This isn't hooking me. It's simply a dialogue between mother and son, with mother reminiscing about something. But there's no forward direction. It's all just establishing back story. I suggest skipping ahead and starting closer to the moment of change.

I’ve been thinking over her insight. In the case in point, she was right, I think. That particular opening did not work.
However, I’m not sure ….
Perhaps it is the difference between “establishing backstory” and “establishing setting.” With both there is likely no forward movement Yet how necessary is that?
Is that the key to why a whole class of openings fail?

Forward movement is nice but it is not the only quality that makes for a good opening. Really well-written description can work. It has to evoke a feeling – curiosity, desire, hunger: some powerful emotion – in the reader. The more powerful the reader’s response, the more successful the opening.

In my opinion, it is the reader’s response emotionally that is the key to good openings rather than any particular element such as forward movement or whether you open with dialogue or description or whatever.

Which leads us to the question of how to determine reader’s response. Tricky at best. Any ideas for guidelines?

One grain of salt I take when reading responses to any particular offering in any critical venue is that the general preference of the most active responders is for dramatic action openings. They're not my target audience. I feel that posting something that does appeal to my target audience is a contentious exercise at best and more likely to shake my confidence than improve upon the opening.

Setting the scene can work, depending upon the scene you're setting, how well you describe it, and how much the reader cares. Keep in mind that different readers will find different openings most compelling.

Back story and setting the scene are not the same thing although it can be difficult to separate the two sometimes. Setting a scene involves what is happening in the now of the story. Back story talks about how we got to the now of a story. One rule of thumb I Like -- if you find yourself using the word "had" very early in the story, it's probably back story.

I've stated on previous threads that action openings tend to turn me off, and that readers can be compelled in many, subtle ways, without necessarily dangling anything right in front of their noses or whipping them into turning the page.

Mary Renault's The Persisan Boy, one of my all time favorite books, in fact starts with back story. But it's still dynamic, while yet being loaded with potential:

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Lest anyone should suppose I am a son of nobody, sold off by some peasant father in a drought year, I may say our line is an old one, though it ends with me. My father was Artembares, son of Arazis, of the Pasargadai, Kyros’ old royal tribe. Three of our family fought for him, when he set the Persians over the Medes. We held our land eight generations, in the hills west above Susa. I was ten years old, and learning a warrior’s skills, when I was taken away.

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Edited to add:
Determining the readers' response, I think, is simply trial and error. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the rest of us simply have to write, get responses, and write again.

And as Christine wisely pointed out, what constitutes a hook is a matter of opinion, though some openings will certainly be more popular. So, perhaps the more pointed question would be, how do I know my market and how can I compel my targeted readers to read on?

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Which leads us to the question of how to determine reader’s response. Tricky at best. Any ideas for guidelines?

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You can't. Which is why, in the end, you write your story, and try to make it the best...and by that I mean the best version of what it is...that it can be. Tben you find a market/readers/audience/whatever that it works for.

Now of course most here seem to want to do it the other way around, but honestly that makes little sense to me.

There are many different people with many different tastes. Thats why there is no secret to a "perfect opening" or a "perfect hook" or whatever...because one persons perfect is another persons crap.

So write what is in your head, and then find a home for it that fits.

I am fairly convinced that for the most part, we have to show a character in that scene and have them doing something or have something happening to them that starts to draw us in.

Read the opening of the oft mentioned GRR Martin novel Game of Thrones. It's a beautifully written opening. It does a great job of scene setting, but even more important it draws us in with a specfic, named character--a boy on his way to see his first beheading.

While to some extent dialogue is doing something--talking, it frequently is fairly static and if it's just relationship building it has the effect of talking heads. So... I'd say it generally doesn't work.

One example, but I could give you dozens. Give me someone to care about and I'll be a lot more patient with your scene setting.

The fundamental dramatic premises are a stranger comes to town or a native leaves home. One other approach combines the two, someone interesting in somewhere interesting does something dramatic.

Let me point out this thread is about novel openings, not marketing.

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It has to evoke a feeling – curiosity, desire, hunger: some powerful emotion – in the reader.

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I think all three of those feelings are similar/related/on a scale - and represent what we as writers needs to do to get a reader into our story. We have to make them curious. There are degrees of being curious. The "huh - what was that?" and "eh?" and "hmms" But what we really want is the hunger kind of curious, a reader who is *compelled* to continue reading, unable to stop.

