Hook ‘em and Hold ‘em
Various Gripping Openings to Consider
You may think that I’m focusing a lot of attention on the opening of the story. The reason is that it is the most important part. If you do not have a gripping opening to your thriller, it is unlikely that you will dazzle an agent and woo an editor.
Years ago, I knew a wonderful writer, Irma Ruth Walker, who wrote sci-fi, mysteries, romances, and half a dozen best-selling mainstream novels. She told me she thought openings were so important that 20 percent of the time she spent writing a novel was on the first fifteen or twenty pages.
At the time she told me this, it staggered me. But now I see how vitally important it is that the audience be drawn into the story immediately. A gripping opening is not simply a good thing for your story: It’s absolutely essential.
These days, creative writing coaches call the opening of a story the set-up. In the past it was called the hook. I prefer hook because that’s what you want to do in your opening sequence: hook the audience good, so it will stay hooked right to the end.
In chapter 4, I discussed how thriller writers, such as the authors of Blood Diamond, Serpico, Dr. Stangelove, and The Constant Gardener are often concerned with social injustice. These are writers on a mission. I am now going to suggest that creating a situation of injustice of some kind is crucial to the creation of a damn good thriller.
The situation of injustice does not have to be an attack on a social injustice, such as trading in illegal diamonds, corrupt police, the threat of nuclear war, or killing people with bad drugs. But the hero’s quest to correct a situation of injustice of some kind is at the heart of every damn good thriller.
Hardly seems possible, does it? Every one? That’s right, my friend, every damn one of them. So when you’re plotting your thriller, keep in mind how important it is for you to create a situation of injustice that your hero will be determined to make right by foiling evil. And the sooner you present this situation to the audience, the better.
In Jaws, the unjust situation appears right from the start, when a young woman is attacked by a shark. In The Day of the Jackal, the injustice is an attempt on the life of French President de Gaulle as the story opens. In High Noon, as the credits roll, the villain’s henchmen are joining up to ride into town for a showdown with the marshal. In Absolute Power, an innocent man (even though he is a burglar) is framed for a murder committed by the president’s men. In Alien, it’s the injustice of a slime creature murdering people. In The Boys from Brazil, it’s the murder of all those innocent adoptive fathers -- and the eventual coming of age of a reborn Hitler.
Okay, you say, but it’s not always possible to present a situation of injustice right away. Well...true. In Hombre, as an example, the situation of injustice does not appear until the outlaws hold up the stage and leave the passengers to die of thirst in the desert, about a third of the way into the film. Sometimes the delay in presenting the situation of injustice is done deliberately on the part of the author, as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Alien, where the slow buildup to the takeover of the villains is calculated to tease the audience a bit and foreshadow what’s coming. However you do it, make the reader want to see an injustice corrected and you’ve gone a long way to creating a gripping thriller.
There are any number of situations of injustice you might present to the audience by way of a gripping opening that raise story questions, start conflicts, and create sympathy, empathy, and identification. You can create the situation of injustice many ways using various strategies.
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Excerpted from How to Write a Damn Good Thriller: A Step-by-Step Guide for Novelists and Screenwriters by James N. Frey. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, St. Martin's Press. Copyright © 2010 by James N. Frey
