We start off with Chapter 1: The Hook. This is for novels, but can also be applied to movies and comics. Basically you need to get the audience audience as quickly as you can, and you do that by making the audience ask questions. Along with that you should try and cover the character, setting and tone aswell. Quite a lot to cover in a small amount of time :P
Anybody interested should check out the book, I just wanted to analyse a couple of opening pages from some manga I have lying around to see how well their hook is.
First one I looked at is Stone Ocean (JoJo's bizarre adventure):
So right here on the opening page we've got some dead folk lying about, looks like the car ran them over and is pulling a runner. And a pretty awesomely designed woman at the scene of the crime.
So immediately we have questions: Why are these guys dead, who's in the car? Why is she standing there? And where can I get that awesome tattoo done? -> Hooked
Other elements also ticked off. We have the main character, the setting looks like modern day, as for mood, going by her Chun Li Punk look, I think we're in for some fighting later on.
Next one is Blade of the Immortal by Hiroaki Samura:
I'm going to say it's not the best example, but it still does a good job posing some questions:
- Why is a samurai in church to confess? What did he do to kill one hundred people, is he a bad guy? What is the priest going to do?I also introduces us to the main character, the setting clearly is historical, and we can expect quite some violence if the main guy already hacked up 100 guys before the story even started :D
Last example is the movie 13 Assassins by Takeshi Miike (above)
The movie basically opens up with a suicide (hara kiri), which is always an interesting one. Who is this character? Why did he commit suicide? This is all explained in the next scene btw :P But it's also just beautifully composed with the white clothing and blade. It lets the viewer know that we're going to see a movie that puts some care in its' visual style, and prepares you for the type of physical and mental torture you're about to see.
