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Come spend an afternoon learning how to harness your readers—and keep their attention through the end. This class surveys a variety of strategies for starting a story, as well as techniques for carrying the energy forward well beyond your opening lines.
Stuck on how to start your novel? Try one of these classic approaches!This visualized excerpt is from "Right Brain Writing: Creative Shortcuts for Wordsmiths...
- 4 min
- 4.8K
- Right Brain Writing
- Begin at A Pivotal Moment
- Add An Unusual situation.
- Add Intriguing Characters
- Conflict
- Add An Antagonist
- Change Emotion
- Make People Wonder
- Dread Factor
- Add Surprise & Irony
- Keep Narrative Voice compelling.
We were people who had Mediterranean ancestors, dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin, and everyone else in White Pine looked very Scandinavian; we became the town’s diversity—before diversity was a good thing.
I coped by being careful and good and funny which was like an invisibility cloak in high school but as much as I tried to blend in, my older brother Ray stood out in the most threatening way possible for a good girl and that was as a bad boy. At home we called him, Open Crab Face sandwich because I don’t think douche bag was a recognizable slur at ...
My father was and is best described as an intense, idealist with a steel girder of a work ethic and a charm that wears thin under the gun of his laser focused attentions. And there I sat, at the nexus of my brother Ray’s crummy moods, ADHD or Asperger’s and my father’s galvanic need to fix him. I was the North Star right in the middle of the war be...
Outside the restaurant, just before swinging the door wide and walking inside my Dad would stop us and say, “Now remember everybody, this is for Mom. Let’s focus on why we are here.” My brother would slouch through the door and my dad would whisper into his teenage ear, “Spaghetti “and then it was dead man walking all the way to our seats. At the t...
The thing about my father is this, he believed that if his lecturing didn’t have the desired effect it was because the listener didn’t or couldn’t fully comprehendhis logic, his high level thinking, and the best course of action was, logically, more lecturing. Ray and I had bedrooms on the same floor, across the hall from each other and night after...
Without hesitation, because my father rarely hesitated said, “I don’t know very much about butterflies.” And off he went secure in the knowledge that the kid who wanted to talk about butterflies wasn’t doing drugs. Ray’s poor judgment, miserable friends and defiance carried him through all of his years in high school, creating a groove in our famil...
In an unrelated action and totally out of character, my father purchased a used 1970 Ford Mustang. He wasn’t the type to buy toys and suddenly there were a lot of new vocabulary words in the house. Mint condition, Blue Book, resale opportunity, investment. I was wholly uninterested except when I heard my brother reason with my dad just after pullin...
I don’t know what possessed my father to hand over the keys that day, but I like to think it was hope. More likely though it could have been the irrational belief that if you knock your head against a wall enough times that walleventually turns into a door. Frankly, it’s more likely that my father had the unshakeable belief in his own salesmenship ...
To make matters intolerable, the plan for the graduation night was to go out to dinner. There was only one restaurant in town, The Konteka, where I worked bussing tables. We all assumed we would go there but, when my father turned left instead of right and headed out onto the highway I heard my brother shout, “Where are we going?” I don’t remember ...
I had to hand it to my parents, this felt heroic. Looking back, I believe my parents thought Ray might kill himself if left to his own or his friends devices and my dad finally stopped talking and did something. It was a checkmate and the most miserable dinner I’d ever spent a night hovering over a toilet through. As if to mock us, the silent, sulk...
- Surprise. First and foremost, something needs to be different in your story if you want to hook your reader. What’s the twist?
- Emotion. Kathryn pointed out that the brain uses emotion to gauge what’s important to us. In fiction, this means your character’s reactions to adversity will show the reader what’s important to them.
- Protagonist Goal. We’ve all heard this before, but only because it’s important. Your protagonist needs a goal. An agenda. And we need to know what it is early in the story.
- Need-to-Know Information. Discern what information the reader needs to know at the beginning. The tricky thing is figuring exactly what that is. Kathryn pointed out that while we believe readers need to know everything, in reality they require very little.
Sep 6, 2022 · 1. Create a Headline That Fascinates People. Having a compelling headline is the No. 1 way to hook a reader into engaging with your online content. The average reader can read at a pace of 240–260 words per minute. That breaks down to about 35 words for an eight-second attention span to capture (or lose) the reader’s attention.
Just as a fisherman uses a shiny hook with the right bait to lure and catch fish, you must have an effective first line to grab your reader’s attention. How to Write a Hook: The 10 Types Writing a compelling hook takes skill.