I've bought books because of the pretty cover...good reviews...recommended by someone...was intrigued by the jacket copy...subject interested me...author's track record...maybe other reasons, but I can't say I've ever bought one because of what the writer writes on the first page or two.

I might put it aside afterwards if I've read a ways in and am bored to tears (it's happened)...but the damage is done, the cash has changed hands, and the book has been sold.

A short story in a magazine or collection would be worse. I've subscribed to the magazine already, or bought it over the counter, and for reasons other than any hook at the front of a story. If a story doesn't grab me I can move on to the next one. If enough content in a magazine bores me I'll buy it no more, or let my subscription lapse.

I might need that hook to con an editor into buying a book or story...but would the book or story then need that same hook to sell it in the marketplace?

Or if you checked the first page before you decided to buy it and it was tacky, would you still buy it just because you like the author, you were was intrigued by the jacket copy, etc? Established writers have to know how to hook too, and they always use them one way or another, because beginnings are just that important.

[PS Kathleen, I think this is just a tiny little bit over 13 lines, but hopefully you'll let it stand]

The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses. Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter - the hardest season, the most implacable - dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. So August gave way to September and there were few complaints.

Here's the first 7 of Ursala K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, at least in my version:

quote:

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I'll make my report as if I told a story, for i was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.

---

There is no pretty cover and even after reading a great cover letter they will start your first 3 chapters with skepticism. Getting them to page 2 is a big step forward.

A hook can be different things for different writers and for different readers.

All a hook needs to do is entice the reader to keep reading.

It's a mistake to think that the only kind of hook you can use is an action-packed scene.

In my opinion, they are only for the benefit of publishers and editors to get them to publish you.

An established author like Steve King or Mr. Card could start their books with "A boy fell in the mud." and as long as the story had to do with that boy... off it goes for publishing.

There seems to be some developing thought that a hook is a skill one must master in order to get published, but once one has a track record, one doesn't need it. I can't say the idea of mastering a skill and then discarding it has much appeal to me, maybe none at all. (You wouldn't believe how many skills I've had to master and discard working for the USPS.)

The little I've read of Clive Barker didn't appeal to me, and I can't say this paragraph makes me want to read more. That's no guarantee that it's not a good story, but life is short.

I read "The Left Hand of Darkness," not because of its opening paragraph, but because I'd already read LeGuin's "The Wind's Twelve Quarters" and the Earthsea trilogy (there were only three of them then). Good, good ideas well handled...but not one of my favorites. (My favorite LeGuin is a Young Adult short novel whose name escapes me at the moment---it isn't science fiction or fantasy.)

Sad to say, there are such writers out there, and their readers may eventually grow tired of reading work that isn't as good as the earlier stuff that got them reading the writers in the first place.

If you have integrity as a writer, you don't discard a skill. In fact, you keep working on improving your skills. To do otherwise is to "rest on your laurels," and that is the start of a down-hill slide.

I have already said this, but I will say it again. The only thing a hook has to do is make a reader want to keep reading. While there may be some "formulaic" ways to write a hook, those ways are not the only ones a writer may use. Good, strong, interesting writing is usually the only hook a writer needs.

If a writer does not keep hooking the reader--all the way through the story--then the reader can put the story down at any time and never pick it up again.

We limit postings to the first 13 lines for many reasons here at Hatrack. Determining whether those 13 lines succeed in hooking a reader is only one of the reasons.

Normally, I'll read the beginning anyway to get a feel for a writer's style and a hint of the pacing, even if it's a writer I know. Once in a while, the writer's first few paragraphs have changed my mind about buying a book.

But before I finished Eragon, I bought its sequel "Eldest" thinking that since Eragon hooked me, Eldest would do the same.

(1) "Eragon" is one of those on my list for possible future reading, but I haven't yet bought it. Also---and this seems a pretty big "also" to me---a write-up I read suggested to me that the author's connections led to it being picked up by a major publisher, rather than the work's merits or worth. I'm not saying "Eragon" has no merit or worth, but few things are more likely to cheese me off than that sort of publishing situation.

From a CNN interview i saw when Eragon first came out heres what happened to the best i can remember

The parents of author* vanity published (though they didn't use that word) his book in a paperback form. They then went around selling the book out of their van in Idaho or some such place. The niece or some other female relative of the publisher got her hands on/bought a copy and then recommended the book to said older male relative.

The rest as they say is history.

A good story uneptly told is not a pleasure.

As for library books...I'll check some out on the basis of their blurbs, since I don't have to pony up any funds, but if the first pages are lame, I won't continue on and I certainly won't be rushing out to buy everything else the author wrote.

If I'm intrigued, I'll scan additional pages, including randomly opening the book up somewhere in the middle and reading a couple of paragraphs. What I'm looking for at this stage is: is the writing stilted? do the characters seem like card-board? are there annoying stylistic tendencies that make reading a chore? In other words, I'm looking for obvious reasons NOT to buy.