There are endless varieties of ways to open your story. Some writers love to open their book with an action scene, while others prefer setting the scene, decorating the stage as it were, with the landscape and/or the characters. James Michener did that a lot. Whatever you do, it must be an opening that makes the reader want to know what’s going to happen next.

In Michener ’s book, Centennial, he opened with cataclysmic geological events. The problem was that those events went on and on and on, page after page, until finally the reader decided he had enough geology and skipped through to where the human story started (I confess, I was that reader.) Michener could get away with that. He was a good enough writer that the readers would forgive him for boring them in the beginning, because they knew it would get better. Most of us don’t have that luxury. We have to hook the reader on the first page.

If you build your story with landscape, don’t go overboard in the painting of that landscape. Leave some of the work to the reader’s imagination. Some writers want to paint the picture in exquisite detail, but most of them aren’t that skilled to do it and keep the reader’s attention. Some are. Most are not.

One good device is to paint your landscape and then populate it with something interesting, such as a man or a woman, or perhaps a crowd, or an animal. The key is to put something in the picture that lends itself to the notion that something is going to happen with whatever it is you’ve populated the scene.

Here’s a sample opening to illustrate: The sun was a white-hot orb, and the desert floor was a hard, desolate sweep of sand, dimpled by the wind, and broken here and there by hearty plants mingling their parched green with the dirty brown hue of the desert. Scatterings of huge boulders broke the landscape and showed promise of a kinder land somewhere nearby. In the shade of one of those boulders, sat a man. His Stetson was pulled down over his eyes as he rested, and yet, it was obvious that the man was very aware of his surroundings. From time to time, his head would turn slightly to one side, and the other, as he listened to the silence of the desert. John Ross was a careful man and a survivor. He knew the dangers that faced him and understood that vigilance is the price he had to pay in order to live.

Those who hunted him would show no mercy, not even to a sleeping man.

Here, a very vivid picture is painted for the reader. You know that it’s hot and dry, and that the location is a desert area. The reader learns that there are boulders scattered around. From these first two sentences, the reader is able to paint his or her own picture of that scene. There could be many other details superimposed onto the scene, such as a scorpion racing across the sand, or the bleached bones of an animal, but those are not completely necessary. Certainly, those kinds of details would not distract, as long as you didn’t overdo it, but in reality, the reader has enough information to paint his or her own picture.

The next element in that picture is the individual. Now, interest is built in the reader to know who this individual is, why he is in the desert, and who is  is looking to kill him. This is the hook. This is what makes the reader turn the page.

Every book ought to make the reader want to turn to the next page. Here’s the opening I used in my latest western novel, Bloody Wes Teague:

He came out of the mist, riding slow on a smoke gray stallion, his yellow slicker moist, its shine dulled with age and dirt that would never wash away.  He was a powerful looking man, with that lean, easy look about him that suggested quickness and danger.  His face was darkened by hundreds of blistering suns and his pale blue eyes took in everything with a perpetual squint.  His name was Weston Teague.  Down in Texas, they used to call him “Bloody”  Teague. He wore a cattleman’s suit beneath the slicker and his boots were not the usual ones he wore for riding. These were made of the softest of calf skin, darkened and polished to a deep brown. The careful observer would have seen pants with a laundry press and shine to them.

It was important in my opening to draw a picture of the main character as a tough, strong man, but to show that he’s not a rag-tag cowboy. He’s got some expensive clothing and is obviously clean. I wanted the reader to get interested in the character.

Next time: Building Your Character