Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell

true story of a complex case involving several deaths and illnesses caused by two large companies that recklessly poisoned the water supply of a small town. But it reads like the best fiction, and it does so right from the start.
    The first sentence reads: “The lawyer Jan Schlichtmann was awakened by the telephone at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning in mid-July.”
    What this does, from the very start, is give you a Lead character and a phone call that wakes him up. We’ve all received late night or early morning calls, and they usually portend bad news. So we want to read on and find out why the call was made. We’re hooked from the very first sentence.
    The opening chapter then goes on to reveal that the call is from a creditor telling Schlichtmann that if he doesn’t pay up, his car will be repossessed. Twenty minutes later another call comes from the County Sheriff, who is coming for the car. We learn Schlichtmann is involved in a huge case and is at the end of his financial rope. Things are so bad he could lose everything — his business, his home, his possessions. And we learn that the jury is out, deliberating on this case that will make or break Schlichtmann. We follow the now carless Schlichtmann as he walks down to the courthouse to wait in the corridor while the jury begins another day of deliberations. Our last image is of this lawyer, alone, waiting.
    This brilliant opening now allows the author to drop back in time and spend the rest of the book bringing us back to the point where it begins. We want to read because we have a character who is immediately sympathetic and interesting, tied up in the battle of his life. We were there from the very first sentence.
    Here are some other ways to grab readers from the start.
Action
    James M. Cain’s
The Postman Always Rings Twice
begins: “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”
    We are, as they say,
in medias res
— in the middle of things.
    Another form of immediate action is dialogue. If there is an element of conflict in there, so much the better. I chose this for my opening in
Final Witness
:
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œTwenty-four.”
    â€œGoing into your third year?
    â€â€œYes.”
    â€œSecond in your class?”
    â€œTemporarily.”
    â€œIsn’t it true you have a motive to lie?”
    â€œExcuse me?” Rachel Ybarra felt her face start to burn. That question had come from nowhere, like a slap. She sat up a little straighter in the chair.
    This cross-examination style plunges us into instant conflict between two characters.
Raw Emotion
    The Quiet Game
by Greg Iles begins with a father holding his four-year-old daughter in a line at Disney World:
    Annie jerks taut in my arms and points into the crowd.
    â€œDaddy! I saw Mama! Hurry!”
    I do not look. I don’t ask where. I don’t because Annie’s mother died seven months ago. I stand motionless in the line, looking just like everyone else except for the hot tears that have begun to sting my eyes.
    We bond with the Lead through his deep feeling of a universal emotion.
Look-Back Hook
    Still another way to capture attention from the start is with the
look-back hook
. Here is how Stephen King does it:
    The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years — if it ever did end — began, so far as I can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
    â€”
IT
    The two things Sarah remembered about that night later were his run of luck at the Wheel of Fortune and the mask. But as time passed, years of it, it was the mask she thought about — when she could bring herself to think about that horrible night at all.
    â€” The Dead Zone
    The idea is to immediately suggest there is a not-to-be-missed story about to unfold.
Attitude
    When using first-person narration, especially in literary fiction, your can capture attention through voice and attitude as