You've Got Five Pages, Disappearance of a Scribe, to Tell Me You're Good.

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it!  The opening pages of Disappearance of a Scribe by Dana Stabenow are a lot of fun. The prologue has a lovely wit to the voice, its cadence an interesting mix of thoughtful prose and short, one-word sentences. This, in part, may be due to the fact that a man is trying to work out the fact he is on a boat about to be murdered. And then is murdered. End of prologue. I was hooked in those pages, but I admit I started the official Chapter 1 quite warily. As I had noted in my earlier episode about The Lioness, the prologue is sometimes used by writers in a "bait and switch." Unfortunately, I was right. Such a tight prologue of tension, dialogue, and action successfully engaged me, but my attention is for *more* action and intrigue, not a history lesson. Of course, Stabenow has to give readers a sense of time and place, for this mystery is set in the time of Cleopatra and her rule in Alexandria. The detective is the Eye of Isis--that is, Cleopatra's personal investigator. The details Stabenow shares with readers in Chapter 1 are all relevant to setting and time--that is not the problem. The problem is that Chapter 1 takes its time explaining the history and significance of the Library of Alexandria without any sort of scene at all. It's quite the exposition dump, and it really didn't need to be that way. If we writers are to keep readers after baiting them with a flash of intense action, then we need to at least keep some degree of action going. A simple conversation between an established character and a new character, for example, would invite education as well as interaction and sensory detail. This would keep the story's momentum going, and the reader would still have the necessary context to understand the historical period. What will you, fellow creative, learn in the first five pages? Let's find out!