Thursday 1 March 2012

Truth and Fiction: Opening Hooks

The opening lines are the words that hook our readers into our fictional world. The words that start them down the path of our tangled webs.  We hope to give the reader just enough to intrigue them with our story question.

Here are the words that opened a debate into minimum sentences for criminal convictions.  The question for my readers is this:  would you read a book that opens with these lines?

"At just before 2:00 am on March 9, 2009, Leroy Smickle was engaged in a very foolish act.  He was alone in the apartment of his cousin, Rojohn Brown, having elected (because he had to be at work in the morning) to stay in while his cousin went out to a club.  Mr. Smickle was reclining on the sofa, wearing boxer shorts, a white tank top, and sunglasses.  Thus clad, he was in the process of taking his picture for his Facebook page, using the webcam on his laptop computer.  For reasons known only to Mr. Smickle, and which arguably go beyond mere foolishness, he was posing in this manner with a loaded handgun in one hand.  Unfortunately for Mr. Smickle, at this exact moment, members of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force and the Guns and Gangs Squad were gathered outside the apartment preparing to execute a search warrant in relation to Mr. Brown, who was believed to be in possession of illegal firearms.  They smashed in the door of the apartment with a battering ram, and Mr. Smickle was literally caught red-handed, with a loaded illegal firearm in his hand.  He immediately dropped the gun and the computer, as ordered to by the police, and was thereupon arrested." [From the judgement of Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Malloy in February 2012.]

I write a draft of an opening line to get my story going.  But then I go back and write and rewrite the lines.  I read other what other writers have written.  I ask myself, what pulls me into a story.  Are there lessons to be learned from Justice Malloy's opening? How do you craft your story opening?

15 comments:

  1. Amy, your blog looks beautiful! I love the log line. And yes, I think I would read a book that opened like that, wouldn't you?

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  2. The very first sentence is good, because it gave concrete detail and tweaked my curiosity. I might massage the grammar a little to get rid of the parenthesis in the second (third?) sentence, but I thought it was a strong opening. Is this an actual court document or a work of fiction?

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  3. Thanks for visiting my blog April. I would love to read a book that opened like this.

    Amy Jo

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  4. Liv,

    Thanks for visitin my blog. This was the opening line of a judgement from a real court case in February.

    Amy Jo

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  5. I agree with Liv. You need to do something about those parentheses the judge used. But, having said that, I wonder if the judge realizes what a great hook she's created?

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    1. My favourite phrase was "which arguably go beyond mere foolishness" - what careful language that was.

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  6. The whole paragraph, even though it was long, hooked me, Amy. I change and fix and rewrite my openings over and over again, till hopefully something twigs and I think, that's the one. :)

    BTW, love your site!

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    1. Thanks Sheila, for your kind words. I think that the time we spend on openings is so important, but they can my writing if I don't keep pushing forward.

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  7. I liked the first few sentences but got a bit bogged down as it went down. good thing we are all different, isn't it?

    i write and re-write my first sentence.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Louise. I think that the judge was just trying to put all the important facts out there as succinctly as possible. Still it does hook me in.

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  8. This really made me think as I'm more used to a shorter hook.

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  9. I tend to re-write my opening line a kagillion different ways. I have 11 versions of one chapter opening. Total overkill, but that's how my brain works. Like Louise said, good think we're all different!

    Love the "moonbeams and mysteries"!

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    1. Hi D.B.
      Thanks for stopping by. Glad you like moonbeams and mysteries. I only had to rewrite that 6 times. Fewer words, I guess.

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  10. Richard Peck, Newberry Award winning author, says your story is only as good as it's first line. Ever since hearing that I work really hard to make that first lineagic! Elizabeth Fais

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