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Topic : Does this entice the reader to continue? This is the beginning of my science fiction book that I am currently writing. I tried to be more specific, but without giving away the full idea. I - selfpublishingguru.com

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This is the beginning of my science fiction book that I am currently writing. I tried to be more specific, but without giving away the full idea. I might have failed at that.
I wanted to know if this opener entices to continue to read. if you have any suggestions, I am more than happy to consider them.

This is just the first draft and I am not finished with it. I just wanted to know if the beginning was good before I continued. Please be critical:

Today was the day; the day that everyone had to worry about. There wasn’t really a name for it, although it was well known. After all, it was the age when a person is legally able to be boosted. Seventeen years old; otherwise known as the Emergence Age.

Most teenagers were afraid. They had the fear of emerging. This would mean that you were compatible with the Booster. Why should you be scared of this? Being compatible with the booster would increase your chances on having to go outside the Divide, into Purgatory. No one wanted that. That was pretty much like tying a rope around your neck and knocking over the chair. Most people saw it this way. Others viewed it from a different angle. There were so many ways that people thought of it.

Me? I didn’t know what to think. No one in my entire family has ever emerged. Was I going to be the first? Or was I just going to be like the rest of my family? No one would know for sure, unless I got boosted and today was the day that I would find out.

A lot of people think that Sector C is a horrible place to grow up in. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that bad. Well I mean, at least it wasn’t Sector D. My sister often refers to this Sector as a dump filled with delinquents and thieves. I, on the other hand, was used to it. Once you know the places to avoid, it’s wasn’t a bad place. It is true that there are a lot of shady characters here, but most of the people here are just poor families trying to get by.


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I agree with the others here that the beginning is a good idea, but not executed well. I think there are two ways you can remedy this.
First idea. I don't want the narrator to talk to me. Your narrator is trying to tease me by not telling me every important thing I should already know because I live in this dystopian world but don't know because I don't live in this dystopian world. Your narrator leaves me with the impression that he feels very smug about not explaining just the right things.
So instead of telling me, drop in the middle of the action and have your narrator talk to someone, or more than one person, about what's going on.

"Well, kid, you seem pretty cool-headed for a youngling about to get Boosted," the technician chortled.
"Meh, no one in my family has ever emerged, so I don't see why everyone freaks out about getting tested," I replied, hoping I sounded nonchalant even as my palms were sweating.
He laughed. "Last kid said the same thing right before he vanished."

This kind of format helps in two ways. First, you get to introduce new vocabulary in an appropriate context. It is still mysterious what it means exactly, but you've got appropriate clues to begin guessing and they feel like natural context cues rather than something you are purposefully trying to feed me in order to keep me confused. Second, you build your characters.
Second idea. I don't mind your narrator talking to me if he's telling me a story. It's a harder format, but some conversational stories are very engaging. But don't have your narrator tell me about how people generally feel about this generic case of this event. Make it personal.
In this case, I'd want your narrator to fill me in on the stuff that's important to the story, just like you would do if you were telling me about that time you went fishing with your uncle and you completely misunderstood what he meant when he said 'throw him back'.

I grew up hard. Not as hard as some, but harder than most. So you can imagine I was scared as a rabbit when I turned seventeen and there was no one in my family who'd ever emerged. There was always one, you see—in every generation of a family, there was always one who got boosted, and the more of my family who didn't, well, the more likely it would be me.
Now it's true that Emergents have a certain status, and that's enviable, but on the other hand, there's always the danger they will go outside the Divide into Purgatory. I grew up on the streets, and I've seen some things, but Purgatory is a whole other level of unkindness. I can't say that risk is something I'm much willing to take, even given the privileges of being Boosted.

In this case, the vocabulary is introduced with enough context that you can feel how the narrator feels about it. This helps develop the character, and although there is still mystery about what all these terms mean, we hopefully have a pretty clear picture of how the narrator feels about what is going on.
And also, you could blend these two ideas together. In any case, I think the core of the story could be interesting. The rest is just editing.


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If this is a day when something culturally important happens, then the culture will have a name to distinguish it (cf. “confirmation”, “bar mitzvah”, “quinceañera”).
Who is the first-person narrator talking to? Why would this audience need to be told about boosting, etc.?
“Others viewed it from a different angle. There were so many ways that people thought of it.” What different angle? What ways? Two paragraphs into the story and you’re already vague: this is not tantalizing but irritating. Furthermore, why should I as a reader care what people think of “boosting” if I don’t even know what it is?
The character that you portray here doesn’t seem to want anything, but is content to just let things happen to him/her and then find out how it goes. This is a weak place to begin a plot.
It wasn’t clear to me how the fourth paragraph connects to the preceding three. On my first reading, I thought that the “dump filled with delinquents and thieves” is Sector D, rather than the Sector C that the narrator apparently lives in.


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Introducing some kind of mystery is a common technique for hooking a reader's interest, but by itself it feels like teasing: the writer knows something but won't share it with the reader yet. So no, this does not entice me; it annoys me, makes me feel manipulated because your narrator is being deliberately coy. Try combining it with another technique: engage us with the character.

As it is, we know nothing about your narrator. He is a blank emptiness upon which the world imposes itself: we are told about things which happen to him and the people around him, but the one time he ventures an opinion, it is to say he does not have one. If you give us a better sense of your narrator's personality, provide us an opportunity to care about the narrator, then we have a reason to care about the mystery beyond idle curiosity.

If you can make us want to spend more time with the main character, you don't even need a mystery to hook us in.


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I think you're in the right direction. However, the first two sentences are a little bit too general. Basically, what they are saying is this: today is an especial day for pretty much everyone.

A good hooking sentence should provide some information and rise questions at the same time.

Consider this:

Today was the day. Most teenagers were afraid; they had the fear of
emerging.

So, in this case, the reader will ask himself/herself: Why were the teenagers afraid? Why emerging is scary?


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