"She didn't remember dying."
It caught my attention and I wanted to read the explanation.

"I felt the first bullet go through me." OK, maybe that's action ) But there's tons of questions that filled my mind there.

Does everyone need those kind of introductions to make a short story work well? No. I do think that it needs to be interesting to that particular reader. A story about PI's or cops? I might pass simply because those stories don't interest me. A story about a man who finds his wife's car in the garage with its front end smashed and blood-stained and a story in the morning newspaper about a hit and run the previous night when he knows she was working--that would arouse my interest.

To each his own.

I think also that the title of a short story plays a big part of the hook of the story and can be a big determining factor in the interest. In a short story, I'd think you need to quickly give information to the reader that raises questions in their mind that you will answer later. Even a lame question in their mind might keep them reading until the end, but a great one will be the hook they'll remember for a long time.

That said, first lines are important since our work has only time for a quick tap dance on stage before the editors' hooks pull them off. Look at enough first lines that made it and it might help. In that vein, run an internet search for "first lines" and you'll find several sources that list them. One fun one that has you guess which book/author the line belongs to is: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/

For instance, I rather the like the start of "War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells:

quote:

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No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a
microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

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It takes quite a while to get to the point, but it sets a great tone and really makes you want to know what's happening next. Of course, it goes on for too long - that's the start of a lump of exposition that goes on for pages... but if it stopped there and the story started, I think that would be a great opening.

I'm rambling a bit, but what I mean to say is this - the action doesn't have to start immediately. What has to start is the reader's thinking about what is going to happen, and action is a good way of doing this, just not the only one.

EDIT: no I didn't get that quote from the above-linked site, I spent twenty minutes trying to find a copy of it, and our postings crossed... :-)

I don’t mind sliding a bit slowly into the story. Take the opening paragraph of your "Betrayal" story in the feedback section. It’s just description. But it’s rich description, very specific and vivid, and in that way the setting it described kept my attention, building to the situation exposing line of the final sentence.
Giving a bit of build-up in that way can actually be sort of grounding for the story.

Also, I do remember reading something OSC said about this topic; that no matter how much action you put in the beginning of a story, if the reader isn't interested in-- or cares about-- the character, no amount of action is going to grab and keep their attention.

This advice caused me to completely back up and re-hash an idea of mine that had died a pathetically empty death at the end of the first chapter. After I slowed the events down a bit, and brought the focus back to the character, the ideas flowed and began pouring out of me. Now I want to keep going with my story, because *I* care about my character and what happens to her!

OSC's book, Characters and Viewpoint, as well as many style guides can explain it better that I, but I will try. A good majority of what you're trying to explain can be inferred in your text. You are telling a story, not the history of your imagined world. Tell your story, leaving initial exposition to a bare minimum, you'll be surprised at how well the reader can pick up on your little hints.

For example, if I start with a fighting sequence, much can be inferred just by the weapon my character is using. Is it a laser-gun, a sword, a nine millameter, a revolver? You can describe character features while describing their actions as well. "He kept pushed his shotty-dime store sunglasses back, as his slim irish nose didn't seem to be doing the job of keeping them in place." (Sorry, bad example, but you get the picture)

Of course, you are not doing this.... Stilly, POV's should only notice those features of other characters that give them meaningful information (shoddy dime-store sunglasses is actually good, it tells us something about both characters, the character being described that wears such glasses and the character who notices that they are cheap--as opposed to being from the 70's or something like that).

The first hook is the author, which is why books in stores are arranged alphabetically by the name of the author rather than by the name of the story. When you're an unknown to the reader, you have to clearly show that your writing will be worth reading for several hours, or the reader will put the book down. Any other 'hook' that makes the reader think less of the author qua author is a serious mistake.

The second hook is the characters. Same story as above, essentially, with the added burden that the character's have to work at being believable. We all know that someone wrote the book, so the author's reality is not open to question. If fact, if your readers have trouble believing that you (the writer) could be so intelligent and witty and have so many interesting ideas...then you are in a very sweet place. But if they have trouble believing the characters could be so witty, athletic, attractive, etc...then you'll lose their interest.

The third hook is action, things threaten the characters in whom we have developed an interest and they respond in various ways (that increase our attachment to them, hopefully).

The forth 'hook' (in paranthesis) is gimmicks. What gamers call 'Easter Eggs'. Such gimmicks are for the enjoyment of the readers in finding them...but they won't look for them if the process of reading is unpleasant.

I put these in that order because each hook depends significantly (though not totally) on the previous hooks having been set. We are only ready to care about the characters once the writer has persuaded us of his or her abilities as a writer. We are only ready to care what happens to the characters and what they do in response once we care about the characters themselves. We are only ready to look for Easter Eggs after we've played the...er, read the book a couple of times through (though, of course, theoretically, any Easter Egg in a book should be findable on the first pass).

quote:

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Having made him look a fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.

Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.

The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.

Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.

But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad.

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Maybe we as aspiring writers get the wrong idea that a "hook" must be some form of action. But isn't it just as interesting to have a character that is in a situation that poses a question? Or a situation that has something strange? I have to say that anytime I hit the second paragraph of a story, and the story goes into complete explination my mind tunes out.

For me, I want to start a story by trying to get a hook that doesn't appear to be a hook. This is still a process I am learning, but my revisions tend to work better once I have forgotten the need for a hook and just tried to improve my story.

Straight into a scene, action description and dialogue- 11 stories

Description of curiosity- 5

Over a paragraph of exposition or setting description- 3

Character description- 3

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Well, I've bought plenty of books based on the teaser on the back cover.

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I tend to avoid it wherever possible, actually. Too many times I've been stung with stuff on the back cover that spoils the first half of the story...

quote:

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I even found my favorite series of books that way

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Last week at my writers' group I got feedback on the beginning of a new short story I'm working on. The consensus was that this was my best story yet (and this group had seen my Phobos and WOTF finalist stories.) Naturally, their analysis is flawed because they haven't seen the whole story (I haven't even finished it yet), so what they really meant was this was my best beginning of a story.

So I compared this new story with my previous ones to see what the difference was, and I think I know: tension.

In my earlier stories, I tend to start with either a quick info dump to give the reader a sense of the setting, or else a more leisurely scene that shows the the setting and eventually leads into the main plot of the story.

I think those beginnings are interesting because of the settings and characters that are introduced, but they do not have much tension.

My new story introduces tension from the first line: "Grant Sullivan watched his dream slipping away on CNN."

Even though it's set in the near future, I still have an info dump over the first couple of pages, but there is tension strung throughout. I think maybe a spoonful of tension makes the info dump go down, because it gives the reader a reason beyond curiosity to care about the information.