First Sentences, First Paragraphs

Today's readers give a novelist very little time to pique their interest. So, a writer doesn't have page after page to get his novel going. First sentences and first paragraphs have become more and more important if a novelist wants to arouse the interest of a reader. Any writer whose novel doesn't get going until page ten or twenty has written a book that is doomed unless he is willing to revise.

When a reader finds a piece of writing boring and does not wish to read any further, he or she will put the book down and read no further. The ideal goal for a first paragraph is to pique the reader's curiosity about the characters, introduce a setting and to give resonance to the story.

The value of a well-written opening is that it makes the reader ready to give himself to the writer's imagined world for the entire novel. By this time it should be clear that something unusual is a factor in piquing the reader's interest. Another necessity is action and conflict. There are a lot of writers who continue to struggle to arouse the interest of their readers and don't understand that the reason the readers aren't interested is because there is no conflict between the characters. A couple that loves each other and never argues is a determent to any novel. They love each other and always got along is simply boring.

Boring writing is the biggest enemy for both the reader and the writer. No one looks at average normal-looking people we see in the street and wonders about their lives. Our attention is riveted to the man or woman who comes from nothing and achieves great success, the serial murder and what turned him into a monster, the movie star everyone idolizes. People whose lives are lived out of the box fascinate us. We wonder about people who survive a disaster and how it effects them. Highways get choked when drivers slow down to look at the remains of a car accident.

Many writers like to spend time looking at the first few pages of novels they have read and liked in order to find the exact spot where the reader decided to keep reading the book.

There are many ways in which the reader will become interested in a novel. Perhaps a character wants something that is important to their survival whether that means their physical or psychological survival. Or perhaps an appealing character is in danger. The type of language a writer uses can also arouse the interest of a reader, but that interest won't last unless the reader can become involved in the lives of the character.