If you Want to Land the Heart Punch, Lead With the Hook

Sadly, this one’s going to start with me breaking your heart. It’s a bit of tough love that I wish I had gotten but never did. I managed to figure it out myself and only because I cared to.

So!

You’re writing a story, an article, a piece of whatever that’s going to change the hearts and minds of those living all over the planet. The thing is...nobody cares. And it’s not personal.

We all want to be known and adored for our writing but it’s a problem of saturation and not a slight against our writing prowess. Even if you’re still reading this, you’ve got tons of other mediums that could address whatever your thirst may be.

To be clear, I’m referring to hooks. Now, I’ve read reference books that discuss and point to what hooks are, but I’ve never fully understood what they were. Come to find out, it was not a problem with me; it was a problem with the way it was being explained.

Like my high school principal, I’m sure you’re quick to defend the position of the professional teacher as I’m requesting to move to Algebra after failing Pre-Algebra. My defense is that I have a poor teacher; yours is that I shouldn’t move on if I struggled with the lesser lesson.

The thing is...that pesky ole hindsight. You see, I now have the ability to look back and see myself passing Pre-Algebra---under the same teacher---by three points. I was four points away from failing it again! then moving onto Algebra as a Junior and failing to earn the ‘highest curriculum’ amongst all other students taking Algebra that year. I missed it by .1 point and you want to know what the difference was?

The teacher.

So, rest assured that this is one of those things.

A hook is simply making your reader care. That is all.

Drop mic, end article, go have lunch.

There are other things to consider, but let’s dig into this lesson more first. I learned it by sharing the core secret in my novel---Twilight Wolf. I shared it with a few readers and while I had the luxury of knowing all the interconnected things that made this thing great, my readers did not. And their reactions proved as much because they didn’t really have a reaction. This something was something deeply personal and traumatic for my protagonist---Mioko---yet it elicited barely an acknowledgment.

This is when I discovered my blunder. It wasn’t anything on the reader; it was that I hadn't given them a reason to care about Mioko, then spoiled a big reveal, forever weakening it when it arrived in the narrative. It’s my hope that you don’t do this. I have a new found respect for spoilers and as a writer, I know giving them lessens the experience that I hope my reader to have.

“But, JT,” I hear your inquiring minds ask. “How do you make the reader care?”

Excellent question, my fellow students! I’m so happy that you cared to ask! The thing that isn’t debatable is being grammatically accurate, but that’s the minimum requirement. Your words need to be accurate, but they also need to carry weight. I took a workshop where a technique was presented, which the instructor called ‘Petting the dog.’ I don’t know how common this technique is but you can find my thoughts on it and a link to the workshop in yesterday’s article. It’s located here.

‘Petting the dog’ is simply doing something that can make your reader sympathize with the actions they are reading. It can be literately petting a dog or it can be something like caring for a sick loved one, a troubled friend, or a stranger who has just been wounded in a car accident. Things like this make us care for the protagonist and will win brownie points with your reader.

Something that you’ve likely seen/heard is not to start your story talking about history or weather. And I agree with this bit. Your reader can’t identify with your two warring nations, who have been in a magical cold war for the past two-centuries and the more you go on about it, the more their eyes are going to roll into the back of their head. You shouldn’t talk about these factions, but you can and should talk about the people involved.

Let’s consider two story starts. On the one hand you talk about the destruction of city XYZ during an attack that caused the loss of a great many civilians. ‘X’ number of buildings were destroyed and ‘X’ number of people had died that day. XYZ was recovering, but still, the scars remained.

That description is okay. Sure, it’s intriguing, but I don’t really have anything invested in this city. But think about the same scenario from the perspective of a survivor.

Abigail rode along ‘XYZ’ street with her adopted parents as they shuttled her to school. They had always tried to avoid this route, but the main thoroughfare was backed up and they were running late. When they passed the empty slab that had once been Abigail’s apartment building, her face went slack as the memories returned. She had been the only survivor after the burning building collapsed, claiming everyone she knew and loved.

This iteration is potentially the same event, but it puts you a lot closer to the actual scars. You could expand on ‘Abigail’s’ emotional response here to make it more impactful, but you get the point. You then move the story forward by describing the war by how the survivors feel about it. Build up this history over time. This history is going to be tinged with character bias and won’t be completely factual, but that’s far more interesting than dumping a dictionary’s contents in our lap.

So, both scenarios are methods to make your reader care, hooks, if you will. One shows a character caring for someone or something, the other shows her suffering in a relatable way.

A last thing I’ll touch on is the audience itself. You need to know what yours is, then deliver what they want. It’s not pandering, it’s sound business sense. If I’m a Pepsi fan and you only stock Coke products, I don’t care that you have three coolers loaded with Coke. It’s nothing personal, but I’ll be going some place that carries what I want.

If you’re curious, I drink neither. So, don’t go thinking this is an endorsement. :)

I recently listened to a booktuber talking about the need for a romance sub-genre in fantasy. If you’re writing a fantasy and the plot of this story revolves around the romance... this is your hook! When you give your reader a sympathetic character, then deliver a scenario that promises to chart a course for the romance, your reader lends you their trust. It’s then up to you to not betray it and give them what they’re reading for.

So, introduce your Romeo or your Juliet or both. Show the potential of them getting together and possibly what’s keeping them apart. Once you do that, you’ve provided the reader with what they want. Do this same thing with any genre. If you promise portal magic, show it early. If you promise knock-down-drag-out fights and sassy characters, then show that. Give the Pepsi fans Pepsi and the Coke fans Coke. Do this and you will satisfy this mystical feat known as ‘hooking your audience.’

The last thing I’d like to add is a ‘best for last’ kind of deal. I’ve used several beta readers and good ones are a bit of a ‘diamond in the rough’ situation. I had the fortunate experience of finding a few good ones and I’d like to share one of them now. Her name is Danielle and she’s on Fiverr. She is very insightful and I received some great feedback and details that helped me smooth out some of my novel’s rougher edges. If you are in need of a professional, you can’t go wrong with her.

But that’s going to do it for me. I hope you found some value in my past experiences. I’m very grateful for your time and I wish you well in your future writing endeavors.