Narrative Lens and Narrative Distance
September 9, 20225 Essential Details to Ground Your Scene
October 17, 2022The hook—the first line of your novel—is the single most important sentence in your story. Books live or die by this sentence. If it isn’t interesting enough, then the book gets put back on the shelf to forever languish in obscurity. If it’s exciting, then your book can gather readers galore.
While it’s easy to come up with any old sentence or worse, a cliche, it is much more difficult to come up with something which will draw the attention of readers, agents, and acquiring editors. Here are 2 don’ts and 1 do which will help you write a killer opening sentence.
1. Don’t start with time period or setting.
Trust me on this one. Unless it’s a history book, I really don’t care what year it is. Unless you’re trekking across a frozen wasteland or swimming through a water planet, being chased by evil water aliens, I don’t want to know.
Actually, I do want to know. Those are great details. Kick the description to the second paragraph, where it can draw your reader deeper into your world, and leave the first sentence for something more all-encompassing.
2. Don’t start with a normal occurrence.
You’ve probably heard the advice to never start with the alarm going off, right? Nobody wants to watch your character roll out of bed, brush their teeth, scurry down the stairs, grab a breakfast muffin, and run to school.
Well, maybe they do, but not here.
The point is, you’ve seen this opening scene a billion times! It’s not unique! It doesn’t tell the reader why they should read this book. Your hook is a one line sales pitch, and the morning alarm going off isn’t going to cut it.
Want to know what else won’t cut it?
After school party.
Math test.
Going to work.
Watching a movie.
If it’s something you do on a day-to-day basis, then leave it out of the first line!
Now, there is one exception. What if your character’s normal day is very different from everyone else’s normal day?
Now, that’s interesting.
So yeah. Keep the normal stuff out of the first sentence. There’s plenty of time for that in chapter 2.
3. DO start with the soul of your story.
What is the soul of your story? What makes it different? What sets it apart from all the other stories out there? If you could distill it into one sentence, ending and all, what would you write? I’ve got a story (at the time of writing this, it is currently a WIP in its 1st developmental edit) about demons breaking into the last pocket of civilization in the entire world. The first sentence? The demons will be here soon, and only I can stop them. It’s been one sentence, and you already know the main conflict. You also know that this is definitely some sort of sci-fi/fantasy book, and the MC is some sort of Chosen One.
Here are some other examples:
All children, except one, grow up. – Peter Pan, by JM Barrie
In my opinion, this is the very best example of starting with the soul of the story. Peter Pan, at its heart, is a story about a boy who never grows up. It talks about the allure of Neverland, the fantasy of never going to school, or work, or growing old. This sentence fully encapsulates the story of Peter Pan.
Now take a moment to think about these examples:
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. – A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Do they hook you? Do they thrust you into the tone of the story? Do they promise a world on which they then deliver? This is exactly what you must strive for when encapsulating the soul of your story.
So, there you have it. Distilling the soul of your book into one line isn’t easy, but it is worth it. What about you? What are your favorite opening lines? Share them in the comments below!
