Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell Page A

a grizzled veteran, and his young partner, arrive. Tension builds as he tries to undo the bomb. Finally, left holding a bit of explosive, Harper is almost there when … boom. His hand is mostly blown off.
    Chapter one: Two-and-a-half years later, Harper is going to see his partner (who was sort of at fault for the accident). He’s working security for techno-thriller author Rod Buckner. Harper is no longer with the NYPD.
    Chapter two: Harper can’t talk his old partner into coming back to the NYPD. As he’s driving away from this very secure complex, a tremendous explosion is heard. The whole house, along with Buckner and all the others, is blown up.
    Chapter three: Harper tries to get information on the investigation into his ex-partner’s death, but his old captain isn’t giving any. Tension builds here.
    Chapter four: We see Harper’s home life. Then he gets a message from an old FBI friend to come see him about the case.
    Chapter five: Addleman, a profiler who is now a drunk and eccentric, says he has a theory. There is a serial bomber out there, targeting celebrities!
    Chapter six: Now a scene with the bomber, the villain, getting stuff from a contact in a remote area. The contact is surly. When the deal is finally made, the contact takes the money. But it is laced with napalm, and a trick detonator. The guy burns up.
    We are now on page 64, the plot is set up, and the cat and mouse begins.
SOME GREAT OPENINGS
    Let’s have a look at some great openings from best-selling novels and see what the writers are doing. We’ll begin, once again, with the master, Dean Koontz, and
Sole Survivor
:
    At two-thirty Saturday morning, in Los Angeles, Joe Carpenter woke, clutching a pillow to his chest, calling his lost wife’s name in the darkness. The anguished and haunted quality of his own voice had shaken him from sleep. Dreams fell from him not all at once but in trembling veils, as attic dust falls off rafters when a house rolls with an earthquake.
    Again, notice that Koontz gives us a specific name and a haunting first line. But then he expands upon that line with two others that are almost poetic in their descriptive power and emotional impact. This is one of the greatest opening paragraphs in any thriller you’ll ever read.
    From
The Stand
by Stephen King:
    â€œSally.”
    A mutter.
    â€œWake up now, Sally.”
    A louder mutter:
lemme alone
.
    He shook her harder.
    â€œWake up. You got to wake up!”
    Charlie.
    Charlie’s voice. Calling her. For how long?
    Sally swam up out of sleep.
    King uses the dialogue starter, which always gives the impression of instant motion. Somebody is saying something, so we’ve got action (dialogue is a form of action, a physical act to gain a result or reaction). As the dialogue continues, we know only that Charlie is in some distress, and that Sally, swimming out of sleep, is about to find out what it is.
    If you’re writing a comical novel, there is another possibility for a grabber opening: using the look and sound of the text itself to create an oddball impression. From
Sacred Monster
by Donald E. Westlake:
    â€œThis won’t take long, sir.”
    Oooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooo oooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo, wow.
    I hurt all over. My
bones
ache. God’s giant fists are squeezing my internal organs, twisting and grinding. Why do I
do
it, if it makes me sick?
    â€œReady for a few questions, sir?”
    Westlake makes sure we are sufficiently intrigued, too, by making us wonder just what it is the narrator does to make himself so sick.
    Now let’s have a look at some great openings in literary novels. Can we get any more literary than Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick
?
    Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and