As bizarre as this analogy is, for some reason I was reminded of people's behavior when driving. When people drive past a dead animal on the road, most will look - trying to see what kind of animal it was. Mildly curious about what caused its demise. (Me, I avert my gaze, but I'm a vegetarian tree-hugger, I don't like to see dead animals.) There's probably some middle group of driving behavior, but I can't make my analogy stretch that far right now. Instead, at the top end we have gawkers on the highway. People are just compelled to stare at an accident, trying I think to figure out what happened. Deep curiosity. It doesn't last long on the highway, only until the next thing on the side of the highway steals the driver's attention.

From Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice":

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

From "Gone with the Wind":

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when captured by her charms as the Tarlton twins were."

From "The Fellowship of the Ring":

"This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history."

From "Peter Pan":

"All children, but one, grow up."

And just for fun (name that series!):

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

My point is that good stories don't have to suck you right in with "action," per se. They should simply make you want to keep reading.

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But it is possible to hook the reader with the dramatic premise, right?

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I don't think it can be the initial hook, Kathleen. I don't think you are going to get the dramatic premise in the first part of the first chapter so that it can serve that purpose. Sure it is probably what will KEEP the reader hooked. But we're talking about starting the story here and surely your dramatic premise needs development. Most do anyway and you'll get that a few chapters in, generally.

An excellent discussion of this is in Bell's Plot & Structure and I recommend Chapter 4 in particular for anyone who wants to strengthen their beginnings.

I've already mentioned that I think the first paragraph of Game of Thrones is a great hook. It doesn't introduce the premise but does introduce a character in a dramatic situation.

The hook might be action or emotion. It can be voice but that is difficult to achieve. I always thought the opening of Catcher in the Rye was particularly good in that respect. I just happen not to be J. D. Salinger so I don't try that one at this stage in my career.

#

A roller coaster car trundles to a halt as we wait at the platform. We see the tracks rising and falling, twisting and turning, the promise of thrills. And the dead body of a girl in a miniskirt, lying across the tracks at the top of the first rise.

#

A bright red Aston Martin draws up. As it sits there with its engine growling, the valet scrambles out and holds the door open to let us slide into the sumptuous cream leather of the driving seat. But why is there blood on the the passenger seat? Fresh, wet blood ...

#

I drive trucks, eighteen wheelers, have done for years. I'd never seen one float across San Francisco Bay, cab and cargo rocking in the waves, until the day Margaret walked into my life.

#

I think a hook sets a scene and a puzzle. The scene need only be a rough sketch; it can be fleshed out later, as the need arises. The puzzle can be a hint of the dramatic premise, a taste of conflict, or a small challenge which leads to the main one.

The hook is a promise, a taste of the story to come, its style, setting and conflict.

To write a start which draws readers in is difficult. I think it's a mistake to be logical, to explain the backstory one thinks readers will need to understand the story. True, they'll need it, but that's company report style. An interesting challenge for a writer, part of the the art, is to feed information through dialogue and narrative, by including telling details, such that the reader is carried along without realising.

I write stories and hooks that I like. I hope that others do too. (I can't write what I don't like.)

I write one day, then read a day or three later, capturing my immediate reactions to the story and trying to avoid being precious and proud with it. When I think it's good I offer it for critique, and learn that it's not, and start all over.

For me what's critical in that process is to offer it for critique to people who are representative of the target audience--in my case, SF readers. It's critical because I don't think people who do not like SF can usefully critique it. (There are exceptions, as there are to any rule, but they're exceptional.)

I hope this helps, but I doubt that it will,
Pat

I think when we're talking about the opening it ought to be the first chapter, not just the first page.

Give me an interesting situation - the 18 wheeler floating in th bay.

Give me an interesting person- Scarlett O'Hara or the Dursleys.

Promise to take me someplace fantastic - Peter Pan, LOTR

The reason "scene setting" often doesn't work is because it foreshadows nothing. David Wolverton used a great example and I'll have to cull through them to find the reference (If IB can't remember it too) where "scene setting" is so much more than that. First, the language was amazing. Second, while he was describing an open field at sunset, the author did an wonderful job of building a sense of menance into the opening paragraphs. The reader knew at a gut level that all this (being described) was going to be swept away by events. That was the promise. How it was going to happen was the hook.

