Hook…
I’m not talking about Peter Pan’s nemesis here. I’m talking about the beginning of a novel. In a way, “hook” is an insulting term. It refers to the first chapter, first paragraphs, first words even, of a novel that can get a reader interested in the story. Readers aren’t fish, though, and an author can’t hook them and reel them in. That said, all fiction has to interest the reader at the beginning. Readers usually don’t start reading in the middle of the book, after all.
There is only one basic question an author must answer for the reader at the beginning: Is this interesting enough to continue? Writers answer that question in various ways. There might be action that’s gripping and suspenseful. The reader gets into the mindset of a main character. There’s an unusual, even weird, setting to grab the reader’s attention. So many others, but they all have to answer that basic question.
In my very first novel Full Medical (2006), I started with a Prelude. Whether Prelude, Prologue, or first chapter, that’s where an author must answer that basic question. My prelude describes the escape of three young people from a secret facility that’s part of the government conspiracy that unravels in the rest of the book. I wrote it in a way that lets the reader know that these young people are victims of that conspiracy. (It’s the first book in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” so you can probably make an educated guess about what the conspiracy is—the cover provides a hint too.) This prelude was designed to answer that basic question and maybe replace it with another: who are these escapees? We only them at first as FS2, HJ1, and SW1.
That first novel was mostly pre-apocalyptic, not post, the trilogy eventually leading to the chaos that beset Earth at the beginning of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” In the second book of that trilogy, Sing a Zamba Galactica (2012), a child falls off a bridge in a pioneer town of a new colony on a planet in the 82 Eridani system; the child is carried way by the swift current, but the colonists find her sitting on the riverbank downstream with something like rope burns all over her body. Who saved the kid? I won’t say. You should read the book…or the full trilogy. The point is that yet again I try to provide an answer by suggesting another question to the reader. There’s a mystery afoot, even if we’re far from Earth.
I particularly liked the beginning of The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. Most of the plot is based on one of my short stories (found in Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape), but I knew that most readers hadn’t read that story. I worked on that beginning a lot. I wanted it to imply another government conspiracy, involve the protagonist immediately, and shock the reader into asking, “What’s going on?” The shock element isn’t uncommon in thrillers. Here a woman is killed in a park in Hoboken, NJ, and the protagonist is a witness. Coincidence, yes, but the victim is on a nurse who works in a nursing home, the killer seems to be a professional assassin, and the witness is an older government agent who is divorced and on her first date after a long time. (She’s DHS agent Ashely Scott who’s an old friend of NYPD homicide detective Castilblanco; he makes a cameo appearance in the novel.)
I thought this beginning was good—not exactly as good as three G’s and an E-flat (Beethoven’s Fifth), but it did exactly what I wanted. Most readers would want to know why this murder took place and more about the characters, including the victim. But one critic (not a reviewer) said he didn’t care why that murder occurred, didn’t like Hoboken (maybe he didn’t like Frank Sinatra?), and couldn’t connect with the protagonist or the victim. He also said I should stop writing! If you read the book, see if you agree. Or you might just agree with me: opening scenes don’t work for some readers. That was an important lesson, of course—a crushing one, because I’d spent so much time on that opening. I’ve gotten over it. (You have to have a thick skin in this business!)
The Midas Bomb provides a similar opening, only with two murders. The first murder victim is an economics-modeling expert working on Wall Street (hence “Midas”); that’s Detective Chen’s case. The second murder is a Navy SEAL on assignment (working for the DHS agent just mentioned but in her younger days)—you only hear her first name during a com contact—and that victim becomes Detective Castilblanco’s case, who’s an ex-SEAL and knows the victim. The reader hopefully has her or his interest piqued and asks, “What’s the connection?” If s/he does, s/he’ll be satisfied later on because Castilblanco eventually makes one, but that’s only the beginning (the “Bomb” comes later).
Only the second murder is presented in the first chapter, though. Let me quote from the book’s third paragraph: “Off the end of the pier a hand came out of the water, half in shadow, as if some ancient, drowned mariner walked along the bottom on his way home to port. Dark blood smudged the hand and face that followed in spite of the solvent properties of the toxic water. Oxygen starved lungs took in pungent, cold air. Colin Murphy fought for his life.” The person observing this was sitting on the pier at the end of West 23rd Street staring at eddies in the mighty Hudson River. The man he spots in the water is an ER doctor who is the Wall Street woman’s fraternal twin, and it turns out he was shot at the same time as his sister.
Probably one of my more complicated openings, although it features only two characters, the doctor and the SEAL, each with their own section. In the SEAL’s, though, you also meet one of the villains. While this opening gets the job done, and I’m fond of it, I might redo it in the third edition, if there ever is one. (The second edition was written to match the style of the other books in the series, among other reasons, because in the other books Castilblanco is in the first person while the rest is third person, something I’d started with the second novel in the series. That’s one thing I liked about James Patterson’s writing…in his Alex Cross books.)
Openings are important. Keep the reader interested; keep the reader asking questions. Authors need readers to turn the pages. Today it’s not enough to write “Call me Ishmael” (only once is the narrator called Ishmael, by the way, in this boring book about turning whale blubber into lamp oil). Of course, a novel has to maintain the reader’s interest all the way through, but it has to start doing that at the very beginning. (Moby Dick didn’t do it for me.)
Because we’re talking about beginnings, let me just say that I’m turned off by a lot of books (from the Big Five mostly) that have pages and pages of endorsements, review excerpts, and plot snippets at the beginning. I’ll accept a copyright page, dedication, preface, and prologue—notes, disclaimers, acknowledgements, and author’s bio belong at the end.
I apologize for using my own books as examples. I know them better than any others, of course, from the writing aspect—my struggles with openings and other story elements, in particular. For me, the beginnings and ends are the most difficult parts in my novel writing journey…but every author should recognize their importance, especially the beginnings.
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Comments are always welcome!
“The Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” Ready for action and thrills? Future government conspiracies? Criminal mastermind Vladimir Kalinin is always behind the scenes in this series creating havoc. You first met him in The Midas Bomb, but he’s been scheming for a long time…and you’ll learn how he’s managed that in this series. Full Medical, Evil Agenda, and No Amber Waves of Grain are sci-fi thrillers that will entertain you because they’re more current and frightening now than when I wrote them. All three books are 50% off now on Smashwords. Use the coupon codes for each book on checkout.
In libris libertas!
