How to “White Lotus” Your First Page: How to Craft Openings That Grip, Haunt, and Won’t Let Go
You know the kind of show you start at 10pm thinking you’ll watch one episode to see what all the hype is about—and suddenly it’s 3am and you’re Googling fan theories with your heart in your throat.
White Lotus nails this every season.
We start with a body and then cut to one week earlier when the guests arrive. From the get-go, we’re wondering: who dies? Who is hiding something? What’s about to unravel?
Wonder how to give your opening pages that same effect? Make them absolutely possess your reader so that they immediately need to know what happens next?
You don’t need a literal body in the water. But you do need a question. A contradiction. A spark of something intimate, electric, and strange.
That’s what White Lotus does well—and what your first page can do, too.
Let’s explore the deeper mechanics of why we can’t look away.
Our brains are wired to notice what doesn’t belong. Novelty, ambiguity, and atypicality are elements that grab our attention and hold it. When a first line gives us something just a little off, our brain lights up with curiosity. It makes the moment stick. This is the science behind the art: the unexpected helps us remember. We’re wired to seek patterns—but it’s the disruption of pattern that jolts us awake. The unexpected doesn’t just make us curious. It makes us pay attention.
Here’s how to apply that energy to any genre—no resort, no murder required.
Note: This post assumes you’ve already done the structural work, landed on the right starting point, and are now deep in the line-editing trenches. If your early chapters are heavy with backstory, it’s not uncommon to cut them entirely and thread essential context more deftly throughout the story as needed.
How to “White Lotus” Your First Page: How to Craft Openings That Grip, Haunt, and Won’t Let Go
1. Lead With Curiosity
From the first line, we are aching to know what happens next. Regardless of genre, lean into mystery—activate that tension of being hooked, the kind that makes us stay up too late just to see how it all unfolds. Let there be movement. Emotional friction.
The strongest first lines don’t pause to explain. They pull us into a moment already charged with consequence—social, emotional, narrative, or otherwise. Sometimes what compels us is tone. Sometimes it’s voice. Sometimes it’s what’s withheld. But always, there is something unexpected: a crack in the ordinary. A question half-formed. A decision already made.
Let’s look at how these openings create that effect:
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
“Yadriel wasn’t technically trespassing because he’d lived in the cemetery his whole life. But breaking into the church was definitely crossing the moral-ambiguity line.”
We start with rule-breaking and rationalization. We have immediate context, voice, and risk. This shows us that Yadriel is used to bending lines, but this time he’s stepping over one. We want to know what he’s trying to do—and why it matters.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
“In the Myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.”
Worldbuilding, voice, character, and stakes—all crammed into one sentence. We’re given religious grandeur and irreverent escape in the same breath. The world is strange and already alive. We don’t need to understand it yet. We just need to follow Gideon, because something wild is happening.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
“The night I watched Athena Liu die, we were celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.”
This sentence drops two revelations at once: death and ambition. The casual tone unsettles us. We don’t know how these events are connected, but the pairing feels loaded. Why is the narrator watching? Why tell us this way? The tension builds before a story has even begun.
Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder
“Jinny heard the bell. She threw down her book, rose from the stale comfort of the old brown sofa, and scrambled for the door.”
We’re dropped into movement without context. Something is happening. The bell matters. Jinny reacts immediately, and that urgency tells us what we need to know. The world is strange, but the structure is firm: something calls, and Jinny answers. We follow.
Curiosity gets them to read the first page. But stakes make them stay.
2. Establish stakes that are personal, not just plot-based
What’s on the line for your protagonist right now? Don’t save the stakes for Chapter 3. Ground them in something emotional on page one.
Ask yourself:
What does this character want, and what do they fear will happen if they don’t get it?
How are they trying (and failing) to hold it together?
What’s the thing they’re pretending not to care about—yet clearly do?
Even if the external conflict hasn’t exploded yet, emotional risk should be quietly present. A character repressing grief is just as gripping as one discovering a body.
Wolfsong by TJ Klune
“I was twelve when my daddy put a suitcase by the door.”
This signals rupture. We don’t know where his father is going or why, but we feel the weight of that suitcase. The boy’s age tells us this is formative. His voice doesn’t name loss directly, but it’s sitting right there. What’s on the line is connection, maybe safety, maybe the idea of being chosen. And now that it’s leaving—what’s left?
