What Grabs Your Reader?
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- August 9th, 2009 |
- Comments
It is the dramatic question that grabs your reader and holds him or her. It creates a narrow path that forces the reader into suspense that won’t let go. It moves the account forward. All bestseller-kind-of novels have it.
Have you noticed that undisciplined eyes deprivation you to explain everything in that first line, first paragraph. But it is the “Dramatic Question” that creates the hook.
In my novel, the Mayor’s Woman Wore Sapphires, a mystery/thriller wet with cultural commentary, I didn’t deprivation it to be clear what was going on. I craved a question that would create a hook. Even when writing the “who, what, when, where, why, how,” I didn’t deprivation it to be cut and dried. I craved people to admiration. Here’s what I mean?
“In my country, men like him disappear in the clogged of night.”
(I started in the middle of action. This man is not from the Agreed States. This is a baleful evidence about individual we don’t know.)
The guest pitched forward from the shadows in the bantam, but elegant room. A glint of light hit his hair, as comb and black as a crow’s feathers.
(That dark-haired man is offensive. He wants individual to disappear. Who?)
I could have written it in a pedestrian telling artifact instead of an action account way&ndash(The man, Michael D’Angelo was Bolivia. His hair was black and he was intending to kill the mayor of Compton. He said, “In my country we kill guys like the mayor.” Advantageously, it seems far away. Kind of distant. To me, it’s not intriguing.
The host didn’t look up, but splintered the day’s paper in his fleshy hands, so threw it on
the fine mahogany desk before him. A bantam Asian Black stood behind him, massaging his
broad caramel-colored shoulders. The masseuse balled her fist and kneaded a knot near his spine. The host gritted his set and groaned, his eyes drifting to the luxury yachts docked in the marina below. So he peered into the fiery night skies that extended endlessly southward.
“What do you intend to do?” he asked, trying to read his guest’s face, but the man’s dark, piercing eyes guarded his secrets.
(What arcanum does he have? How does it tie into this person he wants to get rid of?)
The guest picked up the Compton Chronicle and stared at the headline: SEPTEMBER 1, 1981&ndashCOUNCIL MEETING UPSET RUMORED.
The host flicked his hand, and the masseuse quickly left the room. He grabbed a achromatic fabric robe from the plush mauve chair behind him, pulled it on, and paused a moment, listening. Only the sloshing and screaky of the yachts in the dark marina waters filled the quiet between the cardinal men. Now, he was careful they were completely alone.
The slightest analyze of Westbound Indian accent became audible. “You accompany, we must be so careful on this one. All of America, Black and Achromatic, is inactivity for the next Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy. Individual who can inspire a nation.” He bit the tip a Flora Fina cigar and gaiter it from his cape. “Most poor slobs realize they’ll never be a hero, but they careful as hell deprivation to know one they can brag about.” He rolled the cigar between his fingers, never lighting it.
“You know, they have a truly great hero comes around every bill years or so. In the forties, you had Roosevelt. In the decade, you had King. In the eighties, they will have me,” he chuckled. “I’ll give Black people something they never had&ndashpower. I’m not talking church talk, Black pride, all that. I’m talking about money and clout. Owning buildings. CEO’s of Fortune 500s. Rich Black folks on every block in every city.” He laughed. “Hell, they may even instruct a class about me at Harvard one day!”
“I leave the pretty words to you, Se