The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.
Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.
You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.
I always put myself in the audience's seat, whether it is a film like 'Judwaa 2' or 'Badlapur.' There has to be a message; the core story needs to have a hook, which should be out of the ordinary.
Well, if you're writing a thriller, you have to have your character in mortal jeopardy on page 1 or it's not a thriller.
My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.
Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.
I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.
Sometimes a writer just needs a hook.
I don't stay in the genre because I just like all stories that have a smart hook in them and I can find a comic way through if it's a comedy or a suspenseful way through it if it's a drama.
If the character is really well-rounded, and it's a really strong character, and if the writing is just fantastic, that's the thing that will hook me in, certainly.
Once you have a central character who announces in the first five minutes of the show that he feels whooped by life and that he's had enough, I'm in. I'm hooked.
