Your Opening Is Weak
“Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,” said Paul O’Neill, “send your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall until the tagline.” It’s some of the best advice you’ll get when it comes to opening a novel. If your opening lines don’t grab the reader by the throat, they need work. Your book needs a hook, and that hook has to dig in from the first words.
There are two basic ways to open your novel. You can write a provocative prologue in which we don’t see your protagonist, or we can meet your protagonist right away. If we meed him right away, I have a rule to offer you. I say “offer” because it’s really more of a guideline than a rule. It doesn’t hold true in action series work, for example, because it would get ridiculous quickly, and there are some stories where it just doesn’t fit. If it does fit, though, consider this:
When we meet your protagonist, we should meet him at the worst moment on the worst day of his life.
Use this as an exercise to punch up the opening of your novel. For example, consider the following opening:
Bastille smashed through a trio of coeds on his way to the fence, putting them on the paving. He was going to hear about that. He was sure to have bloodied at least one of them. They wailed after him. He was here to protect their lives, not their dignity, but he was still going to hear about it.
Huffing, face burning, a stitch growing in his side, he reached the south fence. His thumb found the safety on the rifle while he was still running. That was a violation of University procedure. Getting caught moving with a weapon off safe would get him disciplined.
The armor-piercing rounds in the carbine’s magazine would get him fired.
That is an actual opening from a first draft I wrote for a novel. I showed it to one of my mentors, someone who frequently provides me with great feedback and criticism on my writing, and he told me it wasn’t good enough. It was, in fact, pretty weak. Several edits later, here’s what that opening looks like:
The students had been jammed together in the auditorium when the first of the creatures hit the perimeter fence. A severed head landed on the stage. Then the screaming started. There had been no way to evacuate them all.
He stepped in a puddle of blood. Someone was screaming. To his left, a body burned.
He touched his left ear. “Ethan,” he said. “Ethan, come in. Ethan!”
Still nothing. Ethan had been assigned to this section of the quad. Maybe he had gone to ground with a group of students. Maybe he had barricaded himself somewhere. Maybe Ethan’s carbine was the last line of defense.
Don’t be dead, Ethan.
Bastille closed his eyes. His lungs ached. This was his fault.
Now compare the two. The language is much tighter and reads more quickly, which is what you want in a fast-paced opening for a thriller, action novel, or horror piece like this. There’s also a much more immediate building of tension. In the first opening, you get the same information, more or less, about a vague threat the protagonist, Bastille, is fighting.
In the second opening, you get slapped in the face with just how awful that threat is, not to mention a healthy does of internal conflict because our hero is blaming himself for some aspect of it. There’s additional tension from the fact that our hero is now looking for someone specific whom he fears may be dead. Overall, it’s a much stronger opening that better thrusts the reader into the action.
There’s another trick for punching up your openings that you should consider, and that is chopping out your opening paragraphs. Many authors try to set the scene to the detriment of the actual throat-grabbing O’Neill was talking about. I do it myself, and even knowing that I do it, I can’t predict what needs to be eliminated until I actually write it. For example, here is the original, first-draft opening of my novella, Augment: Human Services:
Techno-lounge music thumped and bumped and unced from inside the nightclub, synchronized to exterior displays to create a harmonic strobe. The lights would give any human being a headache after a few minutes’ exposure. Chalmers, accustomed to these petty provocations, averted his eyes through long habit. As he strapped on the forearm bracers of his armor, he glanced to Nile, who was staring out the window on the passenger side. Drops of water dotted the plastic, the shadows they cast drawing phantom pocks on the younger man’s face.
“You’re going to get a migraine,” Chalmers warned. “Don’t look at it.”
Nile jerked his head back as if he’d been caught gazing into an acetylene torch. He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands on the dashboard.
“Relax,” Chalmers said. He began tightening the straps of his chest plate. The spinal guard, overlapping steel plates running down the center of his back, clanked as he shook himself. Nile opened one eye experimentally, then both, as Chalmers press-checked the gas-operated automatic before shoving it into the high-ride holster over his appendix. He grunted as the grips of the gun dug into his gut.
It’s not bad, and it sets the mood I wanted, but the first paragraph isn’t a very good hook. On review, the opening should start with Chalmers’ warning to Nile. Here is how the opening appears in the final draft:
“You’re going to get a migraine,” Chalmers warned. “Don’t look at it.”
Techno-lounge music thumped and bumped and unced from inside the nightclub, synchronized to exterior displays to create a harmonic strobe. The lights would give any human being a headache after a few minutes’ exposure. Chalmers, accustomed to these provocations, averted his eyes through long habit. As he strapped on the forearm bracers of his armor, he glanced at Nile, who had been staring out the window on the passenger side. Drops of water dotted the plastic, the shadows they cast drawing phantom pocks on the younger man’s face.
Nile jerked his head back as if he’d been caught eyeballing an acetylene torch. He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands on the dashboard.
“Relax,” Chalmers said. He began tightening the straps of his chest plate. The spinal guard, overlapping steel plates running down the center of his back, clanked as he shook himself. Nile opened one eye experimentally, then both, as Chalmers press-checked the gas-operated pistol before shoving it into the high-ride holster over his appendix. Chalmers grunted as the grips of the gun dug into his gut.
It’s a subtle change, but it makes all the difference in the world. Eliminating the first paragraph (and in this case simply moving it to after the first line of dialogue) more immediately puts the reader into the story while also raising tension. What is who looking at? Why would it give them a migraine? The reader is hooked and wants more information.
The otherwise minor shift also puts the focus on Chalmers, the protagonist, from the outset, rather than focusing on the setting and then shifting to Chalmers. Again, this is a subtle change, but the novel benefits greatly from it. There are also a few tweaks to the prose that emphasize Chalmers’ tough-guy attitude. “Gazing” is too soft for a tough guy like Chalmers; if he were assessing his passenger’s behavior, he’d think the word “eyeballing” before he’d think “gazing.”
(Not coincidentally, the chapter goes on to describe Chalmers’ being framed for murder on a day that is, unquestionably, the worst day of his life.)
When writing an opening, always look for what will grab the reader most powerfully. Then look at what you can trim, move, or completely delete to clear the way for that hook. You’ll find that almost every first chapter you write is bogged down with extra fat that can be sliced away to reveal a first-class hook. Nothing you write will ever see more sets of eyes than the first paragraph. If you want the reader to continue past that, you’ve got to make a compelling first impression.
