OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW!!!

I hate hard sell.

Ok, I'm as much a sucker for an interesting hook at the beginning of a book as the next guy, but...call me weird if you must...I don't want the whole book to be "exciting".

I like literary works. It doesn't get much better than Sojourner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final novel. Not much exciting happens, but the book is wonderful.  How can that be?

Yes, I do want something of interest in every chapter; in fact, on every page. It's just that "of interest" doesn't have to include explosions or cliffhangers or adolescent snits. Personally, I find really good writing to be plenty.

I hope someday to be able to write like that book. The work is subtle, but filled to the brim with anguish, joy, cruelty, insanity, loyalty, injustice, humility, and heroic sacrifice, all with no explosions.

In fact, most of the book takes place right on the single farm.  They plant orchards, and try to keep the sheep warm through the winter. The main character is a farmer who isn't very outspoken, but feeds his hogs, tills his fields, and daydreams a lot. He plays a flute. He marries the girl his older brother left behind, and they have kids. He has a buddy who's a drunk, and sometimes gypsies come set up on his property for a while. Wow! Are you excited yet?

I sat in the tub with my wife and read this book to her. We sat in the yard and read it. We read it in bed. We stopped now and then to savor the scenes, the language. We're going to use singed pages from an extra copy to decorate the house.

Then I pick up books where the writer throws me into a heated firefight, and I have to wonder why I care who wins. When it's over and I've figured out who the hero is supposed to be, there's a roaring car chase. Then a fistfight. Then the character must hide from the police, while the author narrates the deep personal relationship the character has with one of the officers by telling me "Bob had a deep personal relationship with one of the officers."

I'm sorry, but I don't want every scene in a book trying to tweak my adrenalin.  There must be pacing. There must be contrast. Too much becomes just the 7:15 train rattling my dishes, and eventually I don't even notice anymore.

What I want is an elegant turn of phrase that brings me up short and makes me realize what a character is feeling.

Pick up any of the classics. Open it at random to a few different pages. You'll likely hit some dialogue, some worldbuilding narrative, a tense scene of conflict. It's not always fever pitch.

You can't evoke real emotions in the reader until you get them to care about the characters. Ideally, a good book should hook the readers in the first page, and then reel them in as it progresses. If they aren't willing to read a few pages to develop a little rapport, then they are going to be limited to schlock.

So my job is to generate a good opening that doesn't read like a screaming infomercial, and follow it up with sympathy, depth and feeling.  That's a tall order.

Guess I'd better get back to writing.