Grabbing the reader from the start

[John Dean]

However you start your story, the beginning should have The Question, something that hooks your reader, gives them a reason to read on to page 2. You need to grab them from those first lines.

One way to do to this is to intrigue the reader. I tried this with To Honour the Dead, which began: “Of course, thought Jack Harris as he sat with his feet up on the desk in his office, it could be that he really was the only one who sensed that something was wrong. Perhaps the others simply could not feel it or, even if they could, did not share his concerns. What if, and the thought came to Harris reluctantly, as it always did with suggestions of personal weakness, he was over-reacting? Harris knew that most of his colleagues at Levton Bridge Police Station shared that view; he had seen it in their faces every time he started to talk about it.”

I hoped that by dropping the reader into the middle of something - they were just not sure what - there would be a reason for them to keep reading. What was wrong? Why was Jack Harris the only one who could see it?

The dropped introduction can also work: “Betty was a pleasant woman. She would do anything for anyone. Everyone liked old Betty. A true angel, they used to say. Which was why it was such a shock when she was killed by a Mafia hitman.” You just gotta know what Betty had been doing!

There is another way of hooking readers, in which the writer can draw us in with the sheer quality of their writing, as in books like Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. But you’ve got to be good. Very good.

Whatever you do, remember that all stories begin in the middle - the people you write about have already plenty of history. What you are doing is catapulting the reader into their life.

To find out what was bugging the Detective Chief Inspector in To Honour the Dead, you can go to

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HONOUR-DEAD-thrilling-detective-Detective-...