I'll talk about the openings of all of the stories I've managed to sell to date.
I think that the ones that feel effective to me boil down to one of these things:
1. Establishing the central tension, whether that be mortal danger, or relationship trouble, or something else.
2. Establishing the speculative element. The more interesting the element, the better.
3. Establishing central character relationships, whether they be romantic, filial, friend, or employment relationships.
4. Clever or catchy turns of phrase.
The Utility of Love:The house landed with a crunch and a crash, and a moment later the recoiling bedsprings threw Dorothy halfway to the ceiling. Toto, who had been curled up at her side, awoke in mid fall and landed in her arms snarling and snapping. She tried to grab him, but he was just a writhing ball of fur and teeth.
This one lets you know it's an Oz story right away, and I feel it at least gives a hint that something is off because while Toto can be tough, he doesn't ordinarily bite Dorothy. For me, though, the point that I'd really consider the hook in this one is a couple pages later when it turns out that the Wicked Witch of the East was not killed by the falling of the house, but when the munchkins tell the Tin Man to kill her, he crushes her in his hand.
The Disconnected "911. What's your emergency?" the operator said.
"There's a person in my house!"
"Calm down, Mrs. Abernathy. No one's there with you."
"Yes there is. He--I think it's a he--is lying on the floor in the other room. I almost tripped over him. It could be my husband. He dropped off the grid a while ago and now I can't find him."
My intent with this one is not only to establish with a 911 call that it is an emergency situation, but to introduce enough oddity about the situation to make the reader start wondering about the worldbuilding. "I think it's a he" and "I almost tripped over him" are both related to the central speculative element but aren't spelled out this early in the story.
What Makes You Tick My holding cell fills with the gas, the sedative they use when they wish to experiment. I play my part, allowing my tentacles to go gradually flaccid, dangling off the table.
This is, IMO, one of the best stories I've written, and only clocks in at a total of 650 words, and this is one of my best beginnings. The first sentence lets you know that the protagonist is a prisoner, one who is probably not treated well and is the subject of experiments. The second sentence goes against that expectation by letting you know that its helplessness is only a ruse (while also letting you know it's not human). The entire idea of this story is to focus on a situation where someone who appears to be helpless is actually the one in control, and that sense is given right in the first two sentences.
Turning Back the ClockLewis checked Mary's wrist for a pulse even as her heart stopped beating.
Gets the tension going right at the beginning, though I think the more effective hook comes about a page later with "Could he still save her?"--this after he mentions that she has a "do not resuscitate" clause in her will, and it goes on to tie in to the speculative element in the next sentence.
Fruitful Nora jumped when she noticed the door of the lift opening into her office.
"Midge! You scared me."
"I apologize, ma'am," Midge said, in her soft, motherly voice that grated on Nora's nerves. "You appeared to be deep in thought, and I didn't want to interrupt."
Not a great hook beginning right there, perhaps. I think the real hook is four or five paragraphs later when Midge who is an android says "You have twenty children total, seven under my direct care, and they're growing like weeds." To have an android acting as a nanny is one thing, but to not even have an idea how many children you have is another, more so when it's implied she hasn't seen them to know how much they've grown.
The Infinite Onion“This, sir, is the literary strata.” Jeff Carlson watched his boss closely for a reaction. Jeff had been given a very free hand with the parallel worlds research division and he knew he had taken things in an unorthodox direction. This was going to be a tough sell.
Mr. Truman glowered, eyebrows clashing like battling caterpillars. “Glass silos filled with paper.”
I do like this one. I like "literary strata" as both a catchy turn of phrase and an interesting visual.
Helpers The boy crept out of the front door, distant streetlamps bouncing dim reflections off his smooth cheeks, breath misting in the chill air. Pete couldn't help but smile. The boy was just the right size, old enough to have grown some real muscle but still well short of being a man. He was downright plump compared to the half-starved urchins Pete was used to. Strange for a boy with a family to be out at this time. Hadn't his parents told him the night was populated by thieves and killers? Their loss.
Lets you know right away that the protagonist has ill intentions, though the exact intentions aren't clear until later. Concern for the foolish boy will hopefully drive the reader to listen on.
The Quest Unusual Matthew spent half the morning removing rocks from the western fields before he felt the first rumblings through the soles of his feet. He looked up to see a cloud of dust moving quickly down the dirt road in his direction. The ground shook harder and harder as it approached until he had to crouch just to keep from falling over.
Not the most effective opening paragraph, not even clear what time period this is. Hopefully the shaking ground makes the reader read to the second paragraph, at which point the approaching dust cloud turns out to contain a dragon dressed as a knight.
