What kind of beginning draws me in the most?
Ones that tell something interesting and ones that tell practically nothing. The first one is self-explanatory, but I guess the latter one needs some clarification.
You see, I like the kind of beginnings where you tell about something that's going on and the reader can't understand a word of it. It has to be done well to work: you have to have events interesting enough to keep the reader reading, yet leave all the important stuff untold. I expecially like it when the beginning happens a long time before the actual story, or maybe a long time after it, but still is crucial for the plot. You know, the beginning kind of gives you an idea of what this story might be like, and at some point of the story you suddently realize what it was all about and that you misunderstood it completely. I like that kind of openings and they really grab my attention. The only problem is that you can't really know if the beginning was actually good or not before you've finished the story...
This, for example, doesn't grab my attention:
Crystallina walked down a sunny slope. She was fourteen years old and had just left her home town for the first time in her life. She was tall for her age, had short, blond hair and blue eyes, and her skin was moderately tanned. She wore a peculiar golden pendant with a dark blue stone in it. She had gotten this pendant from her late great-grandmother whom she had loved very much. On the moment of her death, she had given the pendant to Crystallina, telling her it might come in handy if she was ever caught between a rock and a hard place. The pendant had a strange glow to it, even on a sunny such as the one Crystallina left her home town.
This does:
She gasped for air. The young boy looked at her with cold, emotionless eyes. His hair was eeriely blonde and his eyes were gray as little stones. How could she not remember a child looking like that? She had teached her class for more than three years, now, but she could not remember this boy. Yet she knew he was her student. One of the thirty children she looked after. The grey eyes seemed to penetrate her mind and thinking got harder by the minute. No, not only thirty children, she thought, I have a daughter of my own...
The thought of her daughter gave her strength and she threw the closest hard object at the boy.
"You will not have me," she yelled and tried to stand up.
The look on the boy's eyes got more intense. "I will have you," he said, without a single emotion on his face.
Her eyes couldn't see anymore when the hard object hit her head. She was falling into darkness, it was cold. I have to warn her, she thought, I can't die. I have to warn my daughter. I have to warn her...
These thoughts kept rotating in her mind until she slipped into nothingness and stopped thinking at all. The boy left the scene, still not showing a single emotion on his face.