Hooks? We don't need no stinkin' hooks.
I'm reading over the list of seven hooks and either I don't understand them - entirely possible because this week is the first time I'd seen them. Seems to me they lack a little imagination because I don't see an action hook. And y'all, that's my favorite!
Though I am in a class right now that's teaching me to hook via character. This is alien territory for me, but in a romance novel, it makes total sense that you'd want your readers to connect with the characters before, or as, the story action kicks off.
- Enemy Within: Sun glinting off the barrel of a gun stopped Captain
Ari Idylle dead in her tracks. (I'm calling this the Oh, shit hook.)
- Enemy Games: The communications panel trilled, echoing the call in the confines of
the tiny cockpit. (Uhm. I dunno? This is the point where everything changes for the hero. Does that make this a why hook? Or just a weak hook?)
- Enemy Storm: Holy Gods, don’t know what I did to piss you off, but dropping a
starship on my head is overkill. (Ah, Edie. I'd like to imagine this is action and character combined, but that could be wishful thinking.)
- Enemy Deliverance: Even though her eyes were closed, even though she’d done her best to relax in the tiny barracks pod that qualified as a bunk, even though rainwater dripped on her mattress in a lulling plip, plip, plip, Ildri Bynovan wasn’t asleep. (Character and setting.)
- Enemy Mine: Priority Two
Alert. Assassination contract for Captain Xiao Zhong verified. Guild assassin
Mekise Tolenga en route.(Definitely a why)
You can see a major change between books 1 to 3 and book 4. Also, sneak peak. You're getting to look at an opening line for a book that hasn't been published yet.
Well okay, Marcella. That's the SFR. What about the others?
Look at the fantasies.
- Blood Knife: The sweet scent of coffee spiked with caramel syrup preceded the shadow
that obscured the golden October sunshine pouring into my office. (Setting I think.)
- Emissary: When I walked out of the Red Desert into the thin strip of fertile land I’d left as a girl, I barely recognized it. (I have no idea what this is.)
- Nightmare Ink: Funny how longing for something you can’t have gets blown away in the first swirl of snowflakes heralding an oncoming blizzard. (No idea what this is.)
- Bound by Ink: Isa hadn’t intended to end up in a crowd of people so soon after getting rid of a Living Tattoo who’d wanted to kill her and take over her body for his own use. (This must be the Why.)
- Damned if He Does: The problem with being damned was that no one would meet your eye.(Character, I think.)
