The Hook

When you start reading one of my stories, I want you to be instantly captivated, so you feel you just have to read on.

That’s the function of “the hook.”

Since the term comes from fishing, I thought to give you a little fun, and have posted story a about the joys of fishing—for the fish. https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/2023/07/21/fishing/

It is one of the 29 from “Through Other Eyes.” https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/bobs-booklist/#othereyes

Let me tell you, it hurts, but reading my story should not. So, hopefully it’s only a partial metaphor. The poor fish just has to come, to reduce pain. The lucky reader just has to read on, to increase enjoyment.

The principle is to get you to immediately identify with my character, who is in a situation of maximum tension. If it’s a romance (though I don’t write those), it’s instant attraction to an unavailable person, e.g., the boss’s husband. In a thriller, the character wants to stay alive, which seems unlikely in the situation I’ve landed the poor person in.

An illustration is worth an hour of lecturing, and doesn’t send you to sleep. So, how about several illustrations?

One great hook is danger. Check these out:

The water is so cold! Liquid ice flows into Heather’s mouth, into her lungs as she gasps from the shock of immersion in freezing fire. Her head is within the black depths, and a terrible thought beats into her mind as she coughs a great bubble: I’m drowning!

Or

He holds the knife a few inches in front of my nose.

I can’t breathe, just stare into his eyes. A sty on his left eyelid. Coarse black pores on his nose. Gaps among his teeth as he growls, “Whatever cash you got, now!”

These two opening don’t involve danger, but each earned me an award:

Young women are a sweet agony, a toyshop I’ll never enter. I’m a moth, forever singeing the wings of my soul, stupidly circling toward destruction.

Courting ridicule, courting rejection, I instruct my prison on wheels to advance across the Esplanade, stopping against the wrought iron railing.

And

I’ve always thought that ‘an aching heart’ was a cliché, a metaphor, a mere turn of phrase. But during my daily visits to my dying mother, I learn that it is an exact description. My heart is where I feel the pain of grief.

Following David Eddings’ way of starting the first volume of The Belgariad, I’ve started stories with a single sentence of author intrusion as a hook:

The worst day in Tim O’Liam’s life started well.

Or

The terrible times started on a beautiful afternoon.

Finally, a puzzled, befuddled protagonist will want you to read on to find out what’s going on:

The voice came as if from far away. It was a pleasant, deep female voice, saying over and over, “Flora, wake up. Flora Fielding, wake up, Flora…” on and on.

I’m awake, Flora tried to say, but her mouth, her lungs wouldn’t obey. Her eyelids felt too heavy to lift. And she was cold. Her body was ice. If she moved, surely she’d snap like an icicle — if she could move at all. Her skin hurt everywhere from the bitter, malevolent cold. Her bones ached, all over.

I hope you get the idea.

Instructional books also need a hook—an answer to the unasked question, “Why should I bother to read this?”

Pessimism vs. optimism is one of the dimensions of human personality. Interesting research shows that pessimists are consistently more realistic than optimists. This is because reality is far worse than you could think without getting depressed.

Diagnosed depression is a galloping epidemic.

Or

What do people mean when they say, “Human nature being what it is?” What does this mean to you?

The usual interpretation is that selfishness, greed, “looking out for number one,” “let the buyer beware,” “there is a sucker born every day” and similar clichés describe what people are like.

Don’t you believe it.

And one more:

This book is a tool for achieving better health by everyone. It will help you to protect yourself and those you love, so that your chances of developing cancer will be reduced. It will help you to look after someone who is battling cancer, and above all, it will help you if you are the one whose body is the battleground.

Please let me know if any of these hooks left you uninterested, your reaction being “So what.”

And two weeks after this post goes live, I’ll use https://random.org to select one commenter, who is welcome to choose (an electronic) copy of any of my books. You can inspect the list here: https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/bobs-booklist/

Please comment at this link: https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2Zf

ABOUT BOB:

Bob Rich, Ph.D., is a visitor from a faraway galaxy, where he is an historian of horror. So, Earth is his favorite place in the universe. Nowhere else do sentient beings engage in a game of killing non-combatants (war). Nowhere else are child raising practices designed to harm children. And delicious for an historian of horror: nowhere else is the entire global economy designed to destroy its life support system.

Here on Earth, he is disguised as an Australian storyteller, with 19 published books. Five books, and over 40 short stories, have won awards.

He has retired five times so far, from five different occupations, one being psychotherapy, so six of his books are psychological self-help. He still works as an editor for several small publishers and a steady stream of writers.

Above all, he is a Professional Grandfather. Anyone born since 1993 is his grandchild. Everything he does strives for a survivable future for them, and one worth surviving in. This means environmental and humanitarian activism: an attempt to change a worldwide culture of greed and aggression into one of compassion and cooperation.

He has been writing since 1980, with a byline column in Earth Garden magazine and other periodicals. His first book, The Earth Garden Building Book: Design and build your own house, went through four editions between 1986 and 2018. A biography, Anikó: The stranger who loved me, has won four awards. Two of his novels are science fiction, with Ascending Spiral having gone through four print runs.

He discovered that he was a Buddhist at 23, when a Presbyterian minister told him. When he checked up on this claim, he found his philosophy set out in beautiful words. He decided not to sue the Buddha for plagiarism, as an act of metta (lovingkindness).