From Sol Stein's "On Writing": What's your goal for the first paragraph of your novel? 1. To excite the reader’s curiosity, preferably about a character or a relationship. 2. To introduce a setting. 3. To lend resonance to the story.
The reason this works is that readers decide within a sentence or two whether to trust you with their attention, and curiosity is the cheapest, fastest way to earn that trust. A question mark hovering over a person, not a place, gives readers something to carry forward, because we're wired to care about people before scenery. Say your first line is: "My sister had been dead for six years when she knocked on my door." That's a relationship, a mystery, and a world all folding into one breath. The caution is not to confuse curiosity with confusion. Stack too many withheld facts and coy pronouns, and readers stop leaning in and start feeling managed. Curiosity should feel like a door left open, not a maze. Give enough to orient us, and hold back only what genuinely matters.
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