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Casting the Bait: What lure should I use and how should I use it?

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Introducing Shyamalan as a case history is interesting. I was actually listening to an old Writing Excuses podcast a day or two ago in which he was brought up exactly in this context, not delivering on promises. I think there may have been another element in that podcast. Shyamalan had this big mystery buildup and forced so much weight on what would happen in the third act, but the third act just kinda petered out and, on some level, was predictable. (I.e., the mystery wasn't some explosive reveal but just kinda one of those curling party horns, whatever they're called.)

The other thing Shyamalan suffers from is viewer expectation. I don't know if The Sixth Sense was his first film, but it is the first one I can remember of his, and I think many people fall into that category. Every time he puts out a film, people not only expect a twist, they expect him to top, or at least match, Sixth Sense. I think this happens to authors as well, when they hit it out of the park with their first effort. You set your own bar in that way, and readers are going to be disappointed if you aren't perceived as meeting it in later works. Sometimes, the perception of failure to meet it can be due to something as simple as a change in style or approach to storytelling--doing something differently from what your readers loved initially. When you connect strongly with readers, they want to feel that again in your next book, and the next one after that.

I think people want to feel the way they did in the Sixth Sense every time they watch a Shyamalan movie. Some of his later efforts seems to suffer from his trying to force the work to achieve that effect.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
KM Weiland, a self publishing guru has a book out called "The Structuring Your Novel Workbook"... and I just happen to have the link to the PDF ;)

(link removed)

If you scroll through you will see her first chapter is entirely on what she calls "The Hook". She suggests that introducing this early question must be done in the first 1% of the novel by presenting the question almost in the first sentence, a bit like a "thesis statement".

Have a read and let me know your thoughts....

And here is the link to the book accompaniment, where she goes deeper into depth...

(link removed)
 
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Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
@Heliotrope

I think those are good discussion points, and worth pursuing (I tend to agree with the approach). However, please don't link to infringing files of copyrighted work. Weiland is selling both of those books on Amazon, and, I suspect, elsewhere, and I doubt the linked copies are authorized.

If you want to post a short excerpt for purposes of discussion, I think that's fine, but not the entire book. It is against forum rules, and we want to maintain a respect for the copyright of authors, since we're a community of authors.

If you believe those linked copies were authorized by the author, let me know and provide me with whatever information you have. I'll do some further investigation and can always restore them. From what I've looked at thus far, they don't appear to be authorized.

Thanks for your consideration--it is well appreciated!
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Juggling plates is a great analogy, but I also thought to add something to it. For those that don't know, the plates are story questions, and as a writer we're throwing them in the air, the audience is waiting for them to come down. The more there are, the more tension, so the theory goes. But this basic misses two things. First, the plates need to crash and shatter, not bounce like plastic... meaning they must matter to the reader and have dramatic potential. Breaking vs bouncing. Two, the plates must not defy gravity. They must come down. This is the writer making good on a simple promise: I will answer the questions I have you asking (or at least most of them). By continually raising and answering the small questions the writer builds trust that they will deliver the big answers later.

I will use my WIP that's near finished in edit to show a weird plate that not everybody will even pay attention to. This is the sort of stuff I love as a reader and writer, kind of like Hodor.

Chapter 1, first scene opens with priests and monks gambling with dice in a cave. Most readers will just go with the flow, but folks like me think, what's the point of this scene? It's the first scene, a POV intro, and I create a feel for this character being a bit like Two-Face. He isn't just a gambler, he sometimes rolls dice to let fate decide which path he takes. So, if I were reading I'd think that question was answered, but in reality it's all about one roll of the dice where he almost wins the entire pot, but loses. Page 6, and the payoff is like on page 513. It's a plate that will crash that readers probably won't know is even in the air, and that sends more plates in the air continuuing into book 2. Some people might even miss it. It's this sort of thing that makes writing fun and thinking of things in terms of plates in the air gives a little imagery zing in plotting them for me. And when it makes the editor say, whoah, or nice, or holy heck, it's even better, heh heh.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Ah shoot! They used to be authorized and posted for free from her website, which is why I have the links, but they may have been removed? Anyway, thanks for the heads up Steerpike! I'll post excerpts instead :)
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Ah shoot! They used to be authorized and posted for free from her website, which is why I have the links, but they may have been removed? Anyway, thanks for the heads up Steerpike! I'll post excerpts instead :)

Thanks for letting me know, Heliotrope. I went to her website to see if they were still there, thinking I'd just change the link to those versions if so. Looks like she's selling them even there, so she must have decided not to release them for free anymore. Thanks for your understanding :)
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
There're lots of explanations for M. Night and none fot hem are good, heh heh. He got carte blanch on his next several movies, unheard of, and he believed his own press, I suspect. Expectations were a problem, naturally, but so were the stories. And, well, those are hard stories to pull off.

The other thing Shyamalan suffers from is viewer expectation. I don't know if The Sixth Sense was his first film, but it is the first one I can remember of his, and I think many people fall into that category. Every time he puts out a film, people not only expect a twist, they expect him to top, or at least match, Sixth Sense. I think this happens to authors as well, when they hit it out of the park with their first effort. You set your own bar in that way, and readers are going to be disappointed if you aren't perceived as meeting it in later works. Sometimes, the perception of failure to meet it can be due to something as simple as a change in style or approach to storytelling--doing something differently from what your readers loved initially. When you connect strongly with readers, they want to feel that again in your next book, and the next one after that.

