My Husband Married A Hooker-Part 4

We've talked about setting writing hooks with your title, first sentence, and at the end of chapters. Today, we're going to talk about embedded hooks.

Embedded hooks tease, prod and seduce your readers into turning the pages. As writers, we know everything about our characters and our story. It’s tempting to spill our guts. Don’t. Ladle the most interesting information out in small doses, salting the tantalyzing details throughout.

I learned about embedded hooks in the one creative writing course I took in college. The YA story I wrote started with an underage character sneaking into a hospital to visit his friend who had just been admitted. The police left after taking the hospitalized boy’s statement about the accident and my little hero was desperate to see his recovering friend.

To find out what he’d told them.

And that’s all I said about that for several pages. But my professor pounced on the little hook, raving about it. And I knew I'd discovered something important about writing. Writers are a little like old-school fan dancers. We flash our readers. We give them sneak peaks at what's coming. We part the fans and tease them with little bits of information that makes them want to know more.

I use an embedded hook when I'm introducing my heroine Viola in my first Mia Marlowe title TOUCH OF A THIEF (Kensington Brava, May 2011):

The stones would be in Lieutenant Quinn’s chamber. Her fence had a friend in the brick mason’s guild who, for a pretty price, happily revealed the location of the ton’s secret stashes. Townhouses on this fashionable London street were all equipped with identical wall safes in the master’s chamber. The newfangled tumbler lock would open without protest under Viola’s deft touch.

She had a gift. Two, actually, but she didn’t enjoy the other one half so much.

Did I make you wonder what her other gift is? Check out the full excerpt at http://www.miamarlowe.com.

Drop in a little tease here and there and your readers will love you for it. The fun thing about embedded hooks is that there is no limit to how many or how often you plant them. Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code was brilliant in this regard. By dropping little nuggets of information, he creats a path in his prose to pull his reader along. Sort of like literary breadcrumbs a reader can follow all the way home.

If you're a writer, please share an example of an embedded hook from your WIP. If you're a reader, have you recognized an embedded hook in the book you're currently reading?

My Husband Married a Hooker, Part 3

We've talked about hooking readers with your title. We've covered the importance of hooking with your first line. Today, we're going to talk about the hooks that turn a good read into a page-turner--the hook at the end of the chapter.

Mary Higgins Clark made a fortune writing short spare chapters and ending each one with a hard hook. Her books are called fast reads because no one can put them down. A hook is a tantalizing bit of information that compels the reader to keep going. The best compliment my editor ever gave me was sharing that she always had to stop mid chapter when she was editing my work because if she got to the end of the chapter, she’d have to go on.

Here are a few types of "end of chapter" hooks:

Bridging hook- In this hook, you bridge from one chapter to the next by picking up shortly after you left off. I'm sorry I don't know what book this example is from, but I read it once and thought it was delicious. A couple is fighting at the end of the chapter about whether or not to keep a stray dog. Finally, the guy says, "Ok, he can stay tonight, but he's not sleeping on the foot of our bed."

The next chapter opens with: "The dog snored all night."

It makes me smile every time I think of it. In only a few words, you learn a lot about the relationship and you certainly learn who really had the last word in that argument!

Danger, Will Robinson—Ending chapters with physical peril may be a cheap trick, but it works almost every time it’s tried. I heard Jessica Andersen reading an excerpt from her award winning Nightkeeper series at a book signing once. She very cleverly read a chapter that ended with the character's car careening out of control and plunging off a cliff. Well, you have to buy the book and keep reading then, don't you?

If you have a fight scene or a dangerous situation, use it to pull your reader forward. Save the resolution for the next chapter, not the end of this one.

L’amour—The same principle for a fight scene works for a love scene. End the chapter with a kiss of promise and your reader will keep turning pages. Don’t end with the cigarette moment or worse, having the loving couple fall asleep. Something else needs to happen to keep the momentum of the story going or the reader will turn out the light and wake up her husband!

Make it matter—Anything that raises the stakes is a hook. If the bank is about to foreclose, the sheriff shows up on the doorstep at the end of the chapter with the notice. This is especially important at the end of the crucial third chapter.

Why the third chapter? Because when an editor or agent asks for a partial, they want the first three chapters and synopsis. Hit them with a hard hook at the end of 3 and they'll have to ask for the full manuscript.

Setting end of chapter hooks is the best way to write a compulsive read. Who really needs 8 hours of sleep anyway?

Here's an example of an end of chapter hook from my new release STROKE OF GENIUS. In this scene, Crispin Hawke shooes Grace Makepeace, whom he's just met, away from the sketch he keeps covered in his studio--the one of the woman who's been plaguing his dreams for months:

Anyone viewing the sketch would never believe Miss Grace Makepeace hadn’t sat for it personally.

And in splendid nakedness.

Now it's your turn. If you're a writer, do you have a favorite end of chapter hook from your WIP? Readers, what end of chapter hooks kept you up late?

PS. I'm also blogging at Seductive Musings and at Tracy Madison's Blog today. Giveaways at both places, of course! Please pop over and say hi!

My Husband Married a Hooker, Part 2

A couple weeks ago, I gave you the Readers' Digest version of the first part of my MY HUSBAND MARRIED A HOOKER workshop. (It's about writing hooks, of course! What were you thinking?) We talked about what a hook is and how to set one with your title. For a refresher, here's a link to that post.

Today, we'll talk about hooking your reader with your opening line.

