Hooking your Reader…week 4! Starting on the RUN
Ack! Susan May Warren back after a two week OOPs! where I woke in the middle of the night going…uh oh, I forgot to blog on WI!! Just to catch us up…we were chatting last month about HOOKING your reader.
We talked about: StakesHero/Heroine identificationAnchoring – So – let’s voyage on. Our 4th component to a great hook is: Starting our scene: on the Run.
Dwight Swain, in “Techniques of the selling writing: says that “a good story being in the middle, retrieves the past and continues to the end.”
Your first sentence hook should be something that begins in the middle of an action.
What do I mean by that? A good hook already has your character in the middle of the inciting incident, or at least prefaces it with foreshadowing. It is a blip in time in the middle of that incident that zeros in on the character and gives us a glimpse at his life and why this situation is important. In other words: start with your character in action.
Here’s an example from my book Reclaiming Nick:
When the lanky form of Saul Lovell walked into the Watering Hole Café, dragging with him the remnants of the late April chill, Nick Noble knew that his last hope of redemption had died.
This is not a high-action scene, but the lawyer is already in the café, and we know that Nick had redemption at stake before he walked in. The scene is already unfolding as we join Nick. Notice we also have Who, Where, When, as well as some precise words that convey as sense of dismay: dragging, chill, died.
The paragraph continues with a glimpse at what Nick is up to:
Nick didn’t have time to deal with the arrival of his father’s lawyer. Not with one fist wrapped in the collar of Stinky Jim’s duster and a forearm pinning his cohort Rusty to the wall.“We were simply offering to buy her lunch,” Rusty snarled.
This first paragraph tells us that Nick has some sort of “protector” element about him, (creating sympathy and a touch of heroism) whether he’s a bouncer, or a cop, we don’t know. And we know that something has happened to his father to have him arrive.
How do you start in the middle? It’s SO easy to give into the temptation, start at the beginning. We want people to know and love our character, to understand them, to understand WHY this situation so rocks their world. Trust me, it’s much more fun for the reader to figure it out on the run that to front load that information.
One of my favorite shows is LOST. They totally won me when they opened their first season with a shot of a plane down and people wandering the beach. I didn’t have to know their backgrounds to understand that they were shocked and scared, and to feel instantly sorry for them. The fun of the series has been figuring out who they are all, and how they fit together.
So…Here’s what you do…If you have to, write the story from the beginning — for your own rough draft purposes. Then, about a paragraph after the inciting incident, search for your first sentence, it’s in there, I promise. Then, copy and past, and start your first chapter there! You have your “on the Run” moment!
Next week, we’ll be talking about the final element – the Problem, or Story question. Then I’ll post some examples…and hopefully by the end of June, we’ll have our own mini HOOKS contest! Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to stop by www.mybooktherapy.com for your daily dose of writing craft!
*******
Get your Conference Proposal in Shape!
One Sheets, First chapter and Pitch…
You get one chance to wow them, to stir their hunger for your book, to see that sparkle in their eyes that tells you they see your story in print…is your conference submission ready?
We at My Book Therapy know how important that conference pitch is – we have sat at the other side of the editor or agent’s table, hands sweating, trying to throw the right amount of energy into our pitch. And, we have sold those pitches.
Now we want to help you. From now until September, My Book Therapy is offering our summertime “Get in Shape for Conference” Mini Book Therapy fiction editing service, at less than half our usual rate – the hot low prize of $135. We’ll help your tune up that first chapter, create a powerful one-sheet and hone your pitch so when you walk into that air-conditioned room at your writer’s conference, you don’t freeze on the spot. Instead, you’ll have a sizzling hot best-seller, just waiting to be discovered. Click here for more information!
