Nothing explodes in chapter one.

If you wait till chapter three for anything remotely interesting to happen, you'll have lost most people.

But interesting doesn't have to mean a fight, explosion or volcano erupting. Many books start with quieter sorts of interesting.

The hook is not a detonation. It dosen't really need to be more than a reason for the reader to be interested about the story and characters. I personally think it should happen by the end of the first paragraph. I've seen them as soon as the first sentance. Often, I "find" the hook during re-writing. Usually, for me, it means trunkating the first chapter up to the hook, and then back filling. My first chapter is usually twice as long as the others because I know I will need to hack it up for the hook. The hook leaves the reader expecting more, and it is what the entire book is all about -- what happens? That should be your hook.

Now, if you remember a well known story like Stephan King's The Body ("Stand By Me") if you have read it, the hook is the boys being told that there is a body of a kid out at a railroad siding. Apt Pupil's hook is the statement that the old man used to be a NAZI. They are not explosions, but a statement or action that get the main story rolling. The Hook is the "Thesis Statement" if you want to go back to HS writing class terminology (Stories in fact have the same format as a term paper in a broad sense). It tells the reader WHY the reader wants to read on, and defines the "Contract" that the writer has with the reader.

Obviously books with explosions in them promise that sort of fun to readers.

That is why it needs to go up front, because if and when you ever publish it is the first thing anyone sees-- It is what keeps your reader from thowing the book in the trash, and really, to push it to chapter 3 is way too much.

Use Her Name said:

The hook is not a detonation. It dosen't really need to be more than a reason for the reader to be interested about the story and characters.

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I always figure it as something that makes the reader say "I have to find out what happens next" and it should happen throughout the first chapter (and to a lesser extent, throughout the whole book).

A reader will keep reading if the first pages contain something interesting enough to prompt a story or chapter question in the reader's mind, such as - Will the protagonist manage to achieve this, or succeed, or escape, or find X, or get out of this situation, or discover a solution or whatever?

Seeking the answer to the main story question, and subsequent chapter goal questions like these, will keep the reader turning pages, even though the specific questions are triggered but not specifically spelled out.

The hook is something that draws the reader into the story and gets them past the first line. It's not necessarily a "flaming zombie" (Miss Snark) or a body on the first page. In mine, I thought about two things that were immediately unusual: the person's occupation and the location he was at, because they prompted a question that led to the next paragraph. That, in turn, prompts more questions.

All of this was influenced by a contest by agent Nathan Bransford and this post he wrote on the results. When I was working on a previous project, I had the characters get attacked in the first chapter. The problem was that I hadn't hooked the readers by them being attacked; most of them were going, "Wait a minute! I don't know what's going on." A big action scene, explosion, or body on the first page doesn't help if the reader isn't hooked into the story first.

Call me old fashioned, but I think you have let the fish take the bait and not try to cast directly into it's mouth. I know that I'm swimming against the tide, but I'm troubled by instant hooks. I cringe when I see threads asking to hook the reader in 20 words or the first sentence. I shudder in disappointment that people say readers don't go beyond a paragraph, let alone a page anymore.

Parroting this Insta-Hook™ idea that all books must captivate the reader in less than 30 seconds contributes to ruining the craft of storytelling. Do we see people stand up and walk out of a theater, or turn off a video, after the first 30 seconds if they aren't deep into instant rapture? Movies present the plot challenge at just under a third of the way through, but readers need to be hooked in the few seconds it takes to read a sentence or two? Readers are not as sophisticated as movie goers? I think this is a fallacy foisted on us by a lazy and risk-averse publishing industry business model.

How sad.

If readers needed explosions and flaming zombies, why is Jane Austen still in print?

Read the opening of Pride and Prejudice to see how she hooks the reader in with the immediate collision between circumstance (a new bachelor neighbor) and character (an intelligent but disillusioned father and a silly, self-absorbed mother with five unmarried girls weighing heavy in her hands).

All the opening really needs to do is make a promise of story to come, and story grows out of character and circumstance. Take an interesting person or persons. Put them in a potentially interesting situation. Could be very quiet -- in fact, starting out with too much noise is usually a mistake. If we don't know the body, we have no reason to care about that body's parts flying asunder.

This also holds for the properly constructed "deathspian" opening, in which a character appears for the sole purpose of falling victim to the peril/villain/monster of the piece. Preston and Child pull off this opening not once but three times in Relic. In the first part of the opening, an explorer faces a hideous creature in the jungle, but not before we've seen him in quiet action, carefully packing artifacts to dispatch homeward and planning to go after a fellow explorer who's disappeared. In the second part, a smuggler faces another hideous creature in a dark warehouse, but not before we get interested in his plans to make a final deal and then get out of Dodge. In the third part, two young boys wander away from Mom at the New York Museum of Natural History. They will end up dead in the basement, but not before we get to empathize with them (easy to do this with kids, writers). Note, too, that we see them go down into the basement, but we don't find out what happened to them until the next chapter -- the suspense is greater when the camera cut comes at the top of the stairs, not at the attack.