I've been listening to Algis Budry's Falling Torch his hook, for me, was that "Wireman was finally dead." Otherwise the scene was pretty bland (yes, send the hate mail now) and he kept "wandering" to tell me about the funeral and what the new Geneva looked like. BUT everytime my interest started to wander, there was another nugget. Geneva had been destroyed in the invader attack - What? Who ruled Earth for 20 years until Wireman forced them out. Geneva was rebuilt again by Wireman. Wireman scoffed at his own biography as "poppy cock" and the unnamed "young man" his "heir" wonders why. Well, by the time I'm at that "poppy cock" the first chaper is done.

Each of the first lines LL and TaleSpinner used made a promise and conveyed something about the heart of the story.

Pride and Prejudice and Gone with the Wind promise to be character peices.

Fellowship and Peter Pan are promising to take me to fantastic places to meet equally fantastic and larger than life (even if small in size) characters.

Harry Potter - promised something less than normal - slightly less fantastic than Fellowship or Peter Pan.

The first 2 of Tale Spinners promise to be murder mysteries. The 3rd promises to me interesting charcters and has almost a gumshoe feel about it even if the narrator is a truck driver. So, I still think we're dealing with a Mystery.

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Yes, but all of you are coming back to my original premise:

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Reader resonance means connecting with the needs and desires, problems and worries, and lifestyles and society of readers. Knowing the target audience's reading tastes and preferences follows from knowing who they are and what they read. The scatter gun effect might work; which reminds me of an old joke.

Three clerics met for a discussion of tithing. One cleric said, "I draw a circle on the ground then throw the collection into the air. Whatever lands in the circle I give to God."

The second cleric said, "I use a circle too, but I give to God what lands outside the circle."

The third cleric said, "I throw the collection in the air and let God keep what he wants."

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Yes, but all of you are coming back to my original premise: you have to hook a reader with something -- not any one tactic works best -- that evokes deep, deeper, deepest emotion in them. The tactic that does that can be premise, or description, or character, dialogue: anything. But you should keep your eye on evoking emotion, some kind of emotion.

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The reason "scene setting" often doesn't work is because it foreshadows nothing. David Wolverton used a great example and I'll have to cull through them to find the reference (If IB can't remember it too) where "scene setting" is so much more than that.

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Dave was saying if you open with a scene keep it active and use words that foreshadow through how they resonate. I didn't look it up either, but I just posted a comment about resonance (and he began the topic in that article).

Quick examples:
Active: Trees can "march" down a hill.
Resonant Foreshadowing: The leafless tree reached for the sky like corpses reaching out of the grave.

The latter foreshadows "dark/horror", so it helps solidify the genre from the prose.

I guess the question is, can a remote POV work in fantasy, at least for the opening?

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I drive trucks, eighteen wheelers, have done for years. I'd never seen one float across San Francisco Bay, cab and cargo rocking in the waves, until the day Margaret walked into my life.

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Sebastian Conte loved to gamble; the higher the stakes, the better. Who knew the expedition to Vos would be the most exciting gamble of his life?

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I think "remote POV" or Omni works well in fantasy/Sci Fi.

The opening of a short story, IMO, needs to reach out and grab me by the heart within the first few lines. I want to feel scared, curious, angry, impassioned...it doesn't really matter as long as I feel strongly that I need to keep reading.

The opening of a novel, IMO, doesn't need to do that. If I've started reading a novel, it's already passed some kind of test -- either a friend told me to read it, I read good reviews, or I liked the back of the book blurb. Those things hook me in a novel far more than the opening pages, let alone the opening 13 lines. If I start reading a novel, the only thing in the first few paragraphs that will make me put it down is annoying or incompetent writing.

I have indeed put down novels that had a weak opening especially if I didn't have a recommendation that meant I was going to give it a try anyway. I suspect people do it all the time.

I happen to think that although I'm not a big fan one of the best at hooking a reader from the get-go is Stephen King. Take a look at what (if I remember correctly since I don't have a copy handy) is the opening line from Carrie.

'Get up, woman. Let's us get in and pray. Let's us pray to Jesus for our woman-weak, wicked, sinning souls.'

The discipline has helped me realise I want to put movement and interest--beats--into every paragraph, to constantly pique the reader's interest, to seduce her until the end, so to speak. (I think I'll stop there, before I distract myself.)

Also, one idea of the first 13 is that it's about persuading the slush pile reader to turn the page. Is there any reason to believe she'll be more patient with a novel than a short, or will the first 13 theory apply to a novel too?

