DISCLAIMER: If the contents of this post about how to write effective beginnings seem familiar to you, you’ve got a good memory. You’ve also probably been reading the MUF blog for at least two years. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago, I posted about key elements that should be present in a story’s opening lines, and I used Wendy Mass’s Every Soul a Star as a model. Today’s post is going to revisit the same book. And I’m so lazy, most everything else is the same, too. But there’s one key difference:

Wigs.

Now, instead of reading, sit back and relax. Grab your favorite beverage. Then take just 3 minutes to watch my video on what you can do with your story’s opening lines in order to hook your readers.

So . . . what’s a book you’ve read that pulled you in from the opening line? What struggles and/or successes have you had at crafting your own effective beginnings? Feel free to post in the comments below.

Along with his MUF posts, T. P. Jagger can be found at www.tpjagger.com, where he provides brief how-to writing-tip videos as The 3-Minute Writing Teacher plus free, original readers’ theatre scripts for middle-grade teachers. You can subscribe to his e-newsletter and/or his YouTube channel in order to be notified when new videos are posted in “The 3-Minute Writing Teacher” series of how-to writing tips.