How often do we try to gain the attention of others? Quite often I presume, and we gain their attention in various ways. If you are writing something, whether it be a short story, poem, or a novel, you must gain the attention of your audience early in the story. By early, I mean first page or two. It doesn’t have to be main premise of your whole story yet, but it does have to grab.
One way to do this is to create a question in the reader’s mind.
Example: A light glowed as Jack approached the hallway to the left. He stopped and poked his head around the corner. There a small box glowed in the middle of a chalk drawn circle.
This example creates various questions, such as:
- Why is the box glowing?
- What’s in the box?
- How did it get there?
- What does the circle mean?
- Why is it the middle of a circle? What does that represent?
So, all kinds of questions come from this one small sentence. That’s what you want. This would certainly keep me reading/turning the page.
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 