The First Words Count

[Addison]

I recently came across an event that made it clear that the first hundred words are like the first words you hear when you answer the phone. Are your first words saying "Hello, I'm calling to congratulate you because you just won a million dollars!", or "Hell ma'am have you seen my dog?" or even "Hello, is your house chilly and cold? Well it won't be as, in the next three minutes, you can purchase a brand new central heating unit for only five grand."
The second one has a chance. The third gets slammed back into the receiver or dropped with a scream.

But hey if you want to test your opening then try this:
http://tinyurl.com/pcmopmq


The Hook is the first hundred words. The line is the scene and the sinker is the chapter. How do you guys feel about openings?

 

[Trick]

Are we thinking prologue or chapter 1?

 

[Julian S Bartz]

I think this is very true. You have about a paragraph to get your reader to keep reading a lot of the time. However I can think of a lot of famous books that I have come to love where it takes me a few pages to really get into the story. In those cases I read on because I have it on good authority that the story is great.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I think this is very true. You have about a paragraph to get your reader to keep reading a lot of the time. However I can think of a lot of famous books that I have come to love where it takes me a few pages to really get into the story. In those cases I read on because I have it on good authority that the story is great.

You see, now, that's the thing. When our manuscript is in an agent or an editor's hand, or our book is in front of a reader, we're not famous. Not yet. No one is reading past a rubbish beginning on "good authority" that we are great. All we have is our own merits. So don't bank on the laurels of others. We have to rely on our own talent, our own hard work, and our own faith in our characters and our stories to shine.

Eventually, it will pay off.

 

[BWFoster78]

If you are a big name author and/or have a built in audience, the opening isn't all that important. You can afford to slowly draw in the reader.

If you are like the majority of authors on this site, the opening is crucial. Let's say a potential reader hears about your book, where do they go from there:

Step 1: If you're lucky, they'll actually check out your Amazon book page and read the description.
Step 2: If the description intrigues them, they'll check out a few reviews (though I think some readers will reverse the order of Steps 2 and 3).
Step 3: If the reviews don't raise any red flags, they'll check out the sample.
Step 4: They're only going to give you a few minutes of their time. If your opening doesn't grab them or they find any kind of flaw, they're off to the next book.

Basically, if you don't have a rock-solid description, some good reviews, and an awesome opening, I think you have little chance of converting a random browser to a buyer.

 

[Steerpike]

I do steps 1 and 4 of what BWFoster suggests when shopping on Amazon. I ignore reviews and don't read blurbs. Covers help me land on a specific Amazon page to start with, as do Titles. I always read the first page or so of a sample or of a book in the bookstore, and if I'm not convinced to buy it by then I move on.

 

[Philip Overby]

I download tons of samples for my Kindle. I'm always looking for extra books to jump to the head of my to be read pile. I want that next book that's going to "wow" me. I have trouble sticking with books because I want to enjoy what I'm reading at least on multiple levels. It doesn't have to click on all cylinders, but it needs to on some.

I've been doing this reading group on the site here so it'll help prioritize my reading. I'm weird in that I need lots of structure to the way I read. Like I need a book to read before bed, a book to read on the train, etc. I like to categorize my books in that way for a strange reason. If a book "wows" me, it gets read completely. Very rarely do I put down a book I think is awesome.

That said, if I hear from someone that a book is good, I'll give it more than several pages. For me, word use and style catches my attention fairly quickly. Characters and setting hook me deeper. If the plot seems like a winner, then I'm along for the ride. Usually I go through stages when reading:

1. This is starting out good.
2. OK, the main character is interesting/weird/funny/badass/crazy.
3. Oh, I like this world already.
4. OK, so what's going to happen here?
5. (Plot revealed) That's cool.
6. Wow, this is really cool.
7. Can't wait to see what happens next.

If I get through these seven steps, I'll most likely buy anything you ever publish again. For me, this usually happens within the first chapter or two. If one of these steps is off or not clicking, I'm more likely to put the book down. That doesn't mean I'll stop reading it altogether, but it means another book will move to the top of my list.

So for me, yes, the opening lines are important, but I usually give a little more time to find out if these other steps start falling into place.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I fully agree with Phil on this. I'm the same way. When I read Swordspoint in fact (April's reading group pick) I got a few pages in and was pretty along for the ride...until some nobles got together and sat around gossiping over tea. It turned me off so much I put the book down and didn't read beyond. One reason was it was just too much information for me to keep straight. I didn't have a clue what was going on and I didn't have time to get lost a few pages in. It felt a bit like Trigonometry in High School, where I was really trying to get a good grade, but three weeks in, I had a D-. No sense completing that class. I took a study hall.

