McMaincharacter, and I’m sixteen years old.” It has to resonate. Besides, starting on a character’s name has already been done, and I doubt too many people are going to do a better job than Moby Dick did.
My point with these creative writing tips is not to say “you have to do it my way,” and it’s not to crush your current draft into a mold—it’s to get you to consider what elements of your story are going to demand attention. What will grab your readers and make them beg to know more? Your readers don’t know your story or its world yet—but you do. You have that advantage. You know how things are going to start and end. So find something powerful and dangle it in front of your audience’s faces. They’ll love you for it.
