How I Hook

 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.)

Urban Fantasy

• 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.) 

The paranormal.

• Damned if He Does: The problem with being damned was that no one would meet your eye.(Character, I think.)

Huh. Look at that. I only thought that action was my preference. Looking through my first lines, it looks like I've done far more character hooks than action hooks.

My illusions are so shattered. What is writing even?

Hook me in all the ways

This week SFF Seven asks us, gentle writers, which type of hook* we most often use: the why, the character, the catastrophe, the setting, the contradicting emotions, the inherent problem, or the goal. My answer is all of them. Definitely. 

A good story always begins with story questions, so there's an inherent, built-in why. Always. If a story opening posits no questions, it's not a very good beginning. The author might not have deliberately put a why hook in there, but sure, I will play that game with you: you give me the first scene of any book, and I will list the story questions for you, because they are most definitely there. The more intriguing the story questions, the more likely I am to keep reading. You give me no story questions, I DNF.

So, does a story need a "why" hook? Yep. Check.

Most story structure mavens (Michael Hauge, Larry Brooks, Blake Snyder, and on) advise focusing on a protagonist and getting audience or reader buy-in for that character as early as possible. You don't always have to relate to the protagonist -- especially in the case of antiheroes -- but you do always have to be invested in their journey. So in that sense, every successful book starts with a character hook, too. If we don't care about the character, we don't care about the story, and again: thar be DNF.

Character hook? Check.

"Catastrophe" is the same thing as "inciting incident," is it not? A well-structured story needs one of those, too. Check.

When I got my very first edit letter from an editor, one of the things she wanted me to do in my revisions was to "ground" the reader more up front. What she meant was I needed to do a bit of worldbuilding right off, on page one, to situate readers in my story universe. Worldbuilding is "setting" for the purposes of this conversation. Have you ever heard of "white room syndrome"? It's a fatal condition for story and basically means that character are talking but could be talking in any time or place, including a random, boring white room. Even scripts, which are chiefly dialogue, have setting information included. It's important. So yes, setting: check. 

"Contradicting emotions" and "inherent problem" are two ways of approaching conflict, and most Western stories* are structured around a conflict. The earlier you can introduce the GMC--

Wait. Hold up a sec.

I can't talk about conflict without also talking about goals and motivations. So I'll deal with this whole thing in one fell swoop: GMC (goal, motivation, and conflict, aka "what does your protagonist want, why do they want it, and what's keeping them from getting it"; see also Debra Dixon). Yes, your story must have all of them. In fact, the most layered stories have internal as well as external GMC. 

Check, check, and yep, check.

If somebody is telling you they can't get into your story or can't relate to it or are confused by it, my guess is that going through your opening and making sure you have included all of these hooks will fix your problem.

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* The term "hook" in publishing often means "what makes your story special or noteworthy" and can sometimes overlap with your elevator pitch or one-sentence pitch. That's not what we're talking about this week on SFF Seven. (Though maybe we should...?)

** Not all storytelling structures center on conflict. Kishōtenktsu, for example, is a narrative structure that highlights the turn or twist, rather than the conflict. 

Writing the Opening Sentence: Choose Your Hook

The Seven Hooks of openings for a book. I gotta admit, I had to look them up because I've never thought about categorizing the first sentence of my story. The first chapter is always the hardest for me--first one written and last one completed--so I attack the hook from a "put words on page, fix later" method. When I was a baby writer swimming around in various writers' groups, many members were obsessed with nailing the "perfect" opening line, usually at the cost of writing the rest of the book.  That's...that's not good. 

Write the book.

Write. The. Book. 

That's not to diminish the importance of a good hook. It's an encouragement to keep writing your story even if your hook is crappy. A compelling first sentence might not come to you until you're in the editing process. It's okay if it doesn't come to you at all as long as the rest of the paragraph/page pulls in the reader. Whatever you do, don't get derailed by the hook. Keep going.

For what it's worth, here's a list of hooks from my high fantasy and urban fantasy books and their associated category:

Larcout: Blood beings could be chattel or they could be char. [Hook = Why]

The Burned Spy: The antidote burned worse than the toxin. [Hook = Why]

The Plagued Spy: "Sneak, sneak, sneak, creepy guy. I see you," Bix sang to herself. [Hook = character]

The Captured Spy: The prickling of the skin. The brittle air raking across the nape. The weight of regard pressing against the body. Old spies knew to pay attention to these sensations. [Hook = character]

The Hanged Spy: Shadowy dancers twirled on a continuous loop over crystalline walls courtesy of a self-winding music box. [Hook = Setting]

The Exposed Spy: The stench of scorched plastic permeated the two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a town house in Southeast Washington, DC, Primary Mid World. [Hook = Setting + Why]

The Shackled Spy: Snow flurries flirted with tourists bundled up against the biting winds rolling off the Potomac River. [Hook = Setting]

The Heralded Spy: War raged throughout the Mid Worlds. [Hook = Catastrophe Why]

As you can see, I use different types of hooks depending on the story. Some are more intriguing than others, but they each set up the story in a different way. Missing from my usage list are: The Goal hook, The Conflicting Emotions hook, and The Inherent Problem hook. Now that I know there are categories, maybe I'll make an effort to incorporate the unused ones in future books. Maybe. Got to write those stories first.