{"id":1779,"date":"2020-10-16T09:44:34","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T13:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2022-01-06T10:58:52","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T10:58:52","slug":"the-craft-of-writing-grabbing-the-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/?p=1779","title":{"rendered":"The Craft of #Writing: Grabbing the Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Beth <\/strong><\/span>Turnage) <\/strong><\/span>I’ve written posts on Quora on writing and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time, since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really.<\/span> <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

When writing, how do you grab your reader’s attention as quickly as possible?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How do I do it?<\/span><\/p>\n

I bring the reader into the story as quickly as possible. I answer the questions who, what, when, where, why in the first paragraph. This means no long moody passages about the weather or vague impressions about feelings, or any of the awful beginnings that beginning writers are prone to pen.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not the only one. Plenty of first-rate writers do the same thing and here is an excellent page to see the first sentence of their books:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

34 Compelling First Lines of Famous Books | Scribendi<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

But let\u2019s take a look at a couple.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJames Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.\u201d Ian Fleming, Goldfinger<\/span><\/p>\n

Who: James Bond<\/span><\/p>\n

What: thinking about life and death.<\/span><\/p>\n

When: just before a flight<\/span><\/p>\n

Where: Miami Airport<\/span><\/p>\n

Why: the two double bourbons (we assume.)<\/span><\/p>\n

And in twenty-three words. Impressive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were somewhere around Barstow at the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.\u201d Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/span><\/p>\n

Who: We<\/span><\/p>\n

What: traveling (implied)<\/span><\/p>\n

When: somewhere around Barstow<\/span><\/p>\n

Where: at the edge of the desert<\/span><\/p>\n

Why: the drugs began to take hold.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, a non-drug related one:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, not yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. \u201c J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit<\/span><\/p>\n

Who: a hobbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

What: he lived<\/span><\/p>\n

When: during his lifetime (implied)<\/span><\/p>\n

What: a hole<\/span><\/p>\n

Why: for comfort<\/span><\/p>\n

You will find that the more modern of the first lines are generally, though not always, more streamlined than older ones. You will find they have fewer adverbs and vague, filler words. You will see as well a couple of \u201cpower words.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Ian Fleming\u2019s \u2014bourbon (not whiskey, bourbon,) final, death.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Hunter S. <\/span>Th<\/span>ompson\u2019s\u2014edge, desert, drugs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Answer the five questions and you\u2019ll hook the reader.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Beth Turnage) I’ve written posts on Quora on writing and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time, since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. When writing, how do you grab your reader’s attention as quickly as possible? How do I do it? I bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,33,1,34],"tags":[45,137,138,225,300,334],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beth-turnage-writers-blog","category-the-writers-craft","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-adverbs","tag-filler-words","tag-first-lines","tag-power-words","tag-the-five-questions","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1846,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}