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
“When books are your life—or in my case, your job—you get pretty good at guessing where a story is going.”
This sounds self-assured, but the subtext hums: she’s used to disappointment. She’s trying to keep her expectations in check. Maybe she’s not just guessing where the story is going—maybe she’s afraid she’s seen it all before. The personal stake is clear: if she’s wrong, she might get hurt. If she’s right, she might stay stuck.
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
“The first time I kiss Kit, he tastes like jalapeños and apricots. We're drunk enough to be brave.”
This isn’t just a kiss. It’s a risk. That strange sweetness and heat—apricots and jalapeños—tells us everything is tangled here. The speaker’s drunk, yes, but also aching for something tender and terrifying. The stake? Vulnerability. If bravery fades in the morning light, will the kiss still mean something? Or was this their only chance to say what they can’t admit sober?
3. Introduce tension through contradiction, not chaos
You don’t need an explosion. You need dissonance. A detail that doesn’t belong. A tone that feels too calm for the weight of what’s being said. That mismatch is what makes a reader stay. Because contradiction isn’t confusion—it’s friction. And friction creates heat.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingslover
“First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it.”
The language is breezy, but the image is heavy. A child born into neglect, narrating with wit that’s too sharp for his age. The conflict between voice and circumstance creates discomfort—and a deeper kind of clarity. We’re being told this is just how it is, but everything in us knows it shouldn’t be.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
The line is cold and precise, but it’s describing something brutal. We’re not met with panic or grief—we’re met with detachment. That distance makes the tension worse. The reader feels what the narrator won’t say aloud. The calm is too calm, and that’s the tell.
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
“I know too much of mud.
I know that when a street doesn't have sidewalks
& water rises to flood the tile floors of your home,
learning mud is learning the language of survival.”
The imagery is lush and grounded, but it’s not there to beautify. It’s survival, rendered with poetry. The polarity lies in the transformation—filth becomes knowledge. Trauma becomes language. And in that dissonance, we glimpse the resilience this voice was forged from.
Paradox draws us closer—but what holds us there is voice. Something raw. Specific. A little off-kilter.
4. Let your characters be strange, not perfect
Readers fall in love with opposition made human. Let your characters be tender and cutting, bored and yearning, petty and full of ache. Let them say something too honest, or want something they’re ashamed of wanting. Strange sticks in the brain. Strange becomes unforgettable.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
“Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed. I’d get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazadone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again. I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by.”
She’s sedating herself into oblivion with pharmaceutical precision, and telling us every detail like it’s the weather report. There’s no apology, no attempt to justify. Just boredom, privilege, and a bone-deep ache under all the numbing. She’s not trying to get better. She’s trying to disappear. And somehow, we understand.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
“When people ask me what I do—Taxi drivers, dental hygienists—I tell them I work in an office. In almost nine years, no one’s ever asked what kind of office, or what sort of job I do there. I can’t decide whether that’s because I fit perfectly with their idea of what an office worker looks like, or whether people hear the phrase work in an office and automatically fill in the blanks themselves–lady doing photocopying, man tapping at a keyboard. I’m not complaining. I’m delighted that I don’t have to get into the fascinating intricacies of accounts receivable with them.”
Eleanor moves through the world with clinical precision, narrating her life like someone reporting from inside a glass box. The voice is deliberate, restrained, a little too practiced. That distance is what draws us in—she’s performing normalcy with such rigor it’s clear something underneath is fraying. We don’t pity her. We listen closer.
Severance by Ling Ma
“After the End came the Beginning. And in the Beginning, there were eight of us—then nine—that was me—a number that would only decrease. We found another after fleeing New York for the safer pastures of the countryside. We’d seen it done in the movies, though no one could say which one exactly. A lot of things didn’t play out as they had been depicted on-screen.”
This isn’t a dramatic tale of survival. It’s quiet, wry, almost clinical in its despair. The narrator counts the living like tally marks in a notebook. The line is both detached and deeply aware of what’s slipping away. That deadpan voice—too tired to panic—is what makes us shiver. Not the end of the world, but the way she shrugs through it.
Strangeness catches our attention. But it’s the details that make it stick. Once a voice has pulled us in, it’s the specificity—the chipped mug, the meaty crunch, the ribbon in a harlequin’s hair—that builds trust and texture. Great first pages let every detail pull double duty, showing us what matters and how it feels.
