Every book about writing has a different take on how to start a novel, including mine – Goosing the Write Brain: A Storyteller’s Toolkit. When possible, in the first 50 to 150 words, I like to divulge the 3 P’s – Place, Problem, Protagonist. We can accomplish that fairly easily, but what we most want is a hook that tugs a reader into the story.

I’ve staged seven different openings, each focusing on slightly different angles.  Tell me which, if any of these, grabs you.

Ruell discovered his host’s true nature in their second year together. It happened slowly as he explored Kirk Longshadow’s various personality quirks. A human word, quirk, meaning trait, whim, idiosyncrasy–Longshadow had them all. Where Ruell resided now, in his host’s corpus collasum, he had plenty of opportunity to examine Longshadow’s personality and to begin to understand. Humans needed a large amount of understanding.
From where Longshadow lay, sprawled prone on asphalt pavement, the nighttime sounds and smells of the alley resonated repulsively in his muddled brain. He wondered how long he’d been out.

Four minutes, fifty-nine seconds, Ruell informed him.

Hosting an alien energy in your body often proved useful. Longshadow opened his eyes a slit.

Voices approached. He recognized the high-pitched nasal squawk of Skinner Reed, wielder of the pipe that had clubbed him.
For eight consecutive Mondays Longshadow got a phone call from her. If he turned his phone off it didn’t matter, because they had nothing to say to each other. She’d leave a text message, which he would read later and discard.

Then on the third Friday in January, no call, no message. He’d spent the evening at the gym, working off a grumpy mood while watching a tanned and muscled personal trainer fail to impress a couple of yoga students wearing curve-cuddling Spandex. Toweling off from a shower, he checked his phone again. Still no message.


Longshadow knocked on the hotel door knowing that in the next few minutes he’d have his answer, or he’d be dead. The woman opened the door just as he raised his fist for a second, louder and more thoroughly pissed off knock. She did not look like a woman who could turn a blind eye to killing over a hundred thousand people. Barefoot, she wore a blue silk dressing gown splashed with shades of green, and a notable air of impatience. Her short brown hair stuck out in places, her lips were glossy with butter from a half-eaten slice of toast she held. From deeper in the room, a strong odor of coffee scented the air.
Hearing footsteps enter the alley behind them, Ruell, like Longshadow, expected the sheriff’s deputy was joining their stakeout. The corporate analyst under investigation was silently exchanging envelopes with a short scruffy-looking man. As was her habit on alternating Tuesdays, she had entered the bakery, ordered coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, then headed toward the restrooms. Until now, no one had suspected a hidden door to the alley or that anything important could occur during the three minutes she was gone.

And now, if not for his intense concentration, Ruell might have sensed the footsteps were not the deputy’s, and have avoided the heavy pipe before it struck.
They buried Holly Marie Simpson three days after her murder. Polly Simpson wore black, as befitted a grieving sister. Sunlight angled through the trees and glinted off of every reflective surface, including the huge diamond on her left hand as she patted a stray lock of hair in place. The lightly wooded cemetery reminded Longshadow of his neighborhood beat in Houston, where trees grew in profusion. He didn’t miss the beat, but he sometimes missed his friends on the force.

Polly’s eyes, he noticed, were not focused on the funeral. Not on the coffin, the mourners or the minister delivering his elegy. Instead, Polly seemed to be watching for someone to arrive.
After a brief discussion with the pest control man, who had arrived in a red pickup truck, Polly Simpson strolled away from her home along a sidewalk bordering two massive houses on her side of the block. Longshadow, parked across the street in the heavy shade of a live oak, wondered if she was sensitive to the chemicals the man used or merely averse to being at hand while he worked.

In snug black shorts, black athletic shoes and a white t-shirt, she ambled distractedly with no apparent destination. Five minutes later, she returned. Edging slowly alongside the pickup, she glanced around then lifted the lid of a storage box in the truck bed and removed a red quart-sized jug.

One through seven – which hooks you best?

 

Save