A first paragraph template

At some point, someone's going to accuse me of being formulaic. How exactly is that different from studying what's worked for other writers? Not sure, but just to forestall any argument, let me tell you this -- templates are a place to start. Not the final product. Feel free to break the rules once you know them well enough to do so successfully.

Writing is rewriting. Lists, checklists, templates -- all gleaned wisdom, a place to start so you're not staring at a blank page. Want to argue about it? Fine, carry on. I'll listen to you when you've had ten or more books published.

Back to the template -- I say again for possible penetration -- this is a place to start. Here's how I might structure the first few paragraphs using an action hook.

FIRST PARA

Sentence one: Hook
Sentence two: Set world.
Sentence three: Set story

The bomb ticked. Nothing else made a sound inside the aircraft. It was up to
me to stop it.

First Sentence: At my last advanced fiction class, we compiled a list of
“we’re THERE” words. Nazis. Nuclear. Blue Pigs. Any of those will work.

I’m being a little facetious with that, but not entirely. You’ve got to have a
killer hooking word in that first sentence. Remember, your first readers are
editors and agents, people who see lots of first sentences. Yours must be
solid gold.

Second Sentence: Note that the important part in the second line is not the
silence – it’s the way it establishes that we’re inside an aircraft. I could also
have done something like, “The Boeing Sky Eagle plowed through the sky at
thirty-one thousand feet.” That also puts us inside an aircraft.

Third sentence: Here we establish that we’re in first person and sets up the
fact that it’s written in first person. This works but if you can get that first
person fact into the very first sentence, that’s even better. (We’re going to
deal with some first person POV issues in a later section.)

REMEMBER -- no matter how you structure this, you must always be aware of your distance from the reader. More on that later. Remind me if needed because it's a critically-misunderstood part of POV.