H … is for hook.

On 09/04/201410/04/2014 By TomIn Achievement, Competitions, General, Insight, Novel, Poetry, Review, Short Stories, Uncategorized2 Comments

is for hook.

What do I mean by a hook?

A hook will exist in a variety of writing, from articles, t0 poetry, short stories and novels. It is that magnetic word, or group of words, that grips the attention of a prospective reader or browser, and turns that person into a reader.

My own rule for short stories is to create a hook within the first 30 words. It may go over by one or two, but generally I manage to keep it pretty tight.

Example 1: Opening lines of my short story, ‘Duty Bound’.

‘Gary felt pain throughout his body. He opened his eyes and gasped. A small monkey that had been studying him from six inches away shrieked, and scurried along the high branch.’ (31 words)

Example 2: Opening lines of my short story, ‘Mary had a little gun’.

‘Standing in the remote, disused warehouse; Mary stared through the broken windows. Her tortured thoughts drifted back briefly, to life before she became a wife and mother. She had been a different person then. (34 words)

When writing a novel, I may not follow the template suggested by the ‘How to …’ books, but I do create a hook within the first 3 – 5 pages. I also create a hook early, and late in each chapter. In a novel, they are better described as cliff-hangers.

I tend not to give the solution to the cliff-hanger too early in the next chapter, preferring in some cases to keep it under wraps for maybe two chapters or more. Some solutions might be kept from the reader for longer, but I make sure the solutions are worthy of such a wait. The key thing is; they must exist to keep the reader going.

A good choice of title, cover, or both, might be enough to capture interest, but the writer must create a recurring interest to keep those pages turning. The story must tease the reader’s inquisitive nature, sometimes allowing the reader to play detective for a while, and then the solution to one issue is overlapped by creating a new one.

Your task as a writer is to entertain and lure the prospective reader into looking beyond the title of the short story, or novel. Tease them into looking at that first page, and then draw them in, line by line, and page by page.

If those hook examples have worked for any of you, those two stories are available on this blog. As always, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you back here for … ‘I’.

The Self-Publishing Conference 2014 – a review

On 31/03/201431/03/2014 By TomIn Achievement, General, Insight, Novel, Poetry, Review, Short Stories, Uncategorized2 Comments

Before I write my review, I’d like to reiterate a statement I made on this very blog on 11th March 2014.

‘Even if we don’t take all the advice that’s offered to us, we owe it to ourselves to find out what is on offer out there, and this has to be one of the most beneficial days any self-published author could spend.’

I would now like to follow that quote by saying, that if I hadn’t already said it; I would be saying it now.

The event was held at the Stamford Court Conference Centre in Leicester yesterday, Sunday 30th March 2014. It was well organised in every respect, including overflow parking, to allow for those who don’t know how to guide their car between two white painted lines …

There were 4 sessions, which overall offered a choice of 21 seminars to attend. This meant that each delegate made their own choice of which seminar to attend during any particular session. These were pre-booked. Apart from the final seminar, each was followed by a refreshment break.

Rather than tie my faithful (or new) readers down, with a detailed view of everything, I will be writing individual posts over the coming weeks on the four seminars I attended, which were:

1. Work successfully with bookshops and libraries to sell your book.

2. The importance for new authors of an author website.

3. The importance of cover design.

4. Using your existing author website to the full.

Needless to say, the impact of the seminars I attended will be reflected in my follow-up activity. For now, I’ll say no more on that subject. I would suggest, that attendance at the conference next year would be beneficial to any self-published writer. I will most certainly be highlighting it in my diary.

Sponsors of this year’s conference were: Writers & Artists, Writing Magazine, Nielsen, Matador (Troubador), Kobo, Writing Life, Cornerstones, TJ International, Cameron, Self-Publishing Magazine, Booked PR, and The Writers Advice Centre.

It would be remiss of me to leave out one important personal aspect of my attendance. I got to meet fellow writer and blogger, Paul Ruddock. We attended a couple of the seminars together and used every available moment in between, to discuss views that would have taken a much longer time by email or blog post. For any of you that wondered; yes, he really is a nice guy.

The A to Z Challenge starts tomorrow.

Thank you for reading.