How to write a hook

What is a hook and why is it so important? Kit Explains.

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Welcome to the Fiction Writer's Coach, listened to by writers in all 50 states and 39 countries. I'm your host, Kit Crum. Today we're going to go back a little bit to the very beginning of that manuscript. For those of you who are already at this point, you can check and see if it matches up what I'm talking about. For others, it'll be something new. The common phrase is make that first chapter exciting. It's called a hook. Well, what the heck is a hook? And how do you get there? And some people say a hooked is something in the first line, the first sentence, the first paragraph. Just depends upon what expert writer you're listening to. And I say all three of those things worked. I've used them all in my fifty book plus books. But what is a hook? It starts out with what if. What if a car was careening up a mountain road faster than the curves would allow? A tire blows out, it rolls several times. The man barely survives. That is a what if. Is he being followed? Was he going to a place that had where he had to be in a matter of minutes? What caused him to go so fast? Why did his car have a blowout? You know, it goes on and on. What if? What if two kids are exploring a mine and they find a old freight wagon from maybe the 1880s and in it are boxes of gold. What if is how you start your hook? But to be able to do that, you need to know something about your characters. Why would your character be doing this? Because you're going to have to explain it down the line. Now, technically, you should have a hook at the end of each chapter. But again, if you know the first part of your story, if you know the front, I'm always saying this, know the beginning, the middle, and the end. And that allows you to have that hook at the end of every chapter. And that allows you to ask the question, what if? Because that's what you want the right reader to be confronted with. What's going on? Why did this happen to her? Why did this car go off the road? And all the questions that follow. And then you can slowly pull it together. Another phrase you'll hear is at the very end, you've got to tie all the threads together and make sure it all made sense. But actually you do that. You tie the threads together on the second or third chapter, and again on the fourth and fifth chapter. So you leave it unfinished at the end of the chapter with a hook. Back in the days of well, not quite the silent movies, but very close to that, they would have, if you were watching a movie for ten cents, they would have a car going over the cliff and they would freeze frame it. And you had to come back and watch the next episode to find out was the good guy still in the car, why the car go off the cliff? It's the same idea. You need to end with a hook. And if you know your character and if you know your story beginning, middle, and end, then it's pretty easy to come up with some kind of hook. Kind of an unfinished scene could be part of the end of one of your chapters. And it just leads, that makes a page turner. It just leads the reader to turn the next page, go to the next chapter, and start reading to find out, oh, that's what happened. And you can write sequentially, and everything falls into a sequential order, I guess you would say. Sometimes what I've tried in some of my books is to have something happen in that first chapter and no explanation for it until the third chapter. So they rip through that second chapter, and they're into the third, and they're finding out what happened, why that happened in that first chapter. Or you can do that down the line. So why did that thing, why did that event happen in that fifth chapter? And you don't tell them until the seventh chapter. Well, you get the idea. So we'll be talking more about hooks. And the reason I bring that up is because at this point you probably understand punctuation. You're using grammarly or writer's aid or something to this effect, a software that actually helps you keep from using the same word too many times in a paragraph and it'll do spell check for you. That's great. But you have to know your story, the storyline. Writers that I've worked with who got too caught up in the cacophony of technical writing, you know, making everything just perfect. And first you've got to be able to write that story. First, you've got to be able to put in hooks and keep that person turning page after page after page. And then you can go back and you can edit it and make sure, you know, watch. Do you use the word that an awful lot? Do you use the phrase they turned their head or they walked away over and over again? So look for words that you know and you recognize. Do your own editing. The more you can edit on your own, when you turn it over to a professional, it's pretty tight and it doesn't cost that much. But if they have to go through every single paragraph and they're editing and editing like crazy, well, there's your cost right there. And we'll talk more about how to get a good editor and why it's so important to have the back matter really also have a hook, as well as a great cover. Well, this is Kit Crumb, your fiction writer's coach. Be sure to listen tomorrow, and thanks for listening today.