In The Beginning

"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." -- Chinese Proverb

You only have a couple of paragraphs in which to grab the attention of the editor and then the reader. Editors at major publishing houses get hundreds more manuscripts per year than they can read, much less publish. If you don't want your manuscript winding up in the slush pile, you need to hook the editor before he or she puts it down and moves on to the next one. With so many manuscripts to evaluate, the editor is not going keep reading yours, waiting for it to get interesting. If, in the first two paragraphs, you can convince the editor your novel is worth reading, you will have overcome the first hurdle in making the sale.

Hooking the reader is equally important, especially if you plan to write a second novel. Have you been to a bookstore recently? The fiction section is enormous. Even if you are only interested in one particular genre, you have hundreds of novels from which to choose. Many readers, when selecting a novel, will read the back to get an idea of the plot and then open it up to the beginning and read the first paragraph or two. Your novel may have the best ending ever written and chapter eight might be nothing short of brilliant, but if you do not hook the reader before he or she leaves the store, the rest will never be read.

This does not mean you must always begin with a big "shocker." You do not necessarily need a natural disaster or a dead body in the first paragraph to hook your reader. Instead, you can begin just before a life changing event, setting the stage and drawing the reader in by hinting at things to come. Josip Novakovich, in Fiction Writer's Workshop, discusses several ways to begin your novel.

Types of Openings

Action: Action is an excellent attention-getter and can be used in a variety of different ways. You can begin with the life changing event, or "shocker," which sets the plot in motion. If your ending is particularly dramatic, you might prefer to begin with the final conflict, then go back to the beginning and continue chronologically. However, the action does not have to be a major plot point. You can begin with something like, "Matthew opened the front door and immediately knew something was wrong. The house was quiet. Too quiet."

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