You can guess what happens next: Khadaji assassinates the entire quad. After all, the name of the book is The Man Who Never Missed.
But what if you want to open with your hero before the bad guys are actively hunting her? This next example shows how to do that:
The attack came in the hour before dawn. The girl woke to the stench of burning thatch and the sound of her mother screaming. Outside, in the clearing beyond the hut, she heard her father's response, and the clash of iron on bronze. Another man shouted—not her father—and she was up, throwing off the hides, reaching back into the dark behind the sleeping place for her skinning knife or, better, her axe. She found neither. Her mother screamed again, differently. The girl scrabbled frantically, feeling the fire scorch her skin and the sliding ache of fear that was the threat of a sword-cut to the spine. Her fingers closed on a haft of worn wood, running down to the curve of a grip she knew from hours of oil and polish and the awe of youth; her father's boar spear. She jerked it free, turning and pulling the leather cover from the blade in one move. A wash of predawn light hit her eyes as the door-skin was ripped from its hangings and replaced as rapidly by a shadow. The bulk of a body filled the doorway. Dawn light flicker-ed on a sword blade. Close by, her father screamed her name. “Breaca!”
— MANDA SCOTT, DREAMING THE EAGLE
In one paragraph, we know the setting is a primitive village under attack, the time, that the hero is a girl named Breaca who is familiar with weapons, and that she is in danger. Note that the enemy doesn't appear until near the end of the first paragraph. Just long enough to give us the details we need to know before the violence begins.
You can pull off the same effect in countless situations, even if you don't begin with action. For example, your hero could be about to play the winning hand in an illegal high-stakes poker game when armed robbers bust in and demand the money. That gives your opening the added advantage of misdirection. The reader thinks he's getting a scene about gambling, then you switch to robbery. The hero goes from winner to loser in a heartbeat, gaining reader empathy in the process.
Sometimes, stories begin with the hero witnessing violence without being involved.
We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.
They came to a yelping stop overhead, out of sight, dumped her and took off.
It was a hot Monday night in June. With moon. It was past midnight and just past the tide change. A billion bugs were vectoring in on us as the wind began to die.
It seemed to be a very final way of busting up a romance.
— JOHN D. MACDONALD, DARKER THAN AMBER
There are a ton of questions raised by this intro:
Who is the girl?
Is she dead or alive?
Who threw her off the bridge?
Why did they throw her?
What were the hero and his friend about to give up before they saw the girl thrown from the bridge?
The arrival of enemies doesn’t have to bring with it immediate violence. It can merely be the threat of violence, the intimidation, indignity, and humiliation enemies bring.
My used bookstore had been open for just about a month when the police showed up. I hadn’t called them, of course; a black man has to think twice before calling the cops in Watts. They came to see me late that afternoon. Two well-built young men. One had dark hair and the other sported freckles.
The dark one wandered around the room, flipping through random books, looking, it seemed, for some kind of contraband.
“Where’d you get all these books, son?” the other cop asked, looking down on me.
I was sitting in my favorite swivel chair behind the makeshift table-desk that I used for book sales and purchases.
“Libraries,” I replied.
“Stole ‘em?” the dark-haired cop asked from across the room. There was an eager grin on his face.
— WALTER MOSLEY, FEARLESS JONES
There are no swords, no lasers, and nobody’s dead (yet) but the threat is real. Menace hangs in the air: menace, bigotry, and hate. The cops are looking to roust the hero just because he’s black, and maybe they’re looking to do something more besides. A frightening situation, but a fantastic way to hook readers.
But what if it's not action with enemies, but with a natural disaster or some other dangerous survival situation? What do you do then? Pretty much the same thing:
I was thrown out of bed.
— RUDOLPH WURLITZER, QUAKE
It doesn't get simpler than that! The author isn't fooling around and has no intention of wasting our time. He just jumps right in, and that's fine because there's only the hero to focus on and a disaster he can't do anything about. The rest of the opening continues the danger:
The mirror fell off the wall and shattered over the dresser. The floor moved again and the ceiling sagged towards me.
