Your Novel's Hook

I'm a slow writer in comparison to others, so I spent a lot of time with my latest novel. I didn't keep track, but all together, it was probably about a year. Thus, by the time I wrote the metaphorical "The End", I knew my story really well. 

So, why have I never been able to write a great hook for it? 

From my perspective as a failed hook writer, a bad hook suffers from one of two problems: it's either too specific or too vague; too much detail or too little. I prefer the term, "elevator pitch" to "hook", because elevator pitch is more evocative. You're aware that elevators zoom up to their destinations really quickly, right? Frankly, too quickly to spout your pitch to the stranger sharing the car with you, but let's pretend you and he both stepped into one of those sluggish cars. You've got only about twenty seconds to convince the guy to buy your book. So, don't start your pitch with, "Well, let's see..." while scratching your chin. If you do a good enough job verbalizing your hook, once you step out onto your floor, the guy just might jam his finger on the "Open" button, eager to hear more.

For, let's say, women's fiction (because that's what I'm calling my novel today), I believe the hook should home in on the story's theme. There's no big explosion, nor any hostages to rescue. Going with the theme makes crafting a hook really difficult, though. I can't just say, "A woman finds out what she really wants."Oh. Great. Isn't this your floor?"

On the other hand, I can't throw in one of the seminal scenes from the story, because that's getting too much into the weeds. My common joke has always been, "Things happen." Obviously, that's not gonna work for a hook.

So, for women's fiction and genres like literary fiction, authors need to find the sweet spot between theme and action. My difficulty is condensing those two aspects into one sentence; two at the most.

The author knows almost too much about her book to effectively encapsulate it without a plethora of false starts. Instinctively, we yearn to highlight the parts of the story we think are the best, but those are "incidents" that coalesce to reveal the story's theme. A hook doesn't allow for the recounting of scenes, plus for someone who hasn't read the book, why would they care? My novel has scenes I really, really love, but those are for the (hypothetical) reader to discover for herself. (Now I'm back to "things happen".)

Crafting a hook is like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that you need to solve without having a reference picture. Possessing the actual picture grounds you to the task at hand. (I will note that your blurb also needs to have a reference picture.) 

You know me; I crave examples, so here is an article that provides a brief blueprint for writing hooks. Unfortunately, there are some missing words in some of her examples, but readers can probably still get the drift.  (Happens to me, too, when I start out with one statement, then go back and revise it.) This article is a bit more thorough. I actually prefer it when someone tells me what not to do. Without that word of caution, I'm basically just guessing. From the article:

"This Is Not a Hook…

By now, hopefully, you can see that hooks are like snowflakes—all made of the same stuff, but crafted individually, with very few hard-and-fast rules and lots of creativity.

Before you get carried away, here are some things to avoid in your hooks:

• Important plot info — As crucial as the hook is, the rest of your blurb should make perfect sense without it, so don’t put any info in here that they’re not getting later on. As doubling-up is a bad idea in blurbs in general, avoid this by focusing on concepts, not specifics.
• Tricky jargon or proper nouns — Hooks should be instantly readable and able to be understood by anyone who can read. Think 5th-grade level readers to be safe. I’m dead serious. This means you’re better off without big words, fancy terms, or magical names and places.
• Character names — Instead of name-dropping them in the hook, give your characters a full and proper introduction in the body of the blurb. This makes for a much stronger connection with your readers, because what’s in a name?"

 

Why does an author even need a hook? As noted above, and simply common sense-wise, a hook isn't a blurb. There are practical reasons to have both.

One that's rarely mentioned is that crafting a good hook can lead to writing a good blurb. Once you've established a direction, it's much easier to expand on it for your blurb. In fact, a powerful hook could also be the starting point for the blurb. Experts tell us to keep those two things separate, but experts tell us a lot of things. 

If you're someone who interacts with people in real life and you make it known that you've written a book (neither of those things apply to me), a hook is: a) a great way to keep a conversation lively; and b) a way to generate good word of mouth that might drive book sales.

Many of the book promotion sites require a hook when you're setting up your promo, and they're very strict about character count. If you apply to, for example, BookSirens (the outfit that turned me down three times) and you haven't already written your hook, do you really want to slap one together on the spot? Not that it caused my rejection, but that's exactly what I ended up doing. (I think they just don't like me.)

I don't have a written hook for my novel; the one I dashed off for BookSirens doesn't count. But I could use one. I could fashion an Instagram or other social media post around it, for one thing. And lightning could strike and I would need to describe my novel to a real person. 

If you've got a good comp (book or even television or movie comparison) in mind, try to work that in. Familiarity breeds...I don't know, something good. I honestly don't know how popular Daisy Jones & the Six was as a novel; I understand it was quite popular, but I never read it. I did, though, as did millions of others, watch the series adapted from it. So, there's the familiarity factor I'm looking for. Really, I wouldn't have to add much, except a few words explaining how my novel differs. When people are supplied with a connection they can relate to, half the author's battle is won.

Brevity is a learned discipline.

See? There you go. Write a five-word sentence like that. Not easy, is it? 

When I've needed to limit a blurb to fifty words (for a different promo site I used), I just started culling, 'til it got down to the real nitty-gritty. Believe it or not, it strengthens the narrative. Adjectives? Forget it. Adverbs? Better come up with an action word instead. 

When writing your hook, it's okay to start big. Then eventually get smaller and smaller. 

Just look at the picture on the jigsaw puzzle box.