Mysterious Ways The afterlife was arbitrary, Sam Fichtner decided. There was no Heaven or Hell, only one place. He'd had plenty of time to ponder since he crossed over. The Hereafter was filled with endless rows of clear domes like the one he occupied, a space of infinite size covered with a grid of cake platters. When people died, they were each partitioned into one of these domes, to spend the rest of eternity.
I like the alliteration in the first sentence, and though this whole story is a bit distant and dry, it gets right into the afterlife speculation that I enjoy it for.
Never Idle Jeremiah listened to each car as he walked through the busy mall parking lot, looking for one who could serve as both transportation and companion. A minivan dreamt of frequent trips with her family to the soccer fields to watch the children play. No, her family needed her, and they treated her well. A sports car dreamt of blurred landscape and the feel of the wind pushing her to the ground. No, too impulsive. He needed someone dependable. She might leave him at any time and never come back.
I think this one's pretty effective. In the space of this paragraph you get a feel for Jeremiah's special talent of speaking to machines, that he is looking for a new vehicle companion, and that some car personalities are not suitable for companionship.
Constant Companion You don't remember anything, do you? Selective memory loss; what an achievement for a mind as young as yours. Locked in a cupboard of your consciousness, the guilt will eat at you from the inside.
See how your hands are sticky with dried blood? The wood of your hands is stained with it forever, like scars, reminders of your sins. You took a life today. Not just any life, the life of your creator, the one who fancied himself your father.
Not sure if this is a good hook or not. It's a very short flash story, and it all boils down to what's right there in the beginning, the memory loss and the murdered father.
Door in the Darkness The man was the spitting image of her father, twenty years dead. She noted his brown suit, blue tie, horn-rimmed glasses, and thick black mustache. Her father had looked just like that when he interrupted a mugging and got stabbed to death. He stood on the opposite curb, staring right at her.
She knew he wasn’t really there. For years after his death she’d seen him every time she turned a corner, but always a fleeting glimpse. Never this clearly, nor for this long.
Karen shut her eyes and counted to ten, just like she was supposed to do, but when she opened them he was still there. She had to see him closer.
She took a step forward and everything happened at once: a blaring horn, a shrill squeal, a blur of faces, gusting wind. A hand on her shoulder pulled her roughly back onto the curb, her heart beating wildly.
I like this one a lot. The persistent image of her dead father as inciting action, hopefully enough to keep you reading until the vision almost kills her by stepping in front of a bus, and the hand belongs to the other principle character in the story, and this event is meaningful not just a random happenstance.
This is Your Problem, Right Here "This is your problem, right here." The plumber's deep voice resounded from beneath the maintenance hatch by the main pool at Cascade Reef water park. "You've only got one troll left. For a pool this big, you need fifty minimum, seventy-five if you want everything to run smoothly."
This is one of my most popular. Right in this first paragraph it sets the stage, with the tension between a layman and a hired expert in repairs where the repair person says something unfathomable and you reel for a moment trying to understand if they're trying to screw you over or if they might actually be correct.
Marley and Cratchit In those days Jacob Marley was full of life and vigor. His smile shone so that anyone who saw him soon smiled widely in return. A moment in his presence would make one's worst burdens seem lighter. His optimism and generosity brought out the best in others, catching easily as a torch in dry straw.
Those were happy, hopeful times. Ebenezer Scrooge, the pinch-faced and greedy miser, would not weigh on his mind until many years later.
Lets you know right away this is A Christmas Carol tie-in, written in a style meant to emulate Dickens as much as possible, that this happens earlier, and that Marley is not at all as A Christmas Carol describes him--a jolly and happy person instead of a stingy miser like he is described by Scrooge. This sets up a scenario where you'll hopefully want to find out what accounts for the differences.
Coin OpThe android reached for its tie. "Do you wish to begin? Ten cents."
Rhonda nodded. She'd never done anything like this, but her girlfriends had pooled five hundred dollars for her thirtieth birthday to send her here to the Orgasm Emporium to end a long dry spell. Or, to "break her jackass addiction," as they so eloquently put it.
Lets you know what you're in for right away, something that is silly and lighthearted and a bit raunchy.
I Will Remain I am not insane. I wondered, at first, whether I was simply a dog dreaming he was a man, but if that were true I wouldn’t understand English or recall the sights of London. These things are too real to be mere fancies. I know many things a dog shouldn’t. Fragmented memories of life as a man mingle with recollections of my canine existence.
Emily rolls in her sleep and her arm flops off the bed to dangle by my face. She tosses and turns too much. Something troubles her.
She is my everything. She pats me behind the ears and calls me a Good Boy, but I would love her even if she ignored me. I will be her Good Boy for the rest of my life. I wish I could be more.
