Use these considerations for the opening strategy
I love this analogy and have to share it with you as it describes authoring a novel perfectly.
Imagine that your story is about a ship preparing to take off for a journey to the moon. This trip has three distinct parts analogous to the beginning, middle and end; the movement through the Earth’s atmosphere, the travel across open space, and finally landing on the moon.
Your spaceship, your story, cannot travel out of the Earth’s atmosphere to its final destination if the booster rockets are not powerful enough to thrust it beyond the planet’s gravitational pull.
In fact, if your booster rockets fail, your spaceship will fall back to earth and burn into embers.
I want you to think of your opening, your exciting force, as your booster rockets.
They construct your story and keep in mind the following essentials when you create your opening paragraphs. You can use one or two of these techniques, or you can use all of them. The choice is up to you.
So how can you begin an unforgettable story?
Give the reader a sense of what the book is about.
In the beginning, the author presents a contract to the reader, letting them know what kind of book they are going to read.
Uncover a problem.
In adult fiction, authors introduce conflict in many ways, some state it outright, while others let it simmer beneath the surface. Regardless of approach, the reader quickly senses that something is about to go wrong.
Take, for example, the opening of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn:
“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her…”
Though nothing alarming is said outright, a subtle tension coils beneath the surface. His tone is too analytical, too detached. The reader feels it. Something is off in this marriage. Conflict is already brewing.
The adult equivalent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are might be a protagonist who lashes out at their partner during a heated argument, only to retreat into isolation, physically or emotionally.
The consequence isn’t a missed dinner, but a deepening rift or a devastating secret revealed.
The conflict, though more complex, still hinges on cause and effect: action and consequence, just like Max being sent to bed without supper.
Not sure yet what that price will be, but we know the story will continue beyond this immediate consequence of being sent to bed without supper. The reader wants to discover what’s going to happen next.
Reveal character
Sometimes revelation is accompanied in a subtle way by hinting at the kind of character our hero is.
Other times, the emotional state of the protagonist is apparent from the opening sentence.
In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield, the adolescent hero, begins his story with:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
J. D. Salinger has used a powerful voice. He’s tough, resentful and thinks he’s smart enough to know what the reader wants. He’s also filled with a side and naked anger. This is a hero who was rallying against the world a hero teenager can relate to.
Pose a question to the reader
Skillful writing implicitly poses questions, hooking readers.
In Ellen Foster, a crossover novel for teenagers and adults, Kaye Gibbons opens her story with:
When I was little, I would think of ways to kill my dad. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.
The way I liked best was letting go of a poisonous spider in his bed.
What does this question raise?
The first question that springs to mind is, why does this little girl want to kill her father?
What has he done that was so horrible, to make her want to kill him? Does the girl kill her father? These questions create a powerful engine that drives the book and immediately hooks the reader.
Hint at the conflict to come
Conflict is the engine that drives your story.
Conflicts can be comical or dramatic, scary, or tragic. If the character doesn’t confront and cope with conflict, she can’t grow or change. Without this transformation, the character isn’t interesting to read about.
Anchor the story in time and space
From the beginning, readers not only like to know what the stories are about, they like to know where it takes place, and what time in history.
Somehow, you’ve got to propel the action forward by moving the exciting force onto center stage. You have got to catch the reader and pull them into the story.
You have got to hold their hands so tight, entangling them skillfully into the lives of your characters that they don’t want to let go.