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I used to think opening chapters needed to start with action, but a slush pile reader changed my mind
For years I wrote every story starting with a car crash or a gunshot because I read somewhere that you need to grab the reader in the first paragraph. Then I volunteered to read submissions for a small literary magazine last fall. I saw fifty opening pages where characters I didn't know yet were running through explosions. I skipped all of them. The openings that hooked me were quiet ones that made me curious about a person or a place. One started with a woman measuring flour in her kitchen and I kept reading because the prose was careful. Has anyone else found that slower starts work better in certain genres?
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max38811d ago
Yeah, slow can hook you deeper than noise every time.
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Nah, I gotta disagree here. If your first page doesn't hook me right away I'm closing the tab. That slow flour measuring thing would have me gone in ten seconds. Most people don't have the patience to wait around for a story to start.
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