Hookers - at work!

Thought that might get your attention, and I achieved my aim of this post. So now get your mind off the streets, or out of bed because I'm talking about that elusive, most fretted over first sentence to hook the reader and for us unpub's - the editor.
It's significance is the first thing a writer understands, and the reader and editor look for. It doesn't matter what you write, or what genre you write - the first sentence must hook the reader in. And that is only for starters - the rest of the scenes in the story must do also.
Here are some things that I have been told may help.

1. Variety - needed if the story isn't to become repetitive and boring.
2. Avoid the dreaded cliche - plane, a funeral or a birth, awakening from sleep most common openings used according to Bell and Bentley in 'Write On.'
3. Be Imaginative - that's a no brainer every writer wants to have an original twist.
4. Originality, imaginative, intriguing - like a headline which says read on.
5. Contrasts - mood, atmosphere, weather and setting.
6. Versatility - a bit like variety but with drama, conflict and suspense
   
7. Dialogue - but be weary of leaving the reader disoriented and not knowing where they are. It can foreshadow what is to come, build suspense and reader expectation. It also establish immediacy of action/conflict.
   
8. Raise reader curiosity with a question..
9. Place the reader in the scene quickly. Use of settings to establish something about the characters, who they are and the time and place quickly.
   
10. If using descriptive passage, it should be concise, vivid and dramatic and pitch the reader into the scene.
    
11. Emotion - such as anger, involve the reader early. Don't be repetitive as it leads to melodrama. Conflict - draws the reader in. Avoid bickering, try conflict of wills, or conscience vs ego, good vs bad.
12. Use a proverb, or a quote to provide the theme, atmosphere, conflict of the scene or story.
13. Use mystery to introduce a new character.
14. Bridging a time gap can be acheived by condensed, concise history of events; the simple use of a date; new chapter; or line drop.
15. Pace - short sentences build tension and increase pace, longer ones slow it down and can be more romantic (unless of course it is the ' Wham! Bang! Thank you Ma'am'.).

SO, if you're out there looking for a hooker - maybe these will help. Thanks to Richard Bell and Paula Bentley - A Desk Drawer Digest of Style and Grammar in Action Write On! (1997) pub. Writers News Ltd.

I have just finished Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter - a super read if you happen to come across it.
Be sure to look in on Thursday for my Thirteen Things you might or might not know about the English and their famous "Cup of Tea".