What are some good hooks for your opening chapter? This is a question every writer must ask at the beginning of a story. How can we introduce the story and the characters in a plot-pertinent way that also deeply interests readers?
A good hook sets your book apart. It promises readers you’re going to deliver something worth their time—whether it’s a familiar genre romp or something they’ve never quite seen before. It signals you know what you’re doing and you’re offering a story that will keep them intrigued on every page.
Although hooks for your opening chapter are often specialized (to the point writers sometimes spend far more time learning how to write a good first chapter than they do the rest of the book), mastering the opening-chapter hook will provide you with the skills to keep hooking readers over and over as the story progresses.
Learning From Each Other: WIP Excerpt Analysis
Today’s post is the eighth in an ongoing series in which I am analyzing the excerpts you have shared with me. My approach to these critiques is a little different from those you normally see on writing blogs. Instead of editing each piece, I’m focusing on one particular lesson that can be drawn from each excerpt, so we can deep-dive into the logic and process of various useful techniques.
Today, my thanks to Stuart Sweet for sharing from his space opera The Santa María. Let’s take a look! The bolded entries and subscript numbers will correspond with the tips I’ll talk about in the subsequent section.
The entirety of the human race gathered before screens of all dimensions.1 Almost no job was too urgent to postpone nor any person too apathetic to hear what was going to be said. The Captain by the name of Charles2 was to address the solar system with a short speech mere hours after revelations of doomsday predictions of an unlikely planet with an impossible threat.3 On the Santa María4, the captain looked up at the camera.
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