Being a writer, part 11: Real examples 2

I'm going to let you compare extracts from the beginning of two novels, one published, one not (yet). I wonder if you can tell which is which?

FIRST EXTRACT

Alan Greening was drunk. He'd been boozing all night in Covent Garden: starting at the Punch, where he had three of four pints with his old friends from college. Then they'd gone to the Lamb and Flag, the pub dowwn that dank alleyway near the Garrick Club.

How long had they lingered there, sinking beers? He couldn't remember. Because after that they'd gone to the Roundhouse, and they'd met a couple more guys from his office. And at some point the lads had moved from pints of lager to shorts: vodka shots, gin and tonics, whisky chasers.

SECOND EXTRACT

'George,' Olivia says, 'are you a bad person?'
I take her little hands in mine and kneel down to her level, completely disarmed by her. I gaze at the pretty face with the sparkling blue eyes below the blonde hair and the black hair band, knowing I can't lie to her. 'I've been a very bad person.'
'Are you going to do bad things to me, like make me deaded?'
'No, sweetheart, but you do need to pretend you're my little girl for a while. There's something I need to finish. I think you can help me.'

The first is from The Genesis Secret (Harper, 2009) by Tom Knox, the second is from one of my works in progress, entitled Victim.

The trouble with the first passage is that it's a boring pub crawl itinerary and you don't care about Alan Greening and his drunken mates. Chances are, you've already switched off. This is not the way to start a story.

The second passage sucks you in, even if I say so myself. The named characters speak and interact, coming to life in the process, we are in the head of the creepy, evil George, and we are shown (not told) that the two characters have a captor and captive relationship, that the captive is very young. And it poses questions: what has George done and what has George yet to do? Doeas George tell lies? Does Olivia survive? This is why we read on, why we turn the pages. Make the reader care, make the reader ask, and you'll not go far wrong.

Jack Orchison
May 25, 2014.