Learn how to start writing your story with Maestro writers

Hear from bestselling authors Jojo Moyes, Ken Follett, Lee Child and Harlan Coben on how to start writing your story.
Here, they reveal how to write an irresistible first line, how to introduce characters and much more.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Starting afresh
01:12 - Hook your audience with hints and questions
04:05 - Your opening line is the most important
08:00 - Plunge your reader into action
Learn more about their unique approaches to writing in their BBC Maestro courses:
Jojo Moyes - Writing Love Stories - bbcm.co/3JUbfXb
Lee Child - Writing Popular Fiction - bbcm.co/4bwACKw
Harlan Coben - Writing Thrillers - bbcm.co/3WucQul
Ken Follett - Writing Bestselling Fiction - bbcm.co/3JRUsUu
See all our writing courses: bbcm.co/3JSFrC0

[@ogelsmogel]

If this feels intimidaring and you get stuck on the first line, just write something, whatever, to get you started. You can always go back and change the first sentence later.

[@BBCMaestro]

Great advice!

[@ogelsmogel]

@@BBCMaestro I didn't watch the whole video when I wrote it and then I realized it was the exact same advice as in the final part of the video :)

[@chelle_nz]

While I appreciate the star studded lineup. Some are not there for their literary genius.
And I quote...
"He was perhaps forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Indian, or Pakistani, or Iranian, or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian. His passport was British..."
Could his nationality not be condensed to ...his nationalilty well masked, somewhere between middle eastern to southeast asian?
400 pages later we get...
"He was medium height, medium weight, expensively dressed but a little rumpled. He was maybe forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian."
This does NOT pass for literature - fiction, thriller or otherwise. 100 million copies sold by this author...
The mind boggles.