The first paragraph establishes the bedroom and the danger. The second expands the setting and the action, as well as the strange, deadpan reaction the hero has. This tells us we're dealing with a potentially unreliable narrator.
It was dawn and I was in the Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles. There was another trembling through the room and what sounded like wires snapping and windows breaking. Then it was very quiet. I lay back on the floor and shut my eyes. I was in no hurry. There was a high prolonged scream by the pool and then a splash and another, shorter scream. I stood up and raised my arms over my head and tried to touch my toes, an early morning ritual I never perform. The wall next to the bed was moving as if it was alive and I walked into the bathroom.
Another kind of hero would react to in a different manner with the expected panic or bravery. But Wurlitzer isn't interested in normal. His hero does the opposite of what any sane person would do, and that's what makes him interesting. He doesn't care if he lives or dies. Maybe a post-quake world is better than the one before…
Comedy can also work with action to hook readers:
My sister threw down the book she was reading. To be exact, she threw it at me.
— ROBERT E. HOWARD, “THE LITTLE PEOPLE”
Thrown objects are funny, but what about thrown people?
They threw me off the hay truck about noon.
— JAMES M. CAIN, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Action doesn't have to be violence or fast motion; it can be almost any criminal act:
He always shot up by TV light.
— JAMES ELLROY, AMERICAN TABLOID
Action can imply guilt (or protestations of innocence):
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
— JIM BUTCHER, BLOOD RITES
Action can show illness or injury:
As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop, his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony.
— JIM THOMPSON, THE GRIFTERS
Opening with someone hurt, sick, or dying creates sympathy and excitement. Readers become invested in the outcome and want to find out how it happened.
Action can also show surprise and instantly reveal genre:
I was staring out the classroom window when I spotted the flying saucer.
— ERNEST CLINE, ARMADA
Action can also represent a flurry of activity, even if centered around a seemingly normal event:
As the clock ticked down on her senior year in high school, Laurel McBane learned one indisputable fact.
Prom was hell.
— NORA ROBERTS, SAVOR THE MOMENT
Let's come full circle and end this chapter as it began—with violence, but not just any violence. The difference here is the violence is resolved before the first sentence:
After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was off the air, we all went down to the beach.
— STEPHEN KING, “NIGHT SURF”
What kind of sick weirdos would burn a guy to death then go party? If you want to find out, you have to read more, and Stephen King knows that. The rest of
his paragraph neatly segues into casually talking about the narrator's friends—normal teenage stuff—but all is not as it seems and the narrator drops clues about a world-ending plague which means there was a good reason to burn that guy after all!
Other than shock value, the advantage to this opening is combining action with mystery. Burning the body creates the action, while the follow-up creates the mystery. Which leads us to the first story secret:
STORY SECRET #1
COMBINING DIFFERENT OPENINGS
Combining different ways to open your story can create all kinds of interesting results. It's an advanced technique, but when you get it right, it's just as valid a way to open as any of the ten ways on their own—perhaps even more so.
Go back and look at the excerpts in this chapter. Notice they didn't just hook with action, but with mystery, like Stephen King did in “Night Surf.” Who is Logen running from? What threw the narrator out of bed? Why is Roy Dillon sick? It's a one-two punch!
Like where I’m going with this?
There are six more successful ways to start your novel
and I reveal them all in
— WRITING DYNAMITE STORY HOOKS —
BY
JACKSON DEAN CHASE
available in eBook and Paperback
WRITING HEROES & VILLAINS
SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE FIRST CHAPTER
“Perfect heroines, like perfect heroes, aren't relatable, and if you can't put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, not only will they not inspire you, but the book will be pretty boring.”
— CASSANDRA CLARE, AUTHOR OF THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS
EVERY HERO SHOULD BE LIKABLE in some way, or at least interesting. To do that, your hero needs to display some measure of wit and charm, as well as enough willpower to stand up to the villain. But heroes can't be perfect. They must be flawed, or risk becoming boring. That's the difference between Batman and Superman.
