Grand Openings: How to Hook Your Reader From the Beginning

   

One thing I always loved about the opening scenes in the James Bond movies was that they always seemed to begin with a bang (sometimes literally).  The screenwriters always placed the viewer in the middle of the action at the beginning.  How boring many of these beginnings would have been if some narrator had come on giving all of the background information prior to any action taking place.  

The same holds true for your novel or short story.  Beginning in the middle of the action engages the reader more quickly and effectively. That is not to say that your first scene has to have explosions or bullets flying.  It just means that you are giving the reader a reason to pay attention and find out what is going on.  Of course, eventually the reader will need to have some idea about the circumstances leading up to the beginning.  This is where exposition comes in. 

You can think of exposition as the made-up past for your made-up story.  But how do you start in the middle of the action and communicate the background information?  There are a number of ways to do this, but here is how Michael Crichton handles the opening of his novel State of Fear : 

     In the darkness, he touched her arm and said, “Stay here.” She did not move, just waited. The smell of salt water was strong. She heard the faint gurgle of water.

     Then the lights came on, reflecting off the surface of a large open tank, perhaps fifty meters long and twenty meters wide.  It might have been an indoor swimming pool, except for all the electronic equipment that surrounded it.

     And the very strange device at the far end of the pool.

     Jonathan Marshall came back to her, grinning like an idiot. “Qu’est-ce que tu penses?” he said, though he knew his pronunciation was terrible.  “What do you think?”

     “It is magnificent,” the girl said.  When she spoke English, her accent sounded exotic.  In fact, everything about her was exotic, Jonathan thought.  With her dark skin, high cheekbones, and black hair, she might have been a model.  And she strutted like a model in her short skirt and spike heels.  She was half Vietnamese, and her name was Marisa. “But no one else is here?” she said, looking around.

     “No, no,” he said.  “It’s Sunday. No one is coming.”

     Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultramodern Laboratoire Ondulatoire—the wave mechanics laboratory—of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris.  But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall.  Which was why he could not believe his good fortune at meeting this girl.  This extraordinarily beautiful and sexy girl.

     “Show me what it does, this machine,” Marisa said. Her eyes were shining.  “Show me what it is you do.”

And he did. Even though this is not the entire first scene, you get the idea.  Instead of beginning with Jonathan Marshall’s background and his meeting of Marisa, Crichton puts us in the middle of the action, which peaks our curiosity about the story and makes us want to know more.  However, he does intersperse unobtrusively some background information amidst the action and dialogue, providing some orientation.  It is not until the next scene that we learn how Jonathan and Marisa meet.

Again, just as in the first scene, Crichton shows us rather than tells us.  He shows us through sense of place and dialogue how they meet.  We learn that they meet at a cafe where Marisa is having a fight with her boyfriend.  When she grows weary of the argument, she turns to Jonathan who is reading an article on physics and strikes up a conversation. From there, they move on to the laboratory. 

Going back to the first scene, this is how Crichton could have written it:

      Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultramodern Laboratoire Ondulatoire—the wave mechanics laboratory—of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris.  But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall.  

      One day while having coffee at his favorite cafe and reading a physics article, he noticed a beautiful woman at a nearby table who seemed to be arguing with a guy he assumed was her boyfriend. He tuned them out and continued reading.

     After arguing for several minutes, the woman turned to Jonathan and asked him what he was reading.  Startled, Jonathan looked up and replied, “Physics.” She then asked what kind of physics, to which he replied “Wave mechanics. Ocean waves.”

     The woman continued to ask questions.  Jonathan continued to answer.  Soon the two, with boyfriend in toe, were off to the laboratory where Jonathan would show her exactly what kind of physics he was talking about.

As you can see, this second example is much less engaging because it is more exposition than action.  It tells rather than shows.

Remember the best way to begin is by having your characters doing something. Heart-pounding action isn’t the only way to hook your reader.  You just need to provide your reader with a reason to be a part of the something you have created.