Fullback said:

Parroting this Insta-Hook™ idea that all books must captivate the reader in less than 30 seconds contributes to ruining the craft of storytelling. Do we see people stand up and walk out of a theater, or turn off a video, after the first 30 seconds if they aren't deep into instant rapture? Movies present the plot challenge at just under a third of the way through, but readers need to be hooked in the few seconds it takes to read a sentence or two? Readers are not as sophisticated as movie goers? I think this is a fallacy foisted on us by a lazy and risk-averse publishing industry business model.

How sad.

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You have a point, of course. It might be, but what I have heard in the case of writers who are unknown, or who do not have a fan base-- as in a well known author who can give the readers a leasurily beginning "sight unseen," most readers will first look at the covers, including the blurb, and next look at a few lines in the first paragraph. A writer only has a few moments to sell his or her book. New writers are the underdogs here, so I think they should be especially interested in what actually works. I struggle against it too, because I feel that they should be willing to give a new person a shot.

Succeeding as a new author is the only way a new author can become an old author, so you need to go by the actual behavior of book buyers. Movies are a completely different media. They are visual, and visual things communicate differently than written because you can't "see" written things until you have invested some time in them. This is also why cliches are common, because people have internalized "views" of certain people or things.

As far as risk, I really don't think any company would put up the money to produce a product they think they can't sell. You, as a writer, and your agent and other people on your side are gambling that they will make money from your book. To do this, they need to know what the audience is like, and what generally works for "most." It's pretty mych why you don't see too many three wheeled cars either. I mean, they work, but since they are not common, people might not trust them.

I have similar problems because to date, my characters have been so unique that there is no real market for them-- I am slowly trying to create more conventional plots and characters because I am serious about making a living as a writer. I would even store, or put away my odder books in the hopes that I can sell 2 or 3 then bring them out once I have more of a reputation.

Oh, and I doubt that it "ruins the art of story telling." Stories have always relyed upon a hook. From Grimms fairy tales, Greek Epics, all the way to modern genre fiction, stories have always had "hooks," si I can't see how following a tried and true formula that has been arond for thousands of years cold "ruin" storytelling. I'm not trying to be combative, just go into literature and pick any piece of fictional writing and you will find that the hook is right there in the beginning, usually right after "Once upon a time..."

Fullback said:

Call me old fashioned, but I think you have let the fish take the bait and not try to cast directly into it's mouth. I know that I'm swimming against the tide, but I'm troubled by instant hooks.

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I'm unsure what you think a hook should be. Or should I say, shouldn't be. A hook is just you, the writer, saying something the reader finds interesting. It's not a new invention.

Moby Dick (1851) starts with a classic hook: "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

Isn't that fantastic? Don't you want to read more? And why Ishmael? That's a hook.

The population of writers is large now, also. The world has twice as many people in it today than when I was born. It's the raw numbers, not percentages, that affect the supply of material. Unfortunately, too many writers are writing too many stories to be published by too few companies to be passed through a couple of distributors and a handful of retail companies to too few people who buy books now.

I don't mean to derail this thread off the topic, but I can appreciate the original posters comment about no explosions. I also am sorry that you have to write "conventional plots and characters." I'm in your corner, Use Her Name.

Hi Willowmound. I agree that we should always set up some way to draw the reader in quickly -- to let them sniff at the bait. My point is that I see some people who seem to think that the hook is some shocking and dramatic event that screams at the reader.

I see that too, and I think these people misunderstand the point.

In my first chapters, I usually just set up a tense or mysterious situation--usually characters engaged in an activity that is made clear to be very important else things could go very wrong. I can't think of a time when I used explosions to open a story, but then again, I don't use explosions much anywhere in my writing.

I used to dismiss the idea that the first sentence and/or paragraph of a novel had to "hook" the reader because I never consciously noticed a hook when I was just reading. Then I took my favorite books all down one day and looked at the first page of each. By god, they all had hooks.

Fullback said:

Parroting this Insta-Hook™ idea that all books must captivate the reader in less than 30 seconds contributes to ruining the craft of storytelling. Do we see people stand up and walk out of a theater, or turn off a video, after the first 30 seconds if they aren't deep into instant rapture? Movies present the plot challenge at just under a third of the way through, but readers need to be hooked in the few seconds it takes to read a sentence or two? Readers are not as sophisticated as movie goers? I think this is a fallacy foisted on us by a lazy and risk-averse publishing industry business model.