I think you do have a few paragraphs to wow a reader, but more than that, you have a duty not to betray their trust a few pages down the road. GIve them the wow moment in the first page. Then bring them through the obstacle course of your opening chapter or three by throwing them bones--little things they can sink their teeth into. Give a touch of mystery or a little humor. Something to keep them building on their opening positive experience.

 

[Steerpike]

I had a different feel for Swordspoint. I love those chapters where nobles are sitting around bantering, and where each line of dialogue has hidden meaning and innuendo that you have to puzzle out. If Kushner had opened with that, I'd have been just as likely to finish the book as I was with the opening she chose. The Fall of the Kings (also a Riverside book, and excellent) has perhaps more of this than Swordspoint, though it is academics and nobles bantering about what happened to the kings and wizards. The Privilege of the Sword (also great) takes a more traditional approach.

The banter reminds me at times of books like Jane Eyre, which I love, where things can't always be said directly and the reader is forced to draw conclusions from suggestion, innuendo, or even what is not said.

I don't mind being a bit confused or bewildered. One thing I like about Steven Erikson is that he doesn't hold you hand at all. There is little to no explanation of what is really going on in any overt sense, whether through narration or dialogue. Most books use a combination of both to feed information to the reader, and it is all artificial in some sense, though with a good writer it doesn't seem artificial. Erikson puts you into a scene and the characters act and talk as they would be expected to, as people who already know what is going on and don't have to re-hash it. And the narrator doesn't tend to fill in the gaps. I think Erikson has a particular genius for this. It's not easy to do. If you're going to give the reader all of the background information and setup in dialogue or exposition, that's easy to do. If you take Erikson's approach, it's not just a matter of doing the opposite and withholding information. Instead, you have to make sure that the reader has the tools needed to supply that information herself, upon thinking about it.

Some of the more rewarding fantasy reading I've done in recent years has been in moving from a state of bewilderment reading Erikson, to a state of dawning realization, to that "Aha!" moment when pieces click into place. It's great fun.

 

[Philip Overby]

I had a different feel for Swordspoint. I love those chapters where nobles are sitting around bantering, and where each line of dialogue has hidden meaning and innuendo that you have to puzzle out. If Kushner had opened with that, I'd have been just as likely to finish the book as I was with the opening she chose. The Fall of the Kings (also a Riverside book, and excellent) has perhaps more of this than Swordspoint, though it is academics and nobles bantering about what happened to the kings and wizards. The Privilege of the Sword (also great) takes a more traditional approach.

Without spoiling anything too much, there's a scene on a barge I really loved that had a lot of this going on. I'm not normally interested in this kind of thing, but it just goes to show you execution always trumps everything else. In the hands of a different author, I may have zoned out.

Some of the more rewarding fantasy reading I've done in recent years has been in moving from a state of bewilderment reading Erikson, to a state of dawning realization, to that "Aha!" moment when pieces click into place. It's great fun.

Erikson is a great example of the point I tried to make above. His style hooked me early on in Gardens of the Moon. The writing just had a certain flair to it I hadn't seen in some time. I was confused as all hell, but still intrigued. I started to get more interested in the world and before I knew it I had my first character (Paran) who I was really interested in. This later turned to Tattersail and some others. It was weird and different and yet somehow started to become familiar once I got used to it.

Living in Japan, there are certain elements of this I've learned in just everyday life. At first I was baffled by everything and had trouble functioning. I still have trouble at times, but I'm much more acclimated to everything because some things I figured out on my own without someone explaining every single detail of how to get by. It's exciting in life and in a book when you start to get what's happening without someone or the author saying, "Look at this. This explains everything!"

I know Erikson is not everyone's cup of tea, but I agree that he's one that just clicked for me.

 

[Steerpike]

Without spoiling anything too much, there's a scene on a barge I really loved that had a lot of this going on. I'm not normally interested in this kind of thing, but it just goes to show you execution always trumps everything else. In the hands of a different author, I may have zoned out.

Yes, the barge scene is excellent. And once you get from there to the theater, things really start to heat up

 

[Caged Maiden]

yeah, it isn't conversation or banter I necessarily dislike. The scene I'm referring to is like two old women having tea and talking about all the people they know, while one's nephew or something is thinking about other things. It was just too much for the beginning of a book for me. I didn't know who any of the people were and that gave their conversation little weight to me as a reader. Also, I found the pacing really overwhelming. It was a slow conversation but the number of names they listed with no other concept to grab hold of was just an imbalance for me. Honestly... I'm forgiving, which is why I'm willing to push through it and read it with you guys again, but i can't help but wonder whether if I handed that manuscript off to crit partners, how many of them would tell me that the conversation isn't working and list those reasons.

It's interesting how sometimes we learn not to do certain things (like introduce a bunch of names in a contrived conversation--overall a rather boring scene taking place in an old lady's parlor) but here it is and in a book that is quite well known. Interesting.

