Hook, Line, and Sinker

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

72. Developing a compelling hook

I’m quite certain that a great deal of literature has been written on this subject, but unfortunately I have not read any of it. All I can really give is my opinion, based on the fact that I’ve been an avid reader since I was about 8 years old.

To me, the trick to developing a compelling hook is to be both realistic and unrealistic at the same time. Sure that doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. First, you have to be somewhat realistic with your characters and settings, because even when your reader is looking for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, or any of the other crazy options there are, they want to feel some kind of connection to the story. If your character is a gorgeous creature who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and is absolutely perfect in every way your reader is going to have a hard time giving a rat’s behind about them. In fact, they’re more likely to hate them and not want to read about them anymore. But if you give your character some flaws that the reader can relate to (they were teased mercilessly as a child; they have an alcohol problem; they’re embarrassingly clumsy; etc etc etc) the reader is more likely to connect with them and want to follow them through the story. George R.R. Martin’s writing is a great example of this. In his A Song of Ice and Fire series you can easily find yourself rooting for multiple characters on different sides of the battles, because even the most evil characters have certain traits or beliefs that force you to relate with them. Sure, they’re still creeps, but you can’t help feeling that they could almost be your friend in a different situation, which makes you want to find out what happens to them.

Moving on, once you’ve established this sense of realism, you have to move on to being unrealistic in your story. See, the thing is that (for the most part) reality is pretty boring. The world is a pretty amazing place, yes, but the everyday world is, well…every day. People don’t read fiction because they want to read about the same things that they see every day in their own lives; they read fiction to put themselves into another world, a place that’s strange and different and lets them escape from the mundane. To continue using Martin as my example, his world first seems like a perfectly realistic medieval land, but suddenly you find out that it’s also full of magic and dark creatures. You’re relating to the characters and the world they live in, but you’re also surrounded by the odd and unusual, the kinds of things you secretly wish were real.

This doesn’t exactly help develop a “hook”, but I think that these are two important things to keep in mind when attempting to do so because any plot idea you do come up with will be a lot more enjoyable to read if these two ideas are kept in mind.

Or maybe I’m wrong. If so, feel free to debate it with me!

Synopses are Boring :P

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

44. Mistakes to avoid in synopses

This is an area in which I have absolutely no experience. Since I’ve never submitted anything for publication or attempted self-publication, I haven’t written a synopses since I learned what the word meant back in grade school. Because of this I’m cheating a little on this one and giving you a link to a site I found via Google that explain just this sort of thing quite well:

Synopsis Tips

I’ll try harder later, I promise. 😛

Stressors of the Digital Age

I’ve done NaNoWriMo for the past four years in a row because I love the challenge of it. While I’m not competing for a physical prize (though you do get a couple of treats for completing the challenge), feeling like I’m racing against the other participants is great motivation for me. I don’t think I would be remiss in saying that I’ve been known to write more during NaNoWriMo than during the rest of the year combined.

But aside from the challenge, the motivation, the little treats at the end, and the overall fun of the event, there is one majorly important thing that NaNoWriMo does for me each year. That is, it reminds me to back up my damn writing. Along with regular gentle reminders from the people behind NaNoWriMo as well as fellow writers on the forums, we also celebrate “National Back Up Your Novel Day” on November 15th. The constant theme of throughout the entire month is “For the love of God, don’t lose your novel!!!”

It was this theme that I was thinking of this morning when I opened up my zombie novel to plunk out a few words, and found myself confronted with a window that claimed my file needed to be “recovered”. I’d never seen that window before…I’ve been using Open Office for a little while now and had never had an issue with it before. The window was nothing like anything I’d seen in any other program when files crash or become corrupted. It simply showed my file’s name, stated that recovery had not yet begun, and gave me the options of attempting recovery, or closing the program. I just about had a heart attack. After a quick mental calculation I estimated that my last real backup was approximately 14,000 words ago. 14,000 words that I’m confident I would not be able to recreate with any semblance of similarity. For those of you who are trying to picture 14,000 words right now, only know that it took me about three months to write.

It was with a violently thrumming heart that I hit the “attempt recovery” button. My daughter could probably feel the anxiousness from all the way over on the couch where she was watching Sesame Street. Thankfully, a few moments later the window announced that my file was “Recovered!” and I breathed a sigh of relief. If any other outcome had occurred, this post would be nothing but page-long list of every profanity and expletive I could think of.

So what I’m trying to say, what I’m getting at here, is to back up your work. Whether it be writing, art of some kind, power point presentations, or whatever-the-hell, just make sure you keep it backed up!

Today’s Public Service Announcement was brought to you by Tracey’s mini-heart-attack/aneurism.