How sad.

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The comparison isn't entirely valid. By the time you're sat in a theater you've already made a commitment. For many readers that commitment is made in a bookstore by, among other things, reading the first few lines. That can be enough to put some people off, or enough to hook them. If it hooks, they make the commitment and buy, then they're prepared to read beyond the first line/paragraph/page to see whether it delivers.

Cheers,
Rob

Yes, some people do walk out of the theatre within the first five minutes if the movie doesn't immediately grab them. (I, for instance). Go to a bookstore and see how much time people give a book before they put it back. Long gone are the days that you could spend three chapters giving the history of someone before you got to the meat of the matter. And in truth, if you were to go look at all those books that you treasure that you think don't start with a hook, you will see that in fact, after the first few paragraphs they do have a hook. Just a subtle, well-written hook that makes you want to read more. Go ahead. Get any classic and identify the bit that makes you want to read more. It won't be the beautiful language, or the vivid picture it draws. It'll be some sentence, some fact, sometimes a throw-away line (very carefully constructed by the author and very consciously thrown away) that peaks your interest. Guess what, my friend, you've been hooked by bait thrown directly at you. In Pride and Prejudice it's the very first line.

I think, Fullback, that you suffer on some very grave misunderstandings. As everyone else has explained, the hook is not some huge horrible thing happening in the first paragraph. it can be, but most often it's something small that peaks our interest. The craft of storytelling is not ruined. It is, as it should be, ever evolving. By the time VIctor Hugo finished Les Miserables it was hopelessly out of date and everyone ridiculed him for it. It was not a success. And yet, if you read what his contemporaries wrote at that time, it was not bad. It was simply different. Different does not equite ruination.

And just to clarify. theplot challenge in a movie may be presented under a third of the way through (formulas much) but if a movie doesnt give you the hook within five minutes, it does lose the audience. Often the hook of the movie comes before the opening credits even. Often the audience has already swallowed the hook, line, and sinker before they even come into the theatre, it's called a trailer. Trailers are so important, that people will see movies even though the reviews are bad, based only on the trailers. Now that is a hook.

A book blurb does much of the same thing. That little blurb on the back? That is the hook. As is the cover. Before you even open a book, you've already been hooked. And that hook better pay dividends within the first few pages or the consumer moves on. Thats the nature of the beast. It does not ruin the craft of storytelling. There are some incredible books written and published every day that enhance storytelling, that take it to a new level. And guess what? They all have a hook.

JonSwift said:

Is it okay to not have something explode in the first chapter of a book? Or the first sentence? I want to hook the reader immediately but do readers have the patience for the so-called hook to come in chapter three?

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Well, damn. I don't have a single explosion in my entire 121k novel.

Is that a problem?

Grinning the grin of a sarcastic smartass,
Liz

A good thing to remember is that if your first sentence or paragraph has to be so sensational as to cause the reader to grip the book in a bind shredding fever and attempt to eat the words from the page, then, the second sentence, indeed the rest of the book, better be able to live up to that first taste. Do you really want your readers to bite into what looks like an apple cream pie only to find out it's stuffed with poo?
I like to start with a feeling. A laugh or an "Oh my god!" or a "What the f---?" It's like hooking a reader the way a stripper hooks an audience. Show a little with a promise of more to come.

Fullback said:

Call me old fashioned, but I think you have let the fish take the bait and not try to cast directly into it's mouth. I know that I'm swimming against the tide, but I'm troubled by instant hooks. I cringe when I see threads asking to hook the reader in 20 words or the first sentence. I shudder in disappointment that people say readers don't go beyond a paragraph, let alone a page anymore.

Parroting this Insta-Hook™ idea that all books must captivate the reader in less than 30 seconds contributes to ruining the craft of storytelling. Do we see people stand up and walk out of a theater, or turn off a video, after the first 30 seconds if they aren't deep into instant rapture? Movies present the plot challenge at just under a third of the way through, but readers need to be hooked in the few seconds it takes to read a sentence or two? Readers are not as sophisticated as movie goers? I think this is a fallacy foisted on us by a lazy and risk-averse publishing industry business model.

How sad.

Click to expand...

Well when I look at the first page of a book I don't necessarily want explosions. But it does ( or should) give me an indication of whether I'll like the book. Agents and editors can, it's said, tell whether they are going to like a book in the first few lines.

If the first page doesn't intrigue / interest me in some way, then why would I bother with the rest of the book? I read books for entertainment, not out of duty.