5. Use concrete details that do emotional work
The best first pages don’t waste words. Every detail is carrying weight. Don’t describe the weather unless the character is noticing it for a reason. Don’t mention the color of the coffee mug unless it matters that it’s chipped.
Your job isn’t to describe—it’s to distill.
Instead of: She looked out the window at the trees swaying in the breeze.
Try: The trees bent sideways like they knew something was coming. She didn’t like how quiet they were about it.
One line of image. One thread of emotion. And now we’re in it.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“The parties at the Tuñóns' house always ended unquestionably late, and since the hosts enjoyed costume parties in particular, it was not unusual to see Chinas Poblanos with their folkloric skirts and ribbons in their hair arrive in the company of a harlequin or a cowboy.”
This opening paints a scene of glamour and tradition, but there are early clues that something is off. The mix of folkloric icons with harlequins and cowboys creates a sense of visual dissonance—something performative, even surreal. Beneath the surface elegance, we’re already being shown that appearances are deceptive and roles are being played. The gothic unease is sewn right into the first sentence.
Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
“Viv buried her greatsword in the scalvert’s skull with a meaty crunch.”
This opening drops us straight into combat, but it’s not the action alone that hooks us. It’s the language. “Buried” and “meaty crunch” are unexpectedly visceral, grounding the fantasy scene in something physical and oddly specific. We don’t know what a scalvert is yet, but we know it has bones and blood and that Viv doesn’t hesitate. The line raises immediate questions: Who is Viv? Why is she fighting? And what kind of story chooses this exact moment—and this exact texture—as its beginning? We want answers.
6. Leave Them Wanting More
Your first page doesn’t need to resolve anything. It needs to promise there’s more beneath the surface, that what we’ve seen is only the beginning.
Think of your first page as the blurry edge of the map. The moment the reader senses: oh, we’re heading into uncharted territory now. The emotional terrain is shifting. The ground is less certain. And something ancient and sharp is waiting.
In medieval maps, the phrase here there be dragons was scrawled at the margins—marking places where the known world ended and the unknown began.
That’s what your first page can offer. Because what makes a reader keep going is that bone-deep sense that something is coming—and we can’t look away.
Ways to hook your reader:
Cut the details that don’t hold meaning.
In The Pairing, Kit “tastes like jalapenos and apricots” because it’s emotional shorthand. Heat and sweetness. Risk and tenderness.
Withhold one piece of crucial information.
In Yellowface, the narrator tells us: “The night I watched Athena Liu die, we were celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.” We don’t yet know what caused her death—or why the narrator was watching.
Let one line ring out louder than the rest.
In Clap When You Land, the first stanza builds quietly—then lands on: “learning mud is learning the language of survival.” That single line reframes the entire moment, cracking it open with meaning.
Make space for discomfort.
In Demon Copperhead, we have: “The worst of the job was up to me.” It’s a sentence that makes us flinch—but also read it again.
That’s how you White Lotus the first page of your novel. The dragons are waiting. Let the reader follow.
Questions to Pressure-Test Your First Page:
What does my first line make the reader wonder?
What emotional risk is hinted at?
Is there tension created through tone, voice, or contradiction?
What details carry emotional weight and which ones are just filler?
What’s the promise I’m making, and does it feel specific enough to be remembered?
Try this: Reread your first page. Circle every detail that builds emotion, tension, or strangeness—and cross out anything that just sets the scene without meaning. Then, cut the first paragraph entirely just to see what shifts. Are you landing closer to the moment that matters? If your first line isn’t doing real work, revise it until it does.
A great first sentence doesn’t just introduce the story—it declares the tone of it. Take the iconic opener from Feed by M.T. Anderson: “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” In one line, we get voice, world, mood, and a clear promise of what's to come: cynicism, disruption, and disillusionment dressed in casual language.
That’s the bar. Don’t just open the door for your reader. Shove it open with intent.
No matter your path—hobbyist, hopeful, or building a writing career—there’s a place for you inside The Residency.
Choose the path that fits your season. With structure, support, and community, you’ll build momentum and keep showing up for your work.
Tiffany Grimes (she/they) is the founder of Burgeon Design and Editorial, a queer founded boutique editing and design house for brave creatives. At Burgeon, we specialize in book editing, coaching, and web design for the individualists, nonconformists, and trailblazers of the literary world. If you’re a maverick, outsider, rebel, renegade, dissenter, disruptor, or free spirit, you’ve come to the right place.
