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Author Topic: The problem with hooks
scm288
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I have found a problem with beginning hooks. (I should be shot for saying that.)

Isn't it possible to put in a hook TOO early, and confuse the reader? I've gotten comments that say that my hook isn't early enough. And yet, when I start out with a shocking hook, readers complain that they have no idea what's going on!

Could I please have some good advice on this subject? When is the best time to use a hook?


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MaryRobinette
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The best time to start with a hook is at the beginning, because the beginning of your story should pull the reader in. A hook does not need to be shocking, it can be quite subtle. I read something once that said, "Don't confuse the plot with the story." The plot is what happens, the story is how you tell it. So, for a plot it might be important to know that a family has two kids and then, against the rules, they had a third child. His brother picked on him and his sister liked him. That's all important to the plot, but that's not when the story starts to get interesting. Find the moment when your story takes off and give us just enough information to understand what is happening.
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JBSkaggs
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A hook does not have to be shocking, just interesting enough to generate a desire to read further. In other words if your opening is boring nobody will want to read it. I read the 1st paragraph in a submission to my magazine and if it bores me (ie does not hook me) I quit reading politely reject the story and move on there will always be another story to read.

Novels you have a little bit longer to set the main storyline- but your opening should still have a hook strong enough to pull you through the setting. Though it need not be shocking or dramatic- just engaging.

JB Skaggs


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Doc Brown
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There's also the possibility that the people giving you this advice didn't understand your story.
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wbriggs
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What Mary said. Here are a couple of examples.

"I heard a noise," Mrs. Davenport said, "and then I was moving through the tunnel."

This is the first line of the novel I happen to be reading now. I'm hooked. I want to know about Mrs. Davenport's near-death experience.

Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window. The window looked over her garden, once a source of pride to her.

The first bit of an Agatha Christie. I'm hooked. I want to know why Miss Marple's garden isn't a thing of pride any more. No explosions, murders, or aliens bursting out of anyone's chest, but it does make me want to know.

[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited May 10, 2005).]


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EricJamesStone
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Here are the first sentences of the stories in WOTF XX:

quote:
He screamed from all his mouths, then covered all his ears.

quote:
Anp clung to a rock face on the side of the bottomless pit, stealing apples.

quote:
Strange how one can be so close to freedom, yet still wish for death.

quote:
In the viewing room of the greatship Avalon, the Lawbringer Natural Alexander watched the earth turn beneath him while images of the Kin danced behind his eyes.

quote:
I'm soaring over the snow-tipped peaks, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my wings, when the call comes in from Andrew.

quote:
Cassie pushed through the crowd, nose wrinkled, unable to avoid being touched.

quote:
Waxman swore she lived, but you would be hard pressed to prove it to me.

quote:
When your spouse is in the Service, it's best not to get too attached to anyone.

quote:
When I spotted the Automaton, I must have been three days up in the Squeeze.

quote:
The first time Brother Jon saw the metal head, he was deeply ashamed of the human race.

quote:
Colonization of an extraterrestrial body began June 6, 2017, as construction crews cast the first foundation bricks of the Joint Venture Lunar Base (JVLB) ...

quote:
Redfar floated in her cabin, fuming at nothing and everything.

quote:
The detritus of three millennia are piled beneath my feet behind the sun-warmed glass of the Mahdi's pyramid.

quote:
People descended in gleaming metal, fire burning bright across the cloud-streaked sky.

quote:
I stare at the pieces of flesh, detritus only given names like arm and hand because they're affixed to my worthless husk, and I am deeply ashamed.

So, what can we learn from this, other than the fact that two stories used "detritus" in the first sentence, and two used "deeply ashamed," and the one that used both won the grand prize?

I found the possibilities implied by each of those sentences to be intriguing. None of them were shocking, at least not to someone who's read a good bit of speculative fiction.

Of course, I've read all the stories, so I may be backflowing my perceptions into the first sentences. What do you think?


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dpatridge
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i haven't read any of those stories, and all of those sentences do make me wonder what's going on, urging me to read
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Survivor
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Eric, you cheater!

Using proven contest winning stories to demonstrate an essential principle of writing fiction...Hmph!


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KatFeete
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quote:
Isn't it possible to put in a hook TOO early, and confuse the reader? I've gotten comments that say that my hook isn't early enough.

A hook is, by definition, in the beginning. If you're waiting and putting it in later you're doing something wrong.

quote:
And yet, when I start out with a shocking hook, readers complain that they have no idea what's going on!

Well, if you're posting it here in the F&F section this is to be expected to some degree. They don't know what happens. They're only reading the first 13 lines. F&F is a great resource, but it has its limitations... particularly for novelists (though I've no idea whether you're writing long works or not.)