Cheers,
Pat

In at least one case, I bought a book solely on the promise of style from the opening:

This new world weighs a yatto-gram.

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Also, one idea of the first 13 is that it's about persuading the slush pile reader to turn the page. Is there any reason to believe she'll be more patient with a novel than a short, or will the first 13 theory apply to a novel too?

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1. Your novel/short story should start where the story begins. That sounds pretty obvious, but it isn't always. He really comes down hard on including backstory, flashback, or descriptions at the very start of a story or novel. If you need backstory at the beginning of your story, then perhaps you are starting your story at the wrong point.

2. He states that stories should start with emotion. We need to be drawn into the story immediately. Lengthy descriptions or exposition rarely do that.

He has an interesting chapter in which he presents statements from agents and editors regarding what they do or don't want to see in openings. In the end, that is what is important. The ugly truth is that if we can't get past the publisher's readers, our work will never have a "published audience." I think that much of the effort to create that perfect opening is directed at the publishers.

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By the way, I rarely like or enjoy an omni PoV. While I tolerate it in older works, in something current I find it jarring to the point that I'm likely to put the work down. I don't think Fantasy escapes any of the demands of any other genre. These days you almost always have to draw the reader into some character and it's a rare writer who can do that using omni. Add in that we're now used to seeing close 3rd and I think you run into a serious problem.

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I'm curious. Why does time period make any difference? I see a lot on here of people talking about current stuff versus old stuff and the current state of writing or the market or whatever. I understand about the tastes of publishers changing and all...but for you, as a person and a reader, I dont understand...why is something ok for one time period, but not another?

But just as a camera from the '30s would make a film that looked dated, writing techniques that are no longer used tend to be jarring to the reader.

A highly skilled writer might be able to use them, or someone who has a really fascinating story to tell might get read in spite of their technique being jarring. (I find Rowling's writing jarring but read most of the Potter books anyway because she spins a good yarn as an example)

Readers have been affected by all kinds of things and tend to be somewhat jaded. They see thousands of hours of television, movies and have millions of books at their fingertips. We have to work harder than ever to draw them into our world. They tend to demand a character to identify with (something difficult to give them in omni). They tend to demand getting into the story quickly. It's a rare reader who would give you the pages and even chapters to get into the story that authors frequently got a hundred years ago.

We are writing for a different audience, is the bottom line. If we write for ourselves then we can ignore that. If we are writing to be read, then we most likely have to keep that in mind.

Jeanne's right. (No proof needed.)

Before art deco wireless sets, cinema halls and television, books competed against books, in a time when the pace of life was slower, people had more patience with language; entertainment was a social event that included dressing and dining.

Now, our audience devours TV, movies, radio, DVDs or internet downloads, alone or in groups with sleek white plastic ear buds, over burgers and beer; they have attention spans of gnats.

Why read a story when there are quicker fixes? We have to offer an alternative for our times.

Old fashioned, nevertheless,
Pat

From the second para: "Beginners are often taught that the opening's job is to hook readers and draw them into the story. The reality is it's more like advertising ..."

I think that's true, and the trick is to make the opening seem to be just the hook, not advertising, even though to some degree it is.

I think also there's a trap here for us aspiring authors when we try to emulate published writers. They have a "name", a name that guarantees readers. I think that means that readers will give their stories more of a chance than ours, and that therefore established writers can be more "true to their art" in their openings, less concerned with advertising the story, confident that people will read it anyway.

As readers we know, for example, that a new Michael Flynn or Carl Frederick will be well conceived in its science and humanity and that there will be a speculative element. That said, both Flynn and Frederick are in the July/August issue of Analog, and both get the speculative element right into their first 13s.

Lovett's article discusses ten "rules" for openings, and an eleventh which says that only if you know and understand the rules can you break, or "transcend" them.

I've seen most of the rules before in one form or another, but a couple were interesting to me. First, Lovett recasts "show don't tell" as "know when to show and when to tell". That sits well with OSC's sage advice on POV, and how you must tell motivation, here:
http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2000-08-02-4.shtml

The rule that was new to me, and which I find inspiring, is "The best introductions gain meaning after the reader has finished the story."

I'd recommend the full article to anyone struggling with openings, not least because it's comforting to assume that Stanley Schmidt substantially endorses it.

http://baens-universe.com/articles/Editorial__Vol_2__Number_2__Slush

This article has a lot to think about, partially about openings and partially about getting out of the slush pile in general.