The beginning of a book is a delicate time. You must introduce your protagonist, establish the conflict and set the tone in ripping fashion. Years ago, readers gave authors leisure to do this in a long prologue or a first chapter loaded with backstory. No more. We must drop the reader in medias res ("into the middle of affairs"). We hit the ground running and leave enough breadcrumbs in our wake for the reader to follow and catch up.

If this sounds daunting, that's because it is. Most writers I know spend more time revising the first chapter than any other with emphasis on the first line. That's because if you don't hook your reader with the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, she's likely to reshelve the book and move on.

So here are a few tips to start with a hook.

1. Begin as you mean to continue. No bait and switch allowed!The first sentence sets the tone for the whole book.

My Distracting the Duchess starts with “I’m going to have to shorten his willy.” Ok. I admit it. I was going for a snort. Obviously, with this start, you’re in for a sexy romp. If I’d tried to make it a serious tear jerker, there would have been problems.

2. Surprise your reader.

If the world of your story has its own special rules, lead with them. I still remember my reaction to the opening of Nora Robert's Carolina Moon. "She woke in the body of a dead friend." It made me do a double take to make certain I'd read it correctly. When I was sure I had, I knew I had a unique tale ahead of me.

3. Raise a question in your reader's mind. Moby Dick opens with "Call me Ishmael." The first time I read it, I wondered if that was really the narrator's name or if he chose the name of an outcast to describe himself because that's how he felt. In just three words, Melville has set the stage for a story of biblical proportions.

4. Elicit an emotion from your readers. Stephanie Meyers' Twilight begins with "I'd never given much thought to how I would die." Well, that grabs us by the jugular, doesn't it? We all have wondered about death at some time and have pretty strong feelings about it.

You MUST hook your readers on the first line. Surprise them. Make them shiver. Give them something to elicit an emotion or raise a question that compels them to read on.

STROKE OF GENIUS starts like this:

Starting from the well-formed foot and ankle, the long line of the man’s leg ended in a disappointingly small fig leaf.

Raise any questions? Does it give you an idea of the tone of this story? Are you expecting a light-hearted, classy, yet ribald tale? (Click here if you'd like to read the rest of the chapter!)

If you're a writer, please share the opening line of your current WIP. If you're a reader, what's the first line of the book you're reading now and why do you think it's a good one or not?

My Husband Married a Hooker! Part 1

“I couldn’t put it down!”

This is the accolade every writer longs to hear. And the best way to earn this ultimate compliment is by peppering your prose with hooks.

The dictionary describes a hook as a stratagem for snaring someone and writers need to snare their readers hard, fast and securely if they want to keep them turning pages. If a writer sprinkles her prose with hooks, she creates a path for her readers to follow through the narrative. In my workshop, My Husband Married a Hooker, I share tricks to help writers hook their readers using their title, their opening line, chapter breaks, embedded hooks and even the final sentence.

And hopefully hook their readers into searching out their backlists!

Here's the Reader's Digest version of the first part of that workshop:

Hooking with your title ~ Make ‘em pick up the book! The title is your foot in the door. It’s the first chance for you to show the reader what kind of story they’re going to get. CL Wilson’s Lord of the Fading Lands isn’t likely to be mistaken for a contemporary comedy. Why? The title is too reminiscent of Tolkein. This is one place where it’s ok to be like something else. You want to call an image to the reader’s mind that will tell them where your book falls in the grand scheme of literature.

Authors sometimes have no say on the final title, but make up a good one anyway. It's your first chance to hook your editor. I sold STROKE OF GENIUS on the strength of the title and a paragraph.

Why is it a good title? My editor loved the play on words. There's a hint of a naughty double entendre in the word stroke. It lets my reader know they're in for a sensual romp. And it gives a clue about my hero--the artistic genius.

Here are some good title tricks:

Something familiar—Take something your readers will recognize and give it a twist.
Play on movie titles: Karen Hawkins' Sleepless in Scotland.
Play on TV: Elizabeth Boyle’s How I Met My Countess.
Song Lyrics: Susan Elizabeth Phillips Ain’t She Sweet? (And of course, her heroine isn't!)
Old sayings: Mary Balogh's First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Seduction, And Last Comes Love. She's taken the old saw "First comes love" and given it a shake-up. Isn't that brilliant for a set of connected stories?

Series titles—Set up a recurring theme.
One for the Money by Janet Evanovitch. She has an unlimited supply of numbers for subsequent books.
A is for Alibi by Susan Grafton. Same principle, but only 26 available titles. Darn.
The Serpent Prince, the Raven Prince, The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt. By repeating Prince in each title, she's given readers a clue that they are related stories. And if they enjoyed one, they'll want the next.

Alliteration—People respond to patterns. We crave it. Christie Craig’s Divorced, Desperate and Dating plays to our need for pattern beautifully. So does Mary Janice Davidson's Undead and Unpopular. I used this trick for my Distracting the Duchess, Pleasuring the Pirate and Vexing the Viscount.

There are plenty of good ways to develop a hooking title. Just remember, the goal is to surprise and delight your readers into picking up the book. Next Wednesday, I'll talk about how to hook your readers with the first sentence.

And even though I don't have my author copies of STROKE OF GENIUS yet, I'd like to give away one to someone who leaves a comment or question here today. When I get back from RT in Ohio, I'll have my DH pick the random winner, so be sure to let me know you were here.

Here's the discussion question:
What's the best title you've ever seen and why do you think it's a good one? If you're a writer, it's ok to use one of your own if you like! Just be prepared to share why it fits your story.