Hi, welcome to the Storygrid podcast where we help you become a better writer and storyteller.

I'm Sean Coyne. Tim Graal is out this week because of laryngitis, but we did record the episode

before he got sick. So we put this intro on me this week, so bear with me. In this episode,

we talk about the beginning hook of your story and the importance of

really hooking the reader at the very beginning. Also, we get a little bit into character

development. And so without further ado, let's jump right in. So, Sean, before we jump into

what I want to go over today, I had a question. I was working on a new story idea,

and I wrote the first scene, but I wrote the scene. I had written a different version of

this book before, and somebody was saying, somebody that read it said, oh, I should just start with the most exciting scene that was kind of in the middle.

And so I wrote that, but it got me thinking about all these different ways that people open their books.

So, you know, you have, I think about movies, like a lot of times in action movies, there'll be just this kind of throwaway early scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

You know, just be some kind of, you know, breaking in and getting something and they're running out.

And then that's kind of it.

And they move on with the movie.

And then we talked about before with Birdbox where like it, the author

basically started telling the ending payoff at the beginning of the book.

Right. And then the way I was, I was working on it was something where I basically give a

scene from the middle of the book that's really kind of intense to let you know,

like, this is where we're heading. And then I kind of start almost, you know how, like,

they'll show you a scene, and then it's like two days earlier. And then it kind of picks up from there.

You know, what kind of things, you know, what are your feelings on that and

what kind of things are, you know, do you feel like work really well as far as opening a book

...