You've Got Five Pages, The Wager by David Grann, 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 to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! I think for the first time ever, I find the author’s note to be a compelling hook. David Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, a fascinating mix of true crime and nautical history. Grann shares a quick paragraph before the prologue describing the “debris” he sorted through of conflicting accounts and half-truths and that he won’t reach a conclusion for us—we must make our own conclusions as to what really happened a couple of centuries ago. It’s a cold case without any clear-cut closure…and I’m all for it. The prologue then gives readers some basic context for what happened regarding the British ship The Wager: originally sent to overtake a Spanish galleon, it goes MIA only to appear battered and beaten off the coast of Brazil with a starved fraction of its original crew. Yet another smaller vessel with a few more survivors lands later, and these two parties provide very, VERY different accounts of what went down on The Wager and the island where all were shipwrecked. Now considering the unique terminology that comes with nautical period writing, I don’t think Grann’s book is for everyone, but if you’re prepared to lose yourself amongst the waves of the past, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Grann’s The Wager. And what will you find in those first five pages? Let's find out! Cheers!