However, it sounds more like you're confused about what a "hook" is. A hook is an opening designed to make people interested in your story. It does not have to be shocking; in fact, if your story isn't shocking, it is a grave mistake to attach a shocking hook to it. What it shouldn't be is static; that is, there should be a sense of things changing, right from the very beginning. If you're getting complaints that your opening is confusing, you may be trying to jam too much in there. There's a tenious balance in openings; you want to give enough information to make people ask questions, but not so much that they're overwhelmed with questions and have nothing at all to anchor themselves on.

Conviniently enough I've just had an article published on writing hooks, in a ezine that was running a themed month on writing hooks. There's some good articles there:

http://www.lazette.net/Vision/

Perhaps one will help you out.


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HSO
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I don't know if the following two-sentence excerpt from from the start of my novella is a good example of an ideal hook, but I like it for what it says and doesn't say, and I hope it intrigues the reader enough to keep reading:

quote:
The ghost of Jeremiah Hudson passed through the door of his flat at three minutes past six. He floated to a power line and surfed it toward the train station to make the 0605.

Well, actually, I rewrote it about 4 or 5 times before I said, "Yep. That's what I want." I also had advice from a fellow hatracker who helped rewrite it.

Anyway, why did I do choose this for a hook? Firstly, I don't want to hide from the reader that Jeremiah is a ghost, so I say it up front. There's no reason to hide this -- doing so would build annoyance. Also, I don't want them guessing as to what "passed through the door" could mean, or for anyone to assume a living being literally passing through a door. I couldn't use "walk through" because Jeremiah doesn't walk, he floats in his ghostly way.

The next sentence, however, I've deliberately thrown something "odd". Surfing a powerline? What the heck is that? Well, I hope the reader wants to find out.

But then, after this bit, I set up the whole story with:

quote:
Perhaps, he thought, today would be lucky and the hunt for his killer would end in success

There, I've just given the reader what the story is going to be about: who the main character is, and something odd to hopefully draw interest (but that's not the whole story, of course, but it's driving the main plot). Does it work? I dunno. I hope it does.


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EricJamesStone
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KatFeete, I thought your article was very good. I actually hadn't heard of an opening "crook" before, but the concept makes perfect sense.

HSO, I think the first two sentences are very effective as a hook, and I think they achieve the purposes you've outlined. (I also think your third sentence works from a hook standpoint, though the phrasing of the thought itself seems rather forced. But this isn't really the place for me to give feedback on that.)



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HSO
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Yeah, that third sentence still haunts me. But when I go back and edit my story down, I hope to do it more gracefully than I've done. I just want that first paragraph to sing, fly, and set up the story before I digress into my usual over-explicative ramblings

Thanks for the comment, Eric. By the way, every time I go into a UK bookstore, I look to see if they've got your novel on the shelf. I haven't seen it yet, but if I do, I'll let you know. (Or is it only available on-line?)


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EricJamesStone
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I'm still working on finishing my first novel, so maybe that's why they haven't got it on the shelves yet.

L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XX, might be on the shelves.


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HSO
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That does explain a lot. Somehow, I thought I had read you were doing book signings, but that must have been for LRH's WotF, and I must have confused that with reading about your novel WIP. I'll take a look for WotF, then.

But, if I do see your novel on the shelves before you finished it, I'll certainly let you know.


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Jeraliey
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Jeremiah Hudson. *sigh*


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EricJamesStone
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> But, if I do see your novel on the shelves
> before you finished it, I'll certainly let
> you know.

Yes, it would be so much easier to write the final few chapters if all I had to do was copy them out of the published version.


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HSO
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If you were Merlin, that would certainly be the case. Imagine that!

Jer: I know. But I'm all set to write the last half of my novella this week and next. Then, it's going to be shelved for a few months before I edit it down. And then, it's a race for publication to see who gets to keep the J. Hudson name.

So, get writing!

Bwahahaha!

[This message has been edited by HSO (edited May 11, 2005).]


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Jeraliey
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Oh man. I'd better get cracking, huh? Although I must say that it looks like you have a bit of an advantage...I have to write three novellas before I seek publication....

May the best J. Hudson win!


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johnbrown
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SCM288, here's what I've done. It's seemed to help. I type in the first paragraphs or pages of stories that hook me into a document I call "Great Beginnings." As these pile up I've begun to notice what pulls me in and what doesn't. There are some common elements.

But the key thing is that they PULL me in immediately. That's the kind of story I want to write. Because when I pick up a story, I usually give it 3 paragraphs. If it hasn't pulled me in by then, I go to the next or put the book back.

So you've got to have something up front to draw the reader. Hook, twist, intrigue--I don't care what you call it. But what pulls each of us in is a bit different. That's why I suggest you try keeping your own file.

