2. Write a good first paragraph
We have seen some preliminary tips to start writing.
Now we will give you some ideas on how to create a good first paragraph that invites the reader to continue reading.
In today's fast-paced world, the first sentence of your story should catch the reader's attention with the unusual or unexpectedness of an action or conflict.
Otherwise, you risk losing their attention when they've barely read the first few lines. Therefore, you must start with tension, vigor and suspense. Keep in mind that stories should begin near the end. Let us now look at some examples.
Incorrect:
I heard my neighbor yelling through the wall.
This beginning is certainly uninteresting.
Right:
Our back neighbor does scream therapy in the shower almost every day.
However, this sentence captures the reader's attention from the first moment. Who is this man? who screams in the shower every day?
Why does he do that? What exactly is 'screaming therapy'?
Without a doubt this approach encourages you to continue reading:
The first time I heard him, I stayed in the bathroom that shares a wall with his, listening for ten minutes and wondering whether to call the police. That was very different from what the neighbors of my previous apartment used to do, a middle-aged couple with two children.
The rest of the paragraph introduces an internal conflict in which the protagonist doubts whether to take action, so the reader will want to know whether or not he called the police. But it also introduces an intriguing contrast between past and present that lets us know a little more about the protagonist (he recently moved), while posing new questions to the reader (why did he move?)
It is important to understand and be clear about the basic elements of a story before putting them together to form a whole. This process is comparable to the production of something delicious in the kitchen: whatever ingredient is added affects the final result. To create a perfect dish, you must balance the ingredients, take into account the cooking time and take care of the final presentation. Exactly the same happens with fiction writing.
And as a sample, one of the first most shocking sentences in literature: the beginning of Chronicle of an announced death, by the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. What do you want to continue reading?
The day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at 5.30 in the morning to wait for the ship on which the bishop was arriving.
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