If you want a fun ride through the bizarro world of Florida, the modern spirit of destruction, and how ordinary people get pulled into wild tales of adventure, you can’t do better than Carl Hiaasen.
Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald and a bestselling author. Everything he writes offers a clinic on how to draw the reader into a story. Take a look at the opening paragraphs of Skinny Dip:
At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
I married an asshole, she thought, knife headfirst into the waves.
The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse, panties, wristwatch, and sandals. But Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nugget that her husband obviously had forgotten.
Bobbing in its fizzy wake, Joey watched the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour. Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened, and he wasn’t telling anybody.
Bastard, Joey thought.
She noticed that her bra was down around her waist, and she wiggled free of it. To the west, under a canopy of soft amber light, the coast of Florida was visible. Joey began to swim.
What does Hiaasen do in this 169-word passage? Hiaasen follows eight simple rules of attraction, providing:
- An immediate glimpse into the story: In the first sentence, we see Joey plunge off the side of a luxury liner. It’s almost as if we’re on the deck, watching as she f a l l s.
- A low-cost threshold: Joey’s plunge is easy to see. We have questions, but the immediate moment is not at all complicated. She falls. We have good reason to suspect she was pushed. Now what?
- A view of the goal: We immediately see that survival and revenge are Joey’s twin goals. “Bastard!” says the former collegiate swimmer as she begins to dig her arms into rough sea, hoping to survive and swim to safety.
- A hint at the paths needed to get there: The path is simple: Bobbing in the choppy waters of the hostile sea, she needs to find her way to land. She’s got the athletic ability. But how far is land? Is there some island nearby? Or maybe someone sailing nearby? Or is there any way for someone to see her or notice her missing?
- Sensory involvement: We see a sexy, fit, feisty woman plunging into the dark waters below: the ripped clothes and undergarments, the fizzy water, the light. It’s just enough sensory stuff–sights, sounds, and feeling–to get a sense of the moment. Not to mention the sex appeal of this feisty heroine.
- A sense of what it means: We have good reason to know that the Joey’s husband, who forgot that his wife was a swimmer in college, tossed her overboard. That makes him the villain. More to come …
- The right balance of adventure and safety: No reader wants to fly overboard into ice-cold choppy waters. But as Hitchcock noted, we’re delighted to watch from the comfort of our armchair. So settle in for a rollicking tale of survival and revenge. Don’t worry. You’re safe.
- An early win: Joey’s surviving and keeping her wits is a major victory. She’s supposed to be dead, after all. That early win whets our appetite for the drama ahead.
We could do worse than to follow these eight basic rules for drawing the reader into the story.