…and I don’t mean standing on the corner in something skimpy… or making something out of yarn… or some kind of accident when you go fishing. We’re talking about grabbing that attention (that we sometimes need tweezers for because it’s so short). How do we do that with words?
Create excitement where there isn’t any. We have a way of creating excitement or tension that the audio/visual world just doesn’t have. We have a direct route to the imagination. Just the other day, I offered up a starter sentence to help kickstart a fellow writer. I immediately thought of some gal, bored at work, possibly falling asleep only minutes before her shift was over. How exciting, right? I needed some kind of hook or draw to keep the reader interested in this bored lady. In comes a friend, slamming her keys down on the counter and announcing, “Girls night out, five minutes!” Bam, we have something exciting going on, and how many times have we known a ‘night out’ become something of legends?
Announce something strange. Want to grab someone’s attention? Show them something they either aren’t expecting, or something completely off the wall strange. Nothing like reading about a nice idyllic, pastoral scene with a picnic between two lovers… when all of a sudden, one of them is snapped up by a flying dragon and the other whips out a sword and gives chase…
Missdirection. Magicians use this all the time, why not you? Take someone’s hand, walking them through the setup of a murder scene, while you steal their wallet and watch while they’re staring at the grisly bits. Fun!
Just outright lie. Tell them it’s a story about a magical dwarf that goes on a quest to heal his mom… then the reader finds out it’s just a small, delusional robot with a penchant for Tolkien.
Tuck something in their pocket. Give them something to find later… a clue, a remark, a hint, etc… sneak it in. Have a good laugh as you point out that the tidbit was at the beginning the whole time.
There are so many ways to grab the attention of a reader, from all of those up there, to even having a character with a unique name… (read a book where the main female character was actually named Unique) I just thought I’d throw a couple out there to give the old, gray matter a smack. Keep trudging through the jungle… I think I hear drums, and that means that the natives are restless.
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