The Importance of a Strong Opening
Nora Roberts’ first sentence in Dance Upon the Air immediately captures the reader’s attention:
“In the dark green shadows of the deep woods, an hour before sunrise, they meet in secret.”
This sentence is outstanding in establishing the first scene where the initial action place. Through what Roberts presents, the reader immediately experiences the setting: a dark forest full of shadows. There is secrecy, and the reader straight off knows people are meeting for some undisclosed reason. The reader doesn’t know who the characters are — at least, not yet, not from this first sentence. The important point is, the reader’s interest has been piqued. The reader wants to know why these people have decided to meet in this dark place, and what will they be planning to do and, ultimately, where will the next action take place. All of this has been created from the strength of the first sentence.
Roberts has a way of utilizing suggestive words as she continues to build her first scene: “the longest day,” the shortest night,” “solstice,” “a time of ignorance,” “of death.”
The reader, if familiar with the history of the time period of the novel (Salem, 1692), instinctively knows something is about to take place — Puritan beliefs and questionable behavior by people deemed witches. (And we are all aware what happened to those unfortunate souls.) The reader then wants to continue with the story to discover what is going to happen and to whom — and why.
Thanks to writers like Nora Roberts, we, as writers, can study the importance of effective openings and we can follow their examples as we create our own.
Roberts, Nora. Dance Upon the Air. New York. Putnam, 2001
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