What’s a Hook?

Welcome back, daydreamers! Did you come up with a few scenes? I hope so, since we’re going to evaluate some of them for hooks today.

What do I mean by “hook”?

In this case, I’m talking about any and all rough edges that stick out that you could hang part of a plot on.

Rough edges, my unsurprised little bunnies (Is it okay if I imagine you all as adorable baby bunnies? I hope so, because I totally am. And before you ask, yes, Steve, you’re a lop. This one.) are QUESTIONS.

I know, I know. I keep harping on those questions. I should warn you, it’s only going to get worse. I’ll be admonishing you to find and answer your questions with my final breath.

Hooky Daydreams

• Who
• What
• Where
• When

and MOST importantly

• Why

Let’s say you daydreamed up a scene. Who was in it? What were they doing? Where were they? When (in general book event sense) did they do it?

WHY was THAT person doing THAT thing in THAT place at THAT time?

A Quick and Drunken Daydream

Let’s say, in your daydream, your main character orders two drinks – an appletini and an irish whisky on the rocks. The sun is shining through the window as he removes his fedora and overcoat, laying them on the barstool to his left. The drinks arrive and a stranger in a red sequined gown pours herself onto the barstool next to him. She picks up the whisky and purrs at him, “My favorite. You remembered.”*

(Why is Jessica Rabbit in this daydream? I’m obsessed with rabbits today. Blame it on the holiday.)

STOP.

Who are our characters?

1) Jessica Rabbit. She’s sultry, sexy, and is picky about her liquor.

2) Fedora Guy. He’s well-off enough to have a fedora and an overcoat, and he’s the one buying the drinks. He clearly knows and expects Jessica Rabbit to appear, because he immediately ordered the exact drink she likes before she made an appearance. He’s a thoughtful fellow, then. Also, he likes fruity drinks.

What are they doing?

They’re meeting at a bar and ordering drinks. We can assume by Jessica’s comment that although they expected to meet each other, it’s been a while since they’ve been together, and she didn’t tell him what to order.

Where are they?

In a bar of some sort.

When are they?

Sunlight through the windows, so it’s daytime. We’re introducing a new character (Jessica Rabbit) so it’s got to be in the first half of the book. You guys don’t introduce important characters at the end of your manuscripts, do you? Of course you don’t. It’s probably not the opening scene, either. It’s not exciting enough. I could see this coming AFTER Fedora Guy gets hired to investigate something, and maybe gets shot at once or twice by nefarious dudes with tommy guns and terrible aim.

WHY was THAT person doing THAT thing in THAT place at THAT time?

(Gads, you guys are demanding. I JUST made up this daydream and now you want a plot! SHEESH) Clearly, he’s not here on a date, otherwise it wouldn’t be sunshiny outside. I imagine he’s tapping into some old friends and resources to get to the bottom of…whatever it was. He’s here for information.

What was it? A murder, probably. Let’s say he’s an accountant. (What, you expected a private investigator?)

He’s just a numbers guy.

Why does a mild-mannered accountant have a history that includes Jessica Rabbit? Clearly, there’s more than a boring accounting degree in his past.

Maybe he used to do the books for an illegal gambling establishment but got out when his old boss took a dirt nap. Now he’s strictly by the books, doing taxes for Martha Johnson and working at H&R Block.

That was his life…until…

SOMETHING happened. That’s a twist. What was the twist? Did the new guy in town find out he used to do dirty books and is threatening to blackmail him? Maybe an old friend from that past life died. He goes to the funeral and comes home to find an unmarked brown envelope in his mailbox. An envelope The Bad Guys want bad enough to kill his old friend for. It’s cheaper for them to just kill him than to assume he’ll keep his yap shut, but all he wants is to go back to columns of honest numbers.

Why is he here? Is he looking for a place to hide? Probably not, since he’s meeting at a bar in daylight. No. He’s looking for info. Who killed his buddy? Why? Maybe Jessica knows, but to get the information, he’s going to have to do something for her. (She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way)

Can she be trusted? It’d be fun to draw that out, leave it a question until the end when she produces a tiny two-shot derringer from her décolletage and either shoots the man holding them hostage, or jabs it in his back at just the wrong moment, telling him to pipe down or she’ll put a stiletto through his windpipe.

Hooky Bits

See what happened there?

