McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Hooks in You

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arianne:
For me it feels like maybe you're putting in too much world and not enough people, so the hook reads more like a travel guide rather than a story. Why not start with the main character, talk about what his story is, what he wants out of life, and what he's maybe intending to do and so on and THEN talk about the lunar eclipses and guilds and the world behind it. I mean, mystical worlds are great things and fun to visit, but ultimately people want things to HAPPEN in a story.

gatordave96:
Thanks for the response.  I'm struggling because there isn't a main character.  Rather, there are several.  It's told in third person limited POV, with multiple voices in style of Game of Thrones.  I could choose one, but then I wonder if I'm deceiving the reader somehow when they find out that the description doesn't match what's advertised. 

Maybe I just need to spend a day brainstorming and come up with several different possibilities and then narrow them down.

Wordmaker:
Try to keep your hook short, like a sales pitch.

For Locked Within, mine was "A man who remembers past lives is drawn to investigate a series of murders which have taken place over 160 years."

gatordave96:
"Truman drowned in his own blood guilt.  When ordered to flog a man for an indiscretion that Truman committed himself, the resulting darkness cast a shadow over his mind, and what followed started a chain of events that forever changed the balance of power in the frontier town of Fifty Horns.  The eclipse of the blood moon comes – and it is the harbinger of change."

Better?

Wordmaker:
Better, but still needs work.

Remove those first and last sentences. They're far too "in-character" for a hook. They're the kind of thing you use in your cover copy or summaries. Also hooks should generally be written in present-tense.

Also, this seems to say that that Truman's guilt, itself, is what causes things to change in the town, as if he has some supernatural ability to change the world with his mind.

If you could describe the events of the first three chapters in three sentences, what would they be?

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