First Lines Don’t Sell a Book; First Pages Do

Along with my fellow writers at Southwest Crime Ink, I spoke at the premiere Tucson Festival of Books back in March. We talked about “hooks,” and how to snare a reader first thing out of the box. Being a wonk about writing, I had to weigh in with this hand-out:

SIX THINGS THAT SHOULD BE ON THE FIRST PAGE

1. The hook—a one-line teaser that foreshadows trouble. Then set the scene, give us character, and let the hook work on the reader for a while before addressing it again.

2. Give us a character we can relate to. Show us the character by showing something he loves, hates, or some strength he/she possesses. It’s good if the character knows himself. (See example: “Sometimes I’m an idiot.”)

3. Start in the middle of the action

4. Give us a time and a place

5. Give us specifics that make the world seem real to the reader

6. Trouble. Trouble that continues, trouble that morphs into other troubles, trouble that gets worse. It can be a minor irritation, like a bad feeling or a conversation gone wrong, or worse, a worry like a nagging tooth. Or it can be something really bad.

For an example, I used the beginning of Joseph Finder’s KILLER INSTINCT, which starts out:

“Okay, sometimes I’m an idiot.

“The Acura went into a ditch because I was trying to do too many things at once. Radiohead’s “The Bends” was playing, loud, while I was driving home, too fast, since I was late as usual. ”

So he’s in a ditch and has other problems, which he discusses with is wife on the cell phone, and then the tow truck driver comes. The tow truck driver immediately establishes himself as the “alpha dog,” when he says:

“’Let me guess. You were talking on your cell phone.’

“I blinked, hesitated for a microsecond before I said sheepishly, ‘Yeah.’”

I use excerpts from the first few pages of Finder’s book to illustrate my points:

The hook: “Okay, sometimes I’m an idiot.”

The character we follow: we don’t know his name yet, but he’s young, he’s “cool,” he’s white collar but isn’t high up on the food chain yet, and he drives fast. He seems thoughtless and self-absorbed, but you like him because he knows he can be an idiot.

The particulars: listening to Radiohead “The Bends,” thumbing his Blackberry, multi-tasking, Driving an Acura (tells where he is on the food chain). Contrast him with the tow-truck driver in the Harley-Davidson jacket, the mullet, the bandana.

The time and place: night, a lonely road somewhere

The middle of something: literally in the middle of driving, listening to music, texting when he ran into the ditch.

Continuing trouble and foreshadowing: You can see that the Harley tow truck guy has his number, is already getting the upper hand. Despite the main character’s business suit and Acura and up-and-comer status, it doesn’t take Finder long to establish who’s the alpha dog here.

Trouble, in the form of this Harley-jacket-wearing tow truck driver, is coming to a book store near you.