Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go by Edgerton Les

Author:Edgerton, Les [Edgerton, Les]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, epub
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2007-04-11T21:00:00+00:00

What makes Watson's prologue work is that he not only delivers the skeleton of the inciting incident, he places the protagonist's parents in moments of great tension and emotional distress. This allows the somewhat mundane (but necessary) backstory to be delivered, as the reader has been vividly shown that some dire moments are forthcoming. Even though all he delivers here is a glimpse of the inciting incident and resultant surface problem, it's enough of a snapshot to let the reader know a momentous shift has occurred in the protagonist's life and that we're going to get to it, by and by.

Was his prologue necessary? Not really. The story could have begun with the full scene of the Indian housekeeper, Marie, coming down with her fever and what emanated from that triggering incident. The history delivered after the prologue and before the full inciting incident scene of Marie could also have been delivered after taking the reader through Marie's fever and the surface problem that occasioned.

Immediately following the brief prologue, chapter one goes into backstory with a slow, measured description of the area and its history and of the place the narrator's family occupies in it. It gives the history not only of the narrator's father (who will be the protagonist) and how he came to inherit the office of sheriff from his own father, and also of the history of his brother, who will be his antagonist. It's a version of the Cain and Abel story and, as such, requires this history be absorbed by the reader before the story proper begins.

Perhaps sensing that the reader is beginning to get fidgety after reading for these first pages about a family and a region, Watson even includes this sentence near the end of his history lesson:

This was our family in 1948 and those were the tensions that set the air humming in our household. I need to sketch in only one more character and the story can begin.

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