So, for the OP, it doesn't matter if you have no explosions. But have you intrigued the reader? Have you made them want to read more? That is the hook. The ability to make the reader not want to put the book down.

Read the first chapter of the Firm: just a kid at a job interview,but it hooked people and sold a gazillion copies.

Oh boyo. I think I'm the odd eLf out around these here parts ...

I never, ever, ever read the first page in a bookstore. I flip the book open to a random page and read a couple paragraphs from the middle to determine whether or not I'll like the style and where the story's going.

I guess I'm in agreement with Jerry -- I don't always trust the beginning to foretell the end.


I agree with the concept of a hook, sure, don't get me wrong. I just don't think that the 'hook' is the most important part of a book, that's all.


As for my own writing, I love throwing out hooks. I like teasing my readers. Drives my friends nuts when they read my short stories and chapter exerpts. (them; but ... but ... you just threw a guy out of one realm of existence and into another! Does he make it or what? -- Me; muahahaha ... I'll tell you later )



True story time. I had a teacher waaaaay back in the third grade who used to lecture everyone in the class about not giving up on any book. She wouldn't let anyone return a book to the library until they had read the first three chapters. She firmly believed that the first three chapters was the threshold of the story. If you weren't into the book by the end of chapter three, you were allowed to return the book and try a new story. Since I'm a book-devouring-word-obsessed eLfling who's finished every book she ever read (even The Wreck of the Penny ... a little piece of strangeness told from a boat's POV ... weirded me right out @_@) I rarely had to adhere to Ms K's three-chapter-rule.

But to answer JonSwift's original question, no hook until chapter three is fine so long as you have Ms K as a teacher, I guess. Otherwise ... I'd make sure something interesting happens a little earlier

This is not a new problem, I guess. G.K. Chesterton published this poem in 1932:

On the outside of a sensational novel is printed the statement: “The back of the cover will tell you the plot.”

Our fathers to creed and tradition were tied,
They opened a book to see what was inside,
And of various methods they deemed not the worst
Was to find the first chapter and look at it first.
And so from the first to the second they passed,
Till in servile routine they arrived at the last.
But a literate age, unbenighted by creed,
Can find on two boards all it wishes to read;
For the front of the cover shows somebody shot
And the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

Between, that the book may be handily padded,
Some pages of mere printed matter are added,
Expanding the theme, which in case of great need
The curious reader might very well read
With the zest that is lent to a game worth the winning
By knowing the end when you start the beginning;
While our barbarous sires, who would read every word
With a morbid desire to find out what occurred
Went drearily drudging through Dickens and Scott.
But the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

The wild village folk in earth’s earliest prime,
Could often sit still for an hour at a time
And hear a blind beggar, nor did the tale pall
Because Hector must fight before Hector could fall:
Nor was Scheherazade required, at the worst,
To tell her tales backwards and finish them first;
And the minstrels who sang about battles and banners
Found the rude camp-fire crowd had some notion of manners.
Till Forster (who pelted the people like crooks,
The Irish with buckshot, the English with books),
Established the great educational scheme
Of compulsory schooling, that glorious theme.
Some learnt how to read, and the others forgot,
And the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

O Genius of Business! O marvellous brain,
Come in place of the priests and the warriors to reign!
O Will to Get On that makes everything go--
O Hustle! O Pep! O Publicity! O!
Shall I spend three-and-sixpence to purchase the book,
Which we all can pick up on the bookstall and look?
Well, it may appear strange, but I think I shall not,
For the back of the cover will tell you the plot.

[“Forster” (line 29): William E. Forster (1818-1886), English M.P.,
educational reformer, and Chief Secretary for Ireland]

For me, the hook is in the back blurb. The first page is just a test of the writer's style. For example, Kushiel's Dart. I picked it up in a book shop, was intrigued, read the first four pages, thought it was good and put the book back down. Because her writing style was dense and convoluted. I knew what she was going to say four paragraphs before she finally twisted her way around to saying it.

I have become suspicious of "wham, bam," openings. Too many of those books have turned out to lack substance. Book readers are typically not lacking in powers of concentration. Generally we're good for a solid couple of chapters to allow the story to build. What does put me off, is a particular writer's style, but there's nothing you can do about that, and also confusion (usually too many names or too much going on) at the beginning of the story.

I predict the demise of the "exciting" opening. Remember you saw it here first.

I predict the demise of the "exciting" opening.

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Actually most of the books I read don't have exactly an 'exciting' opening.

Terry Pratchett often starts with a page describing Discworld, of the turtle, the elephants, the way the light moves, then very gradually spirals in until you spot the protagonist. Exciting? Not really. Intriguing? Absolutely.