I took a tiny fragment of a scene that didn’t seem to have much going for it, and I extrapolated out some pretty serious plot bits! I’ve got a dead friend, an unmarked envelope, a crime boss with a trigger finger, and a hero who prefers geometry to gunplay.

I looked at the scene and starting feeling around for hooky bits. Stuff that sticks out, begging to have me ask a question about it.

Stained

Jessica Rabbit is NOT in Stained. (my readership all say “Awwwwww!” with unanimous disappointment).

Redhead bombshell or no, I’ve got multiple daydreamed scenes that are MUCH longer than that little bar snippet above. And would you believe it? It’s got even more hooky bits to start asking questions about!

An interesting hook from one of the Stained scenes (the one I said would be at the end of the book, if you recall last week’s NaNo post) – in order for that conversation to happen, the scene must begin with Shayla believing the two of them will not end up together. Why would she believe that? What events could have occurred in order for her to believe that he doesn’t love her, even though she loves him? (And clearly, he loves her, too, though she doesn’t know it).

Directional Hooks

Hooks in daydream scenes can go both backward and forward. The questions can be about what happened in order for this scene to happen … or they could be about what happens BECAUSE of this scene.

Heart

We are developing the core of a book, here. The book’s heart, so to speak. As an author, you may spend months or even YEARS working on a single novel. Clearly, you would go mad if you didn’t love your book.

I could throw premade plots at you. They would be perfectly valid premade plots, guaranteed to be successful. You can find these on the internet for free or you can buy books on the subject. Those books, those websites are NOT WRONG.

Those formulas are important. Being able to dissect your story down to its primary pieces and reconstruct it like a soldier learning how to dismantle and clean a weapon is important.

But you are not a soldier, and we aren’t talking about machinery. We’re talking about a book, and your book must be built on a solid foundation of LOVE. Yes, I know veteran writers with far more experience than me just rolled their eyes, and they are clearly entitled to do so.

I’m still a nobody. I still have a lot to learn.

But I know that I love writing. There’s a joy in it for me that I want to cultivate, regardless of whether I die unpublished at the age of 99, or find myself a wildly famous and successful writer before I reach the age of 30.

I believe that love should matter. I know that you all feel it, too, or you wouldn’t be writing.

Some people are afraid of outlining or planning their books because they don’t want to destroy that magic. I believe you can understand the mechanics of a great book without losing the passion for stories that got you started writing in the first place.

The trick, my darling bunnies (you guys are SO CUTE, I wish you could see you right now) is to build your book around the magic, rather than trying to call forth magic atop the creative equivalent of a concrete paving stone.

Homework

Examine your daydream scenes. Ask questions. Answer them. ALWAYS ask the most important question – “WHY.”

Find your hooky bits and start laying down the groundwork for your plot.

Techniques

Just so you guys know, reverse engineering my creativity into these posts is FUN, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to explain without giving away Stained details and ruin the very book I plan on writing and trying to publish. *fistshake*

One one hand, that’s frustrating (since I clearly WANT to focus on Stained). On the other hand, it’s an interesting way to test my process. A technique may have worked for Stained without working for Random_Book_Idea_07. I imagine my leaping about between imaginary projects and Stained may cause some confusion with new readers who haven’t been following the entire NaNo2010 series, but hopefully it’s not too jarring.

Entire Series

As two someones on Twitter noted, it’d be nice if y’all could access the entire NaNo2010 series without having to fish through my weekly wordcount and other assorted blog posts to find them. Your wish is my command. There are two ways to access the entire series.

• Best of the Blog > The “Best of the Blog” page is intended to be my favorite posts in one easy-to-find location. I’m linking each of these posts as I write them. This is my recommended method. (If there are any posts you think SHOULD be on that page but aren’t, I’m open to suggestions.)
• Search > You can do a search (top right of the current blog layout) for “NaNo2010″ to return all of the posts I use that particular phrase. I’m using it in the title for all of the posts to make sure the search method still works. This method will also pick up any satellite posts where I use the phrase, but you may have to fish around a bit more to find what you’re looking for.

* I’m aware that’s not good writing. It’s a daydream scribble – the equivalent of a rough pencil sketch. It’s okay to be sloppy. Any writers out there afraid to write terribly, imagine an artist afraid to sketch. Laugh, then write the terrible thing.

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