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More... er... problematic rules...

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Yeah, I think start with action is bad go-to advice. But I think it's close, and that's why people fall for it.

Start with rising action.

Begin at a point where things will escalate quickly. If you start in the middle of the action, then not only have you not prepared your readers, but your tension has nowhere to go but down.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I feel like I may be falling into all three of these traps - or rather, like I'm aiming to go straight into them. I'm trying to create tension and suspense to keep the reader wondering, but it may very well be that I'm overdoing it.
It's good to keep these things in mind and hopefully save myself some revision and editing, there's enough of that to be done eventually anyway. :p
 
My rule of thumb is that you should start with something that illuminates what your story is really about. For instance, if your story's about family, begin with a scene that establishes the protagonist's relationship with his family, and if your story's about prejudice, begin with a scene of your protagonist experiencing prejudice. These may not be "action" scenes in the conventional sense of the word, but they can build emotion, and from there create investment. (There are exceptions--for instance, you can't start with loss, since you need to establish the value of what will be lost--but this works nine times out of ten.)
 

Lawfire

Sage
Something has to be happening. If a story starts with lengthy description, my eyes glaze over. I think that is the main point of "Rule #1." Preferably something that makes the reader wonder why it is happening without confusing them.
 
I'd call this required reading, for anyone starting a story. We're all deluged with one of these rules --grab them sooner, louder! snow 'em with description! mix 'em up with mystery!-- as if you can measure a hook's power by how purely it does one thing. It's a classic pressure in Hollywood, and of course they lead the way in taking it too far.

But, action and description depend on some context. We can't rush into battle (or poetry) so fast we don't make a nod to who we should care about, usually for what human reasons make them interesting. And mystery needs the same anchor, plus it can't get so esoteric the readers don't spot there's something they should want to know next (or be so clumsy they realize we're just holding too much back for fun).

So, we have to avoid "purifying" our hook into a one-note experience. No matter how strongly we want to hook the reader, and how fast, a start still needs to play a couple things off each other to work. Like any other writing.
 
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