Those Pesky Opening Scenes Part 2 - Engage the Reader

Photo Credit: Death to Stock Photo

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of the first few scenes to grab the reader’s attention, but once you’ve done this, you still have one giant mission to accomplish. You have to engage the reader and make them WANT to keep reading. Those first few scenes are critically important to not only grab the reader’s attention, but to keep them turning those pages!

How do you do this?

#1: Connect with the Characters

I had a HUGE (enormous, gigantic) problem with this in the first draft of Arthur 1. What I had wanted to do was introduce all my main characters as quickly as possible so that the reader knew who all the players were right away. This sounds great in theory, but in reality, it confused my readers rather than helped them.

Pigrann - Chapter 1: Stela

When Stela opened her eyes, she had forgotten about her arrest. After all, she had woken up in the most elaborately decorated and expensive room that she had ever seen.

It hardly resembled a prison cell.

Not with a diamond-encrusted four poster bed. Or ornate gold foil flower designs that covered the walls and ceiling. Or furniture that had been hand-carved (probably) by the famous Eoilin miners over two hundred years ago, long before Pigrann had been mandated across the colonies.

And Stela had worked so hard to avoid Pigrann. Eight years of hiding, running and trickery had been wasted as she awaited her fate. At any moment they would make her forget her life and force her to become whoever they wanted her to be. Before Pigrann, they called this coercion.

Those Pesky Opening Scenes: Part 1 - Hook the reader

Photo Credit: Death to the Stock Photo

So I’m not gonna lie – I haven’t been revising Arthur’s Lady as much as I should be. In fact, I’m probably only 40 pages in. If that.

Reflecting on these scenes has led me to think a lot about how vitally important they really are. After all, it’s these scenes that hook the reader.

Everyone knows that the first sentence is crucial. But that first paragraph needs to be great too. And so does that first chapter. And if the reader makes it past 35 pages, they’ll probably read the whole thing.