Batman's got all kinds of flaws, Superman's perfect. Which one sells more copies and puts more butts in seats? Batman. You can't fix perfect. It will always ring false to give Superman issues after he's already been established as perfect (and perfectly boring) for decades. Now if Batman overcomes a flaw, fans will be proud of him, but they won't get bored because they know he'll never be perfect, no matter how hard he tries.
Blowing up the Death Star or teaching an uptight town how to dance are all well and good. This outer journey is the main plot, the story arc that changes the world (or some small part of it). It's also the initial reason people buy into your story, but it's not what truly satisfies them. What they really want to see are heroes who struggle to change themselves in relation to their outer journey.
To do this, every hero needs an inner journey. They get one by facing down their flaws—this constitutes the character arc which makes up the emotional subplot. The success or failure of the character arc sets the tone for the story arc. Let me say that again:
The success or failure of the character arc sets the tone for the story arc.
It's the difference between the bittersweet tragedy of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the joyful triumph of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. Butch and Sundance struggle to change and fail, so they must die (albeit in a blaze of glory). Luke Skywalker and Han Solo struggle to change and succeed, so they live and triumph and go on to have other adventures in a galaxy far, far away.
Note that “live or die” can simply mean “win or lose.” Some losers get a second chance in the sequel. For example, Rocky Balboa loses the big boxing match to Apollo Creed at the end of Rocky, but beats him in Rocky II, and guess what? It's twice as satisfying for Rocky and the audience. If Rocky had failed to beat Creed a second time, the audience would have been justifiably angry at both Rocky and the screenwriter. The whole sequel would have been pointless!
That's not to say that you can't have a chronic “loser” continue his adventures (see The Catalyst Hero, below), but he must be a true underdog people can root for. And because he rarely changes (or needs to), that means he must change the lives of those he comes into contact with for the better. He helps others succeed at their story and character arcs, but ends up alone and riding off into the sunset at the end (as in Mad Max: Fury Road).
Eventually, this type of hero must complete his overarching story and character arc, and he should do so successfully. After all, he's suffered so long, he deserves it and the audience demands it. In most cases, this ends the series, so if you're not ready to end it, you should give your underdog glimmers of hope every so often instead—both to remind him and the audience what's at stake in the bigger picture.
While it's generally accepted wisdom that when the hero's inner journey fails, the outer one does too (and vice versa), that's not always the case. There are exceptions where succeeding at an inner journey could mean the hero no longer cares to succeed on his outer journey.
For example, consider the tough jock who passes his prom king crown to the lonely outcast because it means more to the outcast than it ever will to him. He's learned this the hard way over the course of the story, overcoming his arrogant jock flaws in the process. So by the end, he's not only willing to sacrifice outer success for inner success, he must do it, or he won't be able to live with himself.
The jock has changed and grown as a person, and so his original outer journey no longer holds meaning to him—but helping the outcast does, and that becomes his new one. The best part is this helps the outcast complete his inner and outer journey as well. The outcast no longer can fail to hide behind excuses of “nobody likes me” and “all jocks are jerks.” If you've done your job right, and written the jock and outcast as realistic, flawed characters who we can empathize with, then you've written a winner.
Want to read more?
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THE ULTIMATE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO
WRITING
HEROES & VILLAINS
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ABOUT JACKSON DEAN CHASE
JACKSON DEAN CHASE is a USA TODAY bestselling author and award-winning poet. His fiction has been praised as "irresistible" in Buzzfeed and "diligently crafted" in The Huffington Post. Jackson's books on writing fiction have helped thousands of authors.
FROM THE AUTHOR: “I’ve always loved science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but it wasn't until I combined them with pulp thrillers and noir that I found my voice as an author. I want to leave my readers breathless, want them to feel the same desperate longing, the same hope and fear my heroes experience as they struggle not just to survive, but to become something more.” — JDC
www.JacksonDeanChase.com
[email protected]
First Edition, July 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1722681746 / ISBN-10: 1722681748
Published by Jackson Dean Chase, Inc.
WRITING APOCALYPSE AND SURVIVAL
Copyright © 2018 Jackson Dean Chase. All rights reserved.
Previously published as How to Write Realistic Zombies and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. This “ultimate” edition contains extensive new and revised content.
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