Opening Lines

This blog post first appeared on Storeybook Reviews on June 10, 2020

From the opening scene of Snowed Under:

The scene was like every description of a near-death experience I’d ever heard.

I drove through the darkness toward a white light on California’s Interstate 80, east over the Donner Pass toward Lake Tahoe.

Banks of plowed snow towered above the freeway, obliterating what would have been gorgeous mountain vistas if there had been any visibility. What the newscasters had calmly predicted as “winter storm conditions” howled around us, buffeting the car and overpowering my headlights, defroster, and windshield wipers.

For miles, I’d searched for a rest area where I could unclench my hands from the steering wheel, clear ice from the windshield, and take care of more basic human needs. But snow obscured the exit signs and wind erased tire tracks as soon as they formed. My golden retriever, Belle, huffed warm wet breath in my ear. Her pal Mozart panted beside her. My friend Tess Olmos dozed in the passenger seat.

Crafting perfect opening lines, paragraphs, and pages for a novel is a task akin to writing a short story. I need to introduce the characters, setting, genre, and stakes in a way that grabs readers and makes them trust my ability to tell a story and keep them entertained. That’s a tall order.

Few authors are able to check all those boxes at once. For example, in Snowed Under, we don’t learn about the “inciting incident” that propels main character Maggie McDonald into her investigation until page nineteen, at the close of the second chapter. That’s later than usual in my books. I took a chance on revealing more about the new environment Maggie finds herself in—a winter landscape completely different from the Mediterranean climate of her home in Silicon Valley. Still, we know right away that the stakes are high, which I hope will help readers hang on for a bit.

The opening pages of Snowed Under are the least revised paragraphs of this novel. The scene is almost identical to the version that first unfolded in my imagination. I think that’s because it works. We find the characters in the midst of a dire situation (a life-threatening blizzard), and introduce the key players immediately. We see Maggie, her best friend Tess, and their dogs (which tell the reader it’s probably a cozy mystery).

It’s a tumultuous beginning, but the danger is outside the car. Inside the car, as with most cozies, the atmosphere is warm and comforting. My hope is that it draws readers in, signaling that they are entering a classic murder mystery format that is cozy, slightly edgy, and pure entertainment. With dogs.

What do you think as a reader? Does the opening atmosphere envelope you or leave you feeling meh? What do you like to read in the opening lines of a cozy mystery?