Certain oft-repeated statements annoy me because people say them without a thought over whether they’re correct. I would wager we believe a considerable number of false things.
Here are a few examples:
Bats have poor vision. False. They have excellent vision. They can also navigate in darkness using reflected sounds.
Goldfish have a three-second memory. False. They have a month-long memory.
Sugar makes kids hyperactive. False. Sugar may put them in a better mood, but their better mood is what’s causing the hyperactivity, not the sugar.
Defibrillators restart hearts. False. Defibrillators shock an arrhythmic heartbeat back to a normal rhythm. Hearts are restarted using CPR.
Dogs see only in black and white. False. They see colors but can’t distinguish between some of them, similar to a color-blind person.
Albert Einstein failed math in school. False. He failed a college entrance exam, but that’s about it. No one is perfect.
Various areas on the tongue are specialized to distinguish certain flavors, such as salty, sweet, etc. False.
We use only 10% of our brain. False. We use all of it, just not all at the same time, just as we don’t use all parts of our bodies at once.
Diet drinks keep you fat. Well, maybe. I’ve researched a thousand websites over ten years, and none of them say why diet drinks keep you fat. They just keep repeating the same message. Some of them say, “Diet drinks trick your brain into thinking you’re consuming sugar, so you get fatter.” That’s nonsense because fat can’t be created from nothing. Perhaps, when you consume diet drinks, the sugars already stored safely away somewhere within you are released into the bloodstream by the tricked brain—and then those sugars keep you fat. Okay, fine. Except websites don’t say that. Or maybe diet drinks slow your metabolism. Fine. Websites don’t say that, either.
I’m getting thirsty, so now’s a suitable time to get to the point of this post.
The Great and Powerful story hook
I’ve heard for over fifteen years that stories must start with a hook that grabs the reader. Something exciting. Something stimulating and attractive. Virtually everyone says this. I’m sick of hearing it because it’s false! Nothing spine-tingling or eyebrow-raising is required. Such plots work sometimes, but it isn’t a rule.
High-octane beginnings are not the only kind of story hook.
Let’s read together the beginning of George Orwell’s novel 1984 (published in 1949):
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
What happens in these two paragraphs? A sickly man enters his apartment building on a windy day. He climbs the stairs because the elevator isn’t working, only to see repeatedly on the walls a poster of a man above the caption, “Big Brother is watching you.”
Not much action. But everything is going on! There’s richness, description, characterization, and theme.
How about the beginning of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (published in 1952):
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
Just an old fisherman with poor luck and a young boy who wanted to help him against the wishes of the boy’s parents. But wow! Everything is there! Richness, description, characterization, and theme.
How about a more recent example from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (published in 2008):
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
The main character lies in bed thinking about things, concerned about “the day of the reaping.” But everything in her mind is happening!
What’s going on?
The common thread here is characters experiencing unmet expectations, people who aren’t getting their way.
Human beings, including readers, tend to feel for others who are down and out. We empathize with those who experience bad luck because we’re good people.
There’s the powerful hook.
Now that you know the secret, enjoy the first paragraph of Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (published in 1962):
For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. But the valuable shipment from the Rocky Mountain States had not arrived. As he opened up his store on Friday morning and saw only letters on the floor by the mail slot he thought, I'm going to have an angry customer.
A simple opening portraying a character who is disappointed and perhaps afraid.
The notion that stories must have exciting beginnings is false.
Conflict
I've also often heard that stories must begin with conflict. Such statements are usually made by people who don’t know what conflict is. Conflict in fictional stories occurs when a character desperately wants two things at once but cannot have both.
Try starting a novel with conflict. Describe in the first few paragraphs the tribulation within the character’s mind. Such would be very difficult to do because why should readers care about the character’s conflict before getting to know him or her?
Action
People often say that stories should start with action. The problems with doing so are vast. I've listed a few here:
How do we know the events’ relevance or consequence when we don’t yet know the context?
Who wins or loses resulting from the events, and why should it matter when we don’t yet know the characters?
Where and when are we when this action occurs?
If you’re a budding author, try using a simpler approach that doesn’t require pulling many levers at the right moment and in the correct order.
Start your story with unmet expectations, which center your readers inside your character’s mind, which is where they want to be. They want to relate to, feel for, and love (or hate) your characters. Give them their wish on the first page.
Another example
Read the first three paragraphs from my first novel, The Linking. I’ve highlighted in green the sentences portraying unmet expectations. Note that I wrote these paragraphs before I knew anything about the concept of unmet expectations.
Hunched over a student desk at the back of the classroom, Mr. Marc Krause managed to write only a few words about each senior presentation before his next student stood up. Drops from his water-soaked towel draped over his neck to cool him created more ink-smeared stains in his faculty notebook than notations. Cheers from the class after each student’s mathematical demonstration made the past three days more like a pep rally than a high school calculus class.
“Settle down,” he told his students, his nausea reducing the rebuke to a wheeze.
He could muster only enough energy to utter one or two words such as “excellent” or “good work.” My students deserve more than this. The stories he’d given his students over the year had made math come alive for them. But now, with his flu, he lacked the energy to control the class.
Poor Mr. Krause’s day didn’t go as planned after a year’s worth of work. The scene certainly isn't a high point of action.
Empathy
You want your readers to empathize with your characters so they’ll worry about them night and day instead of about their real lives. This is what your readers want, too. If you do this well, your readers will also feel empathy for you and buy your stories.
You need more people to care about you. That’s how I feel.
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