Here are some from mine. In most of them I'm presented with a very clear situation. Not in the middle of some action (which only causes confusion). But a situation that's intriguing.

--------------------------------------
Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark

The Library at Hurtfew
Autumn 1806-January 1807

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic--nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one's head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

--------------------------------------
(skip this one if you're uncomfortable with some cursing)
Skinny Dip by Hiaasen
At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.

I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.

The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse, panties, wristwatch and sandals, but Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nuggets that her husband obviously had forgotten.

Bobbin gin its fizzy wake, Joey watched the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour. Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened, and he wasn't telling anybody.

Bastard, Joey thought.

--------------------------------------
Dragon's Bane by Hambly
Bandits often lay in wait in the ruins of the old town at the fourways--Jenny Waynest thought there were three of them this morning.

---------------------------------------
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by McCrumb
Quote that I skipped

Nora Bonesteel was the first one to know about the Underhill family. Death was no stranger to Dark Hollow, Tennessee, but Nora Bonesteel was the only one who could see it coming...

--------------------------------------
Ender's Shadow
Chapter One
Poke

Poke kept her eyes open all the time. The younger children were supposed to be on watch, too, and sometimes they could be quite observant, but they just didn't notice all the things they needed to notice, and that meant that Poke could only depend on herself to see danger.

There was plenty of danger to watch for. The cops, for instance. They didn't show up often, but when they did, they seemed especially bent on clearing the streets of children. They would flail about them with their magnetic whips, landing cruel stinging blows on even the smallest children, haranguing them as vermin, thieves, pestilence, a plague on the fair city ofRotterdam. It was Poke's job to notice when a disturbance in the distance suggested that the cops might be running a sweep. Then she would give the alarm whistle and the little ones would rush to their hiding places till the danger was past.

--------------------------------------
Newton's Canon by Greg Keys

1716 A Miracle
Benjamin Franklin was ten years old when he saw his first miracle. Cold fingers of wind had been groping up the narrow streets of Boston all day, and as night fell they clenched and tightened their grip. The sunset burned like a furnace, but it was empty bluster. The equinox had come and gone, and winter had an early hold on the Massachusetts colony.

-----------------------------------------
The Atlantic Monthly | June 2004

Pursuits & Retreats
Fiction

Until Gwen by Dennis Lehane

.....

Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat. Two minutes into the ride, the prison still hanging tilted in the rearview, Mandy tells you that she only hooks part-time. The rest of the time she does light secretarial for an independent video chain and tends bar, two Sundays a month, at the local VFW. But she feels her calling—her true calling in life—is to write.

You go, "Books?"

"Books." She snorts, half out of amusement, half to shoot a line off your fist and up her left nostril. "Screenplays!" She shouts it at the dome light for some reason. "You know—movies."

"Tell him the one about the psycho saint guy." Your father winks at you in the rearview, like he's driving the two of you to the prom. "Go ahead. Tell him."

------------------------------------
"Iron Joan"
by ElizaBeth Gilligan
Illustrated by Chris Pepper
From Black Gate, Winter, 2002

Joan came to our village a hardy, unsmiling woman of no more than seventeen, young even for our folks to be setting up house. That brute of a man, Thomas Murfie, brought her… her and her round-cheeked Baby John.
Even before Thomas bragged about her in the tavern, we knew who she was. He, a lowly sailor with never more than a copper to his name, had a woman of noble birth to set up his house and give him his children. What did he care if she came from a family marked as the devil’s own? That even with this birthright, she had been shamed? Who could have got that child on her? How had he dared? That Thomas showed no concern for the baby which was not his own seemed sign of witchery. Thomas Murfie wasn’t the sort who accepted another man’s spawn as if it were his own kith and kin.

------------------------------------------
"If you are only a girl, this is how you destroy your enemies." From p246 In My Hands Irene Gut

(So sometimes I find GREAT BEGINNINGS in the middle of stories.)

--------------------------------------
This did not happen to Jack. A woman's beauty did not befuddle him. Yet there stood Captain Arrow with her leg exposed and her bright, clever eyes looking right at him.

---------------------------------------
Bill was my retarded cousin; he liked dangling praying mantises in his hair, eating hotdogs chopped up in his ice cream, and climbing precarious heights. And that’s where I found him. He’d wiggled through the hole in the fence, past the neighbor’s rooster that scared the bejesus out of him, and to the Farmer’s Creek bridge. The creek was an itty bitty thing. Hardly enough to grow anything but scum. But the bridge. The bridge was massive, standing forty feet in the air. And Billy, he stood on the edge like some hoo-haw with a death wish.

[This message has been edited by johnbrown (edited May 11, 2005).]


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