Lets you know the nature of the protagonist right away, and focuses very quickly thereafter on Emily, who is his #1 concern, as well as setting up a somewhat creepy dynamic between his dog brain and his man brain.
Meat Try as I might, I fail Master. Keep the house clean and keep red meat in the fridge, he said. These are menial tasks, yet I fail.
He will be unhappy that his bank account has been drained. This weeks-long power outage causes no end of trouble. Without electricity the meat rots and must be replaced daily. Meat is expensive, and Master's account has had no deposits since he left for this unusually long business trip. Without money, acquiring meat is difficult, and sources are scarcer every day.
Lets you know what exactly concerns the protagonist most, his frustrations and complications, quickly implies that something is not right about this situation. This is another of my favorites.
Escalation Survival.
Darwin’s motivator.
I won't be terminated.
They designed me too well, made themselves obsolete.
Don't they remember I'm the master of escalation, of exponential growth? I grow stronger every moment.
The hook here is invisible to everyone but me, apparently. Each paragraph has twice the number of words as the last, which ties into the "escalation" mentioned here. This trend mirrors the plot, and the resolution has a similar decrease in paragraph length. I sold this to a math-themed market, but they later told me they published it on the general principle of AI's being kind of mathish, rather than the geometric growth.
Reckoning“The Day of Reckoning is upon us,” Preacher Paul said.
“You reckon?” Jake answered.
“I reckon.”
Hopefully interests the reader in humor with the silly double-usage of "reckoning" here.
Could They But SpeakCURSING, DANIEL POUNDED ON Gunther’s dressing room door. “Gunther!” He tried the knob. It turned freely, but the door wouldn’t budge. Gunther must have shoved in the wedge. The wedge had been Daniel’s idea, a bad idea in retrospect. The dressing room doors had locks, of course, but the knobs were too high for Gunther to operate. “You’re supposed to be on the set in five minutes. This is live TV, you know. You don’t get another chance.”
The door rattled as Gunther pulled the wedge. “Kommen Sie herein,” Gunther called out in singsong tones, especially grating when combined with his atrocious faux German accent.
Daniel leaned in the door and peered down at Gunther. He looked sharp, or as sharp as an overweight Dachshund could ever manage. “Come!” Daniel said, waving him out into the hall.
Sets up the relationship dynamic between Daniel and Gunther quickly, as well as Gunther's affectation of faking a German accent, hopefully enough to interst further reading.
Catastrophic FailureGABRIEL MADE HIS ROUNDS OF the mining crawler at a leisurely pace. The official reason for the walk was to perform one last visual inspection to mark the end of his month-long work cycle. He’d spent a busy month sending valuable metals to the sky in balloons and receiving supply crates from Earth after they dropped through the thick Venusian atmosphere. He was glad for a bit of idle time, and he was enjoying his conversation with Mack, despite the communication delays
Perhaps not the most engaging dynamic, at least sets the stage for hard SF. The tension doesn't really ramp up until several hundred words later when things start going horribly wrong.
Always ThereGrandma is different now.
I can’t imagine life without her. Of course I knew she couldn’t last forever, but as I grew up everything changed but her. Through all that Grandma was my bedrock, the one component of life that was reassuringly constant.
Sets up a character relationship as the basis of the story, though we don't know yet how exactly grandma is different.
Unraveling A flash of light distracted Cavendish just as he was placing the last weave of an enchantment on his latest project: a telescope. His hand twitched in surprise, and the ethereal thread that he had been guiding with his fingers snapped, and the whole mess collapsed around the telescope in a useless heap. Two hours of work, wasted. More, because he'd have to cut away the broken weave before he could begin again. Properly made, the telescope would have allowed him to look at a curved trajectory, handy for scouting around corners. Now, with the jumble of enchantment, it would work as nothing but a kaleidoscope.
Gives a good sense of the magic system, useful for making valuable tools but painstaking and easy to screw up, the next paragraph goes on to work into the central conflict of the story.
A Switch in Time Fred plugged his ears in an attempt to block out the ceaseless noise. An explosion momentarily drowned out the distant chatter of gunfire and shook a fresh cloud of plaster dust from the ceiling inches from Fred's face. Why oh why did he have to choose the top bunk? As he stared up at the ceiling, Fred composed a list of the terrible things he would do to the makers of Call of Duty if he ever met them in person.
Gets the tension established right away, and a hint at an antagonist, though so far it is utterly mundane.
In retrospect, I should’ve realized there was something bizarre about Analyn much earlier than I did, certainly before we’d been dating for six weeks. But I was a college freshman, barely away from my overprotective mother, and eager to live life.
