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006: The Hook

I used to work at a publishing company that did a speculative fiction magazine (because we weren't just about horror or science fiction or fantasy) and one of the tasks which fell on my plate was reading the mail. The editor wandered by my desk one afternoon and asked me what I was doing. "Reading," I said.

"Why?" he responded.

I indicated the manuscript in front of me. "Because they sent it in?" Figured this was one of those trick questions.

He picked it up, skimmed the first page and handed it back to me. "Ditch it," he said. And, seeing my confusion, laid it out for me. "You are looking for an excuse to toss these. Spelling, a phrase that rings wrong, plot material that you've seen before, even if they misspell my name or don't have the right information at the top of the page. Any reason you can think of not to turn the first page is a good enough reason."

"But how will I know if it is any good?" I asked.

"It won't be." He indicated the pile of eighty or so story manuscripts on the desk. "This is the mail from today. There will be another stack just like it tomorrow. Trust me. You can read them today if you like, but by next week, you'll be looking for excuses. The only stories I want you to bump up to me are the ones that you can't stop reading."

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Next time you are in the bookstore pick up Stephen King's Bag of Bones. Read the first chapter. Notice what he does. King sucks you into Mike Noonan's pain -- his despair at the loss of his wife. You get hints at the fragility of his current existence as well as the tragic nature of his wife's death. You feel for this guy and you're all wrapped up in his life by the end of those fifteen pages. And then he reaches under the bed...

This is the hook. This is what gets the reader's attention. In short stories you get a line. Novels have a little more breathing space. But not much.

When I'm in line at the grocery store, I check out the rack of paperbacks that are begging for my attention. I go through them one by one, reading the first page, seeing if I can stop at the bottom of the page, seeing if my interest is pulled towards the rest of the chapter. It doesn't matter if the genre is something that I'm interested in; these books are placed to be impulse buys. Of all the books in the supermarket these should be the ones that I glance at and, having done so, find myself wanting more.

They never do. The fat cats have forgotten about the hook. We can't. We don't have the luxury of name recognition. We have to lay a trap for the readers and hook them hard.

Posted by Teppo at October 31, 2002 03:52 PM

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