Story Cookies, Part 1: The Art of Writing Hooks

Photography: somma

Lately, there have been some amount of posts in the blogosphere about the art of writing query letters. One key point has been the hook.

If you can’t hook, you can’t survive. Merciless, but that’s writing for you. Luckily, there is help from Techniques of the Selling Writer: Swain’s “starting lineup.”

Is *very* simple. Idiots (like moi) can do it. Let’s look at an example.

The basic structure behind the “starting lineup” is:

Hit the high points. Niggly details, like the ninja squadron that tries to wipe the hero out, the debonair and condescending assistant, and the symbolism involving cucumbers, should be left out.

Example involving my current short story:

Just because it’s a short story, don’t assume that I didn’t leave a lot of things out. There are many things not there, some important, including:

• the cover story is that he’s supposed to kill one of the faction leaders involved in a 3-way power struggle between the King in Yellow, the Crawling Chaos, and the Deep Ones;
• a debonair, condescending 130-year-old mentor who has a different viewpoint on morality and an intrusive presence in Vance’s mind;
• Vance’s frustration that everyone treats him as a kid, even though that’s his primary asset, mixed with other teenage concerns, like hormones;
• discovering why the undercover agent died is not the only reason Vance is there, and he’s hiding this information from his mentor;
• the Academy is full of pricks itself;
• symbolism involving Japanese monster movies married with sushi;

and yes, that’s all within the first 3500 words. There’s way more fun in the next 3500–10000, including three disasters (or at least a bunch) and a lot of Act I, Act II, Act III type stuff.

These details are important, but the key is: they are not the central idea of the story. The art of the hook requires figuring out how to cut to the heart of the tale. Is it hard? You bet. Expect to spend some time on this.

Once you have the starting lineup, you can boil it down further to a single sentence:

15 words exactly.

If I can do it, then so can you!