The challenge: 100 first-page story hooks in sixty days. Just the first page (or less), and it has to hook the reader to want more.
Raise the difficulty: Nah. Not doing that tonight. These are just as they come off the keyboard.
Sixty-seven:
Neal scribbled on his paper. Words, he guessed. He wasn’t really looking.
His head down, as if he were focused on his paper, his eyes nevertheless rolled all the way up and scanned the back of the girl in front of him. The lovely, slim back of Annabelle Gray.
Blue silk top today, stretched lightly across her shoulders, which twitched as she hunched over her test paper. She rose up a moment, stretched her left arm, and flicked her long golden hair over her shoulder, tucking it behind her shell-pink ear. She bent again over her paper.
Neal began again to breathe. One hopeless breath, and back to the riveting question of whether Cortes should be considered the greatest villain in history.
Sixty-eight:
Sixteen cars passed Davus Partridge as he stood on the side of the freeway, gas can in hand. Sixteen drivers glanced sideways, and sixteen brake lights never came on. Davus evidenced no surprise, simply standing there, can dangling from his right hand, left hand shading his eyes from the descending sun.
The seventeenth car showed around the gentle curve, and Davus’s mouth turned slightly downward. This was the one. When it got to less than a hundred yards away, Davus stepped off the shoulder and into the lane. He figured the driver of the green Buick had about a half second to realize what he’d done, another quarter second to apply the brakes, or he’d be flattened across this lane of blacktop.
He really hoped the driver was paying attention.
P.S. This series is the brainchild of The New Creatives, which challenged us to create 100 of something as a way of attaining mastery of a particular art form (or beginning the process, more like). This is my attempt. #TNCmy100
This blog series loves the Minnow Support Project and all its lovely denizens.
#67 is a great piece of description but as a story hook didn't really have much to drag me in. #68 on the other hand should get its own private jet and an endless supply of hookers and blow. That one is money. I was totally hooked. ;-)
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I didn't feel it with #67, but I couldn't figure out how to amp it up. There's a hopelessness there, and that's not an action driver. Maybe @rhondak and her crew could figure out what to do with it.
The problem with #68 is I have no earthly idea what's going on. I don't know who Davus is. I don't know what's special about car 17. I don't know what the gas can is for. I have no idea whether the driver IS paying attention. Or who the driver is. The only way to know is to keep writing. Maybe I'll have to come back to this one.
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@cristof interesting indeed especially section of the lovely, slim back of Annabelle Gray.
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Yeah. There was a girl, once, in math class...
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Good one indeed. Beauty and brain isnt it?
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Another couple of nice ones!
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