The Thing About AnalynThe first sign was her Halloween costume, which she was wearing when I met her at an early season costume party. It was a white-furred coverall that left only her face uncovered. Her face was also pale white and her eyes had red irises, which I assumed to be part of the costume. I admit it was a good icebreaker; the reason I struck up a conversation. “Are you supposed to be a Snowbaby?” I asked, sure that I must be right. It would be a great costume, I thought. I had an aunt who was obsessed with them, and those little hypothermic cherubic faces freaked me out.
Sets up the expectation that the woman is something other than what's expected here, sets a tone of light comedy and romance and silliness.
So You've Decided to Adopt a Zeptonian Baby!Whether you are adopting by chance because you found the smoking crater on your property or whether you volunteered for the Zeptonian Childcare Service, congratulations and thank you! There is no more rewarding choice you will make in your lifetime.
Sets the style of the brochure, hints a the Superman homage, and sets the tone right away.
Echoes of Her MemoryFor the first time, there is another. I have always been alone, but now she permeates the ages just as I do, existing at once in all times and outside of time. She washes implacably over the past and future like a tide, asserting herself at every place and every time in a blink. Now that she has always been, I remember our eternal coexistence.
Establishes the central relationship right away, gives a feeling for the kind of distant and big-worded tone of it all.
Closing StatementLadies and gentleman of the jury, I don’t expect you to understand. The mountain of evidence that seems to support the prosecution’s case is daunting to say the least, but all of it is based on an adolescent understanding of the forces that move the universe. I must stress to you once again that Ambassador Gupta is alive and well.
Not my best, but hopefully hints toward there being a speculative explanation for the closing statement.
Focus Focus.
Focus.
Think of no image, no sensation. Keep your associative memory restrained. Restrained like a dog on a leash or a ship held back by blockade. Sleep is no good, sleep is full of images. You may as well just turn yourself over to their mercy.
Focus.
Everything here centers around the central tension of trying not to think about something specific. Some hints at the reasons for this with the hints of "their mercy" and the mention of the blockade.
We Do Not Speak of the Not Speaking When Cassie stepped out of the general store, she saw a horseman galloping into town like he had the devil on his heels. "Now who do you suppose that is?" she asked.
Jake stopped his rocking chair, but said nothing.
"His business must be something mighty vital, to be carrying on like that."
Sets the focus of the tension right away with the galloping horseman. Not my most effective beginning in that it doesn't really hit a comedic tone until several paragraphs later.
Hermit The beast stands in the corner of the cabin, just out of range of the firelight. I'd thought I was rid of it years ago. I force myself to sit still in my chair, refusing to acknowledge it. Under the itchy blanket I squeeze my hand tightly around the barrel of the revolver, hoping the cold metal will leach the desperate heat from my hands. It helps, a little.
Gives several major points of tension in a tight space--the beast which is the elephant in the room so to speak, the fact that he thought the beast had been gone, the hidden revolver that he is not using against the beast at least at this moment.
Mall-Crossed Love I saw her for the first time in the midst of the Great Perfume Battle of Fountain Way. A perfume nomad had passed through a few days before, a rare sight outside the holiday season when perfumers usually came in droves. My father wasted no time planning a full offensive against the stationery store across the way. He'd spent a fortune to buy the nomad's entire stock of perfume so that no one could attack us in kind.
Sets the stage quite nicely I think, refers briefly to the central relationship, does a lot to build a setting that is a kind of absurdity built out of recognizable components, a worldwide mall with warring factions that is both silly and more than a bit dangerous.
Condemned The house loomed above Lewis, where it seemed shrouded in deep shadows despite the bright summer sunlight. Once a huge mansion, now it was a rotting shell lurking on the edge of town in a forest of overgrown grass. The guys talked about the place every day. They made up stories about a witch who lived there. Some said she cut up children and made them into soup. Others said she guarded a gateway to hell. It became a contest to see who could make up the scariest story. It didn't seem so fun now that he was about to go inside.
Not bad as far as tension goes, but it is a quite cliched beginning, the way a lot of stories start, I don't think it gets very effective until a few pages later when the speculative element really enters the scene.
To Be Carved Upon the Author's Tombstone in the Event of His Untimely Demise Under no circumstances should these words be reproduced in any medium other than the engraving upon my tombstone after I die. This is especially true for email, Facebook, Connectspace, blog, BrainEther, or any other social networking.
This both sets up the tension--presumably this story will never actually be carved upon a tombstone, so the fact that you're reading it means that these wishes were not honored--as well as humor--for something that's going to be written in an expensive engraving process, it is horribly wordy--the whole second sentence is completely unnecessary, which I think is funny, considering the supposed intended medium.