I re-read an interview with Harry Harrison today, concerning the origins of the Stainless Steel Rat, one of my favourite sci-fi heroes.

"Back in New York when I was still an artist. I knew all the writers because I was illustrating science fiction magazines, and we'd sit around and talk, and one of the things we discussed was the narrative hook. Narrative hook is a pulp term - the first page of a pulp story manuscript has the name and the address of the person to be paid for the story up in the left-hand corner; and in the right-hand corner we have the number of words in the story. That's the money! Then we jump to the middle of the page - because we need a lot of white for the editor to write on - the title, double space, 'by' any name at all, double space, then the first paragraph. And its all double-spaced! At this point you end up with six or seven or eight lines on the front page of the manuscript, and the narrative hook is something that will hook the pulp-editor into turning the page - because there's so much crap comes in front of him that's so rotten...Eeerah! He looks at it and throws it away. But if you get him to turn the page, he says, 'My God! I turned the page... I'll buy it!'"

(excerpted from the interview on www.harryharrison.com

That pretty much prompted me to look at the first page for Goldric's Luck again. I had a pretty good narrative hook for the first page, but having realised that chances are I have less than half the space to work with than I thought, I've been spending most of today trying to get something else sorted out.

Let's be all goal-oriented for a second. What have I got on that page so far.

Item: A growing number of pilgrims on their way to the city. Not bad, but hardly gripping -- big groups of people go to places all the time.

Item: A paragraph describing the protagonist. Okay, fair enough. He has to look like something. Give the reader a few visual cues -- but there's no action there -- no speech. No dynamic. Might I be better off shunting this onto the next page?

Thing is I have a nice simile linking the two things together (the pilgrims as sheep, the protagonist as a wolf, etc) -- can I stretch it to cover two pages or more while keeping the reader's interest? I may have to, given that further parts of that image are described elsewhere (the guards as sheepdogs and a cleric as a shepherd).

I need another hook, though. Can't count on an editor reading the first page and considering it worth his or her while to turn to the next. Bugger.

Ah, well. All part of the learning process.