The single most important element in convincing a reader to continue reading past your first page is an unanswered question.
This question might be explicit: perhaps you open with the character wondering something, which will hopefully make readers wonder the same thing.
Lizzie Leigh by Elizabeth Gaskell (affiliate link)
But more often the question is implicit, as it is in Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story “Lizzie Leigh,” which opens with a dying man’s last words to his wife. All he says is, “I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me.”
Readers have no idea whom the man is forgiving, or why he might need to beg God’s forgiveness. The fact that we don’t know what he’s talking about makes us want to read on to find the answers.
The important thing to remember about presenting this opening question is that it cannot be vague. Readers have to understand enough about the situation to mentally form a specific question. What the heck is going on here? does not qualify as a good opening question.
It’s not absolutely necessary that the question remain unanswered for the entire story. It’s perfectly all right to answer the question in the very next paragraph, so long as you introduce another question, and another and another, to give your reader a reason to keep turning those pages in search of answers.