 

[Steerpike]

I think it also demonstrates how much comes down to individual tastes and why, ultimately, you have to have faith in your own vision of the story and not necessarily let beta readers guide it. I enjoyed the scene in question, but for anything I enjoy there is always someone who didn't care for it.

 

[skip.knox]

>Are we thinking prologue or chapter 1?

Which points out the trouble with prologues.

 

[skip.knox]

@A.E. Lowan, I think you have the logic reversed here. If I'm reading Julian S Bartz correctly (which I must be, because I agree!), it's not that I give a book more time because it is famous. Rather, I have read a good many books I enjoyed greatly which did not have boffo openings. These books happened to be famous for being well-written. To put it another way, both this reader and many other readers liked these books that opened slowly. And if that's true, why all this fuss over the first sentence or the first hundred words?

Well, he said, answering his own question, it has little to do with reading and little to do with writing. It has much to do with the nature of current journalism. The fashion nowadays is for numbered lists and catchy headlines. It's a trivial task to gather "evidence" (NB: anecdotes are not data) to prove one's point about fast openings. It's equally trivial to prove the opposite.

Here's the thing that gets me. If I can write a hooky hundred words, why stop at a hundred? Why not write the whole book in such a way as to hold the reader mesmerized? And if I can do that, what's the fuss over those first hundred words? The advice should therefore be: write well.

That, of course, will not get many Likes nor drive traffic to your blog. So we get the Wisdom of the First Hundred.

 

[Michael J. Tobias]

There's a distinct difference in writing a grabber and just writing "well." A description of a street can be written "well" and be enjoyable to read, but if it's the first thing in the book, I'm gonna think the writer doesn't really understand structure and pacing. Similarly, the idea of writing every scene so that it "grabs" the reader is going to lead to a weary reader, because the "grabber" is like a prize dangled at the end of a stick. If there's no payoff, soon the reader will see it as nothing but a mechanical rabbit used to lure the reader to no end and put the book away.

 

[Addison]

Exactly.

Look at these two sentences:
"The valley slept under a blanket of fresh snow as the moonlight peeked around the clouds."

And

"The grizzly bear lifted its head from its paw as a human's scream attracted its ears and grumbling stomach."

Which sentence grabs you better? It's the one with the "uh-oh" factor. You want to be sure to carry that factor and let it grow. Don't write it just to grab the reader.

 

[Svrtnsse]

The first one actually appeals to me more. However, this might be because it reminds me a lot of one of my favorite books I used to read as a child, Moominland Midwinter.
The Amazon link lets you Look Inside to see the first bit of the book, but I'll quote the introduction here:

The sky was almost black, but the snow shone a bright blue in the moonlight.
The sea lay asleep under the ice, and deep down among the roots of the earth all small beasts were sleeping and dreaming of spring. But spring was quite a bit away because the year had only just got a little past New Year's.

It goes on like this for quite a while. There's nothing to grip the reader and pull them in on the action. Nothing really happens until the end of the second page.
What it does instead is it sets the mood. It creates something of an air of mystery and hints at secrets to be revealed. This appeals to me and gets me interested in learning more about what's going on.

Now, I'm clearly biased. I've read this book several times and I've got one of the pictures in it tattooed on my arm. I really do like it though and I wish I could write like this.

 

[skip.knox]

Exactly. One of the many fallacies with the hook-'em-early thesis is that there is some universal hook. Not only do different openings appeal differently to different people, I'll react differently to the same opening depending on where I am in my life.

The most effective opening is not the one that grabs the reader, because that statement is too vague. The most effective opening is the one that works best for your particular story. And by "works best" I mean "is the absolute best I was able to do". That might very well be an action opening, but it might also be a mood-setting opening. Or dialog. Or even once-upon-a-time.

Which brings me to another detrimental aspect of the fallacy. It focuses the author on the wrong thing. The focus should always be on the story. Everything is subordinate. Get the story right and make sure the beginning is right for the story. Make sure the ending is right too. And don't forget that middle. IOW: write the story.

Maybe I'll feel differently after I've published my eleventh book and I can work on points for style (to coin a phrase). But I hope not.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Here's the thing that gets me. If I can write a hooky hundred words, why stop at a hundred? Why not write the whole book in such a way as to hold the reader mesmerized? And if I can do that, what's the fuss over those first hundred words?

Let's flip this. I suppose you could say I write stories with hooks, but I don't really use most of the things people talk about when they talk about hooks--not just in the beginning, but in the story as a whole. Why would I write a hooky beginning if it's not representative of the story, rather than a beginning that shows what kind of story it's going to be?

Edit@Addison: I greatly prefer the first one. The first one works on beauty and the second on tension, but I have no reason to be tense if I don't know who's screaming.