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

In my new Christian Sci-fi book, Wearer of the Gold, I tried out some techniques that I’d never employed before in my writing. First of all, I had to have some exotic words. These words needed to be nearly impossible to speak, but not entirely. They had to be words that did not exist, or needed to exist for a meaning we do not have a word to describe. That was not an easy task, but I reasoned that if humans speaking English had a word, a very strange word not found in their language, what would we do? Well, we’d adjust it somewhat to enable us to pronounce the word, and we might even use the phonetic sound of the word to create the word in our language; or, in some instances, we may just render a word that we cannot say, into something we can say that has nothing to do with phonetics, but just meaning.

In later portions of the book, Wearer of the Gold, the main character, Cubal, meets an alien race. They are strange in many ways (including their love for human flesh). I had to have an unusual name for them, so I invented the name A’rkji.  This would be a name that could have come from the complete inability to say the real name of this species, phonetically speaking, “Abjt-ssha-katta-malibk-jlissi.” Thus, the shorthand version, A’rkji.

Here is a short scene from that section of the book

Cubal moved closer, watching curiously as a small band of A’rkji, flesh-eating man hunters he’d come to despise on Kroys’nan, began removing  a prisoner from a cage. His eyes swept the group quickly, then focused on the uniformed soldiers. He knew the man he was looking for was not here. The black-clad warrior began moving back slowly, blending himself into the crowd. He had long ago learned the art of blending, of making his life force diminish so as not to alert those who might seek him as prey or sense him as competition. It was not that he feared anyone in the room. But, he still had that sense of danger, that sense that told him someone or something waited here for him, probably to harm him.  Therefore, it would be wise for him to be as the Putsha, invisible to his unknown enemies.

Suddenly, as he was moving toward the outer edges of the room, he heard the prisoner of the A’rkji cry out. He stopped suddenly.

I know that voice!

He knew the identity of the prisoner of the A’rkji! And, he also knew that his desire to remain invisible was now going to be impossible. The incident with the slavers had been of little notice. The policeman did not care one way or another. But here, there were too many who would know of him and some who might actually know him. Those who sought him would now be alerted.

He moved with the quick glide of a big cat moving swiftly across an open field to take down its prey. Cubal kept the extension of his life force at a level that would not be noticeable to the A’rkji. He saw them hurl the prisoner onto the diamond plate. The man slid across the polished surface on his back, spinning around until he came to rest in the center. He again cried out in pain, and Cubal saw streaks of blood across his stomach.  He’d been beaten, probably with a Kylanian whip. It was a favorite of the A’rkji.

Cubal moved near the A’rkji and watched as one of them began punching at a pad controlling the mechanism in the ceiling. He knew that if he did not move quickly, his friend would be instantly transported, probably to the home of the A’rkji, for food. This was only the second interstellar transporter of this kind he’d ever seen. They were very expensive and their use prohibited on most other worlds. While the ordinary portals could move a person into another world, it did it with the use of an extensive array of jump sites, usually located in ships. Although the leap through a portal would seem instantaneous to the one moving through it, in actuality, the person was moving through several, sometimes dozens, of linked portals.

These were different. They moved through time and space itself. It was said that if the right settings were made, one could move forward or backward in time. Cubal did not know. He did know that this device would transport his friend instantly to the world of the A’rkji, and that his end would be as the main course in a frenzied feeding by some of the elite on that world.

He leaped over the light-bezel and grabbed his friend from the floor. But, he’d barely begun to lift him when the brilliance of a thousand suns swept through his body, and in a millisecond of thought, he knew that the A’rkji would not have a one-course meal, but would have two coming for dinner. In the next second, he was there, standing on a plate of polished diamond. But, little else was the same. Instead, he was in a room filled with A’rkji warriors, each armed with their deadly light guns.

He lifted his friend, who groaned softly. His mind was calculating the odds. A Wearer of the Black did not fear an enemy and did not fear death. It was never about death for such a one. It was about life force and protecting it, and about measuring the life force of an enemy and determining its vulnerabilities, its weaknesses, and its strengths. Now, it was about protecting two life forces: his and his friend’s. He knew that the time was not right. His friend would die if he chose to resist. He slowly lowered his energy level and shrank inside his dark cloak.

Three warriors came up to them, one chortling, “It is good. Two there are for the feeding. It is reward.” Roughly, they seized both men and dragged them off the diamond plate, then shoved them down a long, unlit, narrow hall. The dampness of the whole place carried foul odors.  After a few moments, the two were propelled into a large room. It was a room of almost complete darkness. Cubal knew that the A’rkji preferred the dark and always fed in the night hours. He could not tell whether it was nightfall or not. But, perhaps they did not need light. Perhaps they only needed the dark.

But, the blackness was his friend, too.

Does the Bible say anything about space travel? Indeed, it does. Several years ago, I stumbled on a passage of Scripture that was stunning. I found this: Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD. - Ancient Book of Obadiah, chapter 1, verse 4.

Immediately, I dug out an old manuscript that I’d started some time ago and had put aside, unsure of where to go with it, and began writing furiously. I now knew where I was headed with it: Straight out into the galaxies!

Thus began a book I’ve tenatively titled “Wearer of the Gold: The Ancient Ones.”

It is a science fiction book unlike anything I’ve seen on the market today, yet it contains much of the ingredients that fascinate all of us who loved Star Wars. It is a book about a man who was bred for one purpose: fighting. He does not believe in gods or devils, only superior beings, of which, he is one.

This blog begins an exploration of that book and some of the concepts within it, discussion of portions of it, and even some excepts. From time to time, I’ll have some podcasts in which I’ll do some readings from the book

A release date is not yet scheduled, but expectations are January 2010.