Grabbing Readers

As a writer you have one chance to grab your readers and lure them into your story, essay, novel or poem. That one chance is at the beginning, and if you squander that chance, you've lost your readers for good. They won't come back if they're not hooked right away. We do most things in life in an orderly way. There is a beginning, middle and end to everything. And we are taught to "set things up" by providing appropriate explanatory background information. That approach, however, is the death of writing. You won't hook your readers by starting with explanation and background. You'll bore them and they'll stop reading. Readers want to be hooked into the middle of the story, "in media res." They want you to drop them into the action and come back later to fill them in on the background. They want to get involved right away. They want to care about your story or imagery or ideas right away. They don't want to have to wait to get excited. So forget about the beginning of your story. Go right to the heart of it and start there. Don't worry that readers might not have all the details right away. They don't need them. They just need to become engaged with what you're writing. They will forgive you if you wait to fill them in. In fact, they would prefer it. Readers want to have to guess what's going on, what may be happening next. Filling in the blanks is a big part of the thrill of reading. So don't rob your readers of that thrill. Grab them right away, grab them hard, and keep them enthralled.