The most important thing a writer can present at the beginning of any scene is a question that will hook readers into needing to know the answer. The second most important thing is making certain that question isn’t the wrong question. You want your readers asking tangible questions. Who stole Grandma’s favourite vase? How is Marg going to escape the Pit of Despair? Why did Cinderella order glass slippers a size too large?! You don’t want your readers asking the dreaded four-word question: What’s going on here? Or, worse, the end-of-the-line three-letter one word question: Huh?
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Be cautious of creating false suspense, the kind of suspense that has readers floundering to understand the fundamentals of your scene, rather than forging ahead with explicit, clear-cut questions. Apart from making it clear up front who your character is, their age, what they look like and other characteristics, the following is a list of questions your reader shouldn’t have to ask.
Where is this scene taking place?
Don’t leave your characters exploring The Matrix’s White Room. Readers need to know if the scene is taking place in a café, a forest, a bedroom, or an airplane.
What year is it? Or day, or season...
This is particularly important if you are writing historical fiction, or some other kind of story in which the date is important. Familiarize your readers with any time-sensitive information.
Who is this character interacting with?
If other characters are present in the scene, give readers a little help by naming them. “He” or “she” just doesn’t give readers much to work with the first time they’re introduced to a character.
What is the narrators relation to the other character(s)?
Readers should almost always know everything the narrating character does. Unless the other characters in the scene are strangers to the protagonist, fill readers in on how the narrator knows these people and what he is doing with them.
What is the character trying to accomplish in this scene?
The character’s goal in any given scene is arguably the single most important bit of info to share with your readers. This is what drives your scene. This is what gives birth to those concrete questions you want readers to be asking.
Why should I care about any of this?
Why? This is the icing on the cake! This is the question you must answer if you want readers to keep reading. Whether the answer is curiosity, emotional investment, or sympathy, you have to supply readers a personal reason to care about finding the answers to all the rest of the questions you will present in the story.
If you can make certain you’ve satisfactorily answered all these questions in the opening of your book and, to a lesser extent, in the opening of every scene to follow, you’ll free up readers minds to concentrate on the questions that really matter!
Dancing in Ink... 