How to Ground (and Hook) Readers in Your Opening Scene

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If readers get lost in your first scene, they’ll never get to the second.

The opening scene of my novel, The Shifter, features a girl getting caught stealing eggs out from under a sleeping chicken. It’s a fun scene, I enjoyed writing it, and most of all—it helped sell the novel.

Somewhere along the lines, my critique partners and I started referring to strong opening scenes as “chicken scenes.”

As in:

“I’m still working on my chicken scene.”

“I thought of the perfect chicken scene yesterday.”

“I can’t get this book written until I find my chicken scene.”

Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com