R&R: Raves & Rants For October ~ Great Beginnings

Great Beginnings

Have you heard that you need to hook a reader within the first three pages?  It’s true, but I’d go even further and say that your first page needs to have such a strong hook that readers simply cannot stop reading.

If you’ve been following this column for the past few months, you’re probably expecting me to rant about terrible beginnings.  Instead, I’m going to rave about several books that hooked me with their opening lines.

A chicken will never break your heart.

I dare you to stop reading.  After all, who starts a book talking about chickens and broken hearts?  Joanne Kennedy, that’s who.  This is the opening line of, Cowboy Trouble, the first of her wildly popular cowboy books.  Let’s see how she continues to reel us in after she’s set the hook.

Not that you can’t love a chicken.  There are some people in this world who can love just about anything.

But a chicken will never love you back.  When you look deep into their beady little eyes, there’s not a lot of warmth there – just an avarice for worms and bugs and, if it’s a rooster, a lot of suppressed anger and sexual frustration.  They don’t return your affection in any way.

What makes this work besides the attention-getting first line?  It raises questions.  Who’s telling this story, and why is she talking about chickens?  The first line makes me think she’s had her heart broken, so I want to know who did it and how she’s dealing with that.  As a result, I keep reading, because I need to have my questions answered.

Questions are the key, at least in my opinion.  When I critique manuscripts, I tell the authors that whether or not they’re writing a mystery, their first pages should raise more questions than they answer.  That’s what keeps readers turning pages.

Here’s an opening from another debut novel, Emily France’s highly-acclaimed Signs of You.

She’s been dead two years when I see her in the grocery store.  She’s looking at bottles of bubble bath.  She picks up a pink one, unscrews the cap, and sniffs.  Her nose wrinkles and she puts the bottle back on the shelf.  As she looks for a different scent, I blink.

Once again, the first line hooked me.  After all, how often do you see women who’ve been dead for two years in the grocery store?  I certainly haven’t.  But though the first line intrigued me, it’s France’s skilled prose that kept me reading.  Notice the details that she shares with readers, drawing us into the heroine’s world.  And notice that, like Kennedy’s opening, this one raises questions, including why the heroine blinks as the dead woman searches for a different scent.  Would you continue reading?  I think so.

I challenge you to look at the stories you’re currently reading and identify what about the opening paragraphs convinced you to keep reading.  Did the authors plant questions in your brain?  I’m betting they did, because that’s the hallmark of a great beginning.

Next month we’ll be back to rants, this time the truth about lies.

~Amanda

A lifetime of reading and writing, not to mention a host of teachers who believed that good grammar was one of the essentials of life, have given Amanda Cabot such firm opinions about the printed word that I asked her to share some with us in her Raves and Rants posts.  Although her working career was in Information Technology, Amanda achieved her dream of selling her first novel before her thirtieth birthday and is now the author of more than thirty novels as well as a number of books and articles for Information Technology professionals.  

Her most recent release is A Borrowed Dream, the second of the Cimarron Creek trilogy.

Find all of Amanda's books, newsletter info and social media links here.