I think people want to feel the way they did in the Sixth Sense every time they watch a Shyamalan movie. Some of his later efforts seems to suffer from his trying to force the work to achieve that effect.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
It is an it isn't, the story hook being discussed isn't really just one thing. But I guarantee that for me as a reader, I'm not hooked by pretty words, or a single event, I'm hooked by a series of events... questions that get answered and raise more questions that I'm interested in. What the hook is is a matter of perspective and naming convention.

I am not convinced that the story hook must be the entire first act. When you mentioned this earlier, I liked the idea because I thought it could be the first act or require that much time to be presented. But if a short story's hook could be two pages, why not a novel's? Then again, a short story's first two pages might be the first act of a short story, hah.

My current thinking is that the hook requires certain elements, and we only need as much time as necessary for establishing and presenting those elements. Different genres and different story archetypes may have different requirements.

I'm also not sure that thinking in terms of multiple hooks will be helpful, although it might be for some story types (not sure; just throwing the question out there.) I think we enter into a fuzzy realm when we consider simple presentation of the base elements of a hook vs the type of presentation that will make a reader care about those things. Character, conflict, stakes could be presented very quickly but in a way that doesn't make readers care very much about those things; so, how much time will we need to write those things in a manner that will engage? Adding to the fuzziness will be the use of recognizable tropes. Tropes by their nature are not only recognizable without much ado but also may quickly hit the right buttons to inspire interest/engagement for a reader.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Ok, so excerpt from The Structuring Your Novel Workbook...

She agrees that the "hook" needs to be a very specific question:

You’ve created a hook only when you’ve convinced readers to ask the general question, “What’s going to happen?”because you’ve first convinced them to ask a very specific question.

Some of the examples she gives are:

• What scary reptilian monster killed the worker?
(Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

• How does a city hunt?
(Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve)

• Who is the one child who will never grow up?
(Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie)

She then goes on to give examples of ways these questions have been raised in first lines explicitly:

• “Where now? Who now? When now?”
(The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett)

• “Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go
into the night?”
(Matched by Ally Condie)

• “This is really Earth?”
(Angels at the Table by Debbie Macomber)

And also implicitly:

“I am an invisible man.”
(Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison)
Implicit Question: How is that possible—and why?

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could
see them hitting.”

(The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner)
Implicit Question: Who is hitting what—and why?

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost
deserved it.”

(The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis)
Implicit Question: How could anyone possibly deserve that name?


Notice how all the examples sort of set up the entire story question right from the very first line, almost like a "thesis sentence" in an essay? Obviously the story about the Invisible Man is going to be dealing about his invisible-ness. Obviously the story about Eustace Scrubb is going to be about how the boy changes from deserving his name to perhaps learning a lesson.

Thoughts on this approach?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Prime examples of what people call "great" opening lines that I consider "meh". Faulkner and Lewis are the two I like best. But, have to take up more chat on that later, heh heh. Running!

Ok, so excerpt from The Structuring Your Novel Workbook...

She agrees that the "hook" needs to be a very specific question:

You’ve created a hook only when you’ve convinced readers to ask the general question, “What’s going to happen?”because you’ve first convinced them to ask a very specific question.

Some of the examples she gives are:

• What scary reptilian monster killed the worker?
(Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

• How does a city hunt?
(Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve)

• Who is the one child who will never grow up?
(Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie)

She then goes on to give examples of ways these questions have been raised in first lines explicitly:

• “Where now? Who now? When now?”
(The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett)

• “Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go
into the night?”
(Matched by Ally Condie)

• “This is really Earth?”
(Angels at the Table by Debbie Macomber)

And also implicitly:

“I am an invisible man.”
(Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison)
Implicit Question: How is that possible—and why?

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could
see them hitting.”

(The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner)
Implicit Question: Who is hitting what—and why?

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost
deserved it.”

(The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis)
Implicit Question: How could anyone possibly deserve that name?


Notice how all the examples sort of set up the entire story question right from the very first line, almost like a "thesis sentence" in an essay? Obviously the story about the Invisible Man is going to be dealing about his invisible-ness. Obviously the story about Eustace Scrubb is going to be about how the boy changes from deserving his name to perhaps learning a lesson.

Thoughts on this approach?
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I'm still a bit shaky on the concept/definition of lures here (I'm also unfamiliar with mini tension). Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lure is a little bit like a hook in that it keeps a reader reading, but it's not a hook in its own right?

Perhaps it's something that adds depth or weight to the promise?
Little tidbits of information. Hints about the eventual resolution, or threats about further complications.

Mini tension then, is that tension caused by interesting situations that don't have any direct impact on the hook/promise?
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I'm still working out hooks and lures too :)

But microtension, as I understand it, is as simple as how you shape your sentences.

So, when describing a room I might say:

The rug was worn in a direct path to the dresser, where he obviously kept the only items he needed; a warm pair of coveralls and a pair of threadbare socks. Being a farmer there was not much use for finery, and so the rug beneath the wardrobe, where I know he stored his black silk suit, all wrapped in tissue and smelling of mothballs, appeared almost brand new. Today, however, I knew he had entered the wardrobe because the tell tail sign of toes and a heel lay imprinted on the vacuumed fibres.

Meh. Bland. We don't get to anything interesting until the end.

Microtension is a way of rearranging sentences so that you start with tension right away and keep it flowing through the paragraph.

There was something off about the carpet in his bedroom. Usually worn in a direct path to the dresser containing his work clothes, today a smattering of foot prints dotted the spaces off the beaten path, usually untouched except, unnecessarily, by the vacuum cleaner. His large foot prints stopped directly beneath his wardrobe, which I knew only meant one thing. There was only one thing in that wardrobe he could have needed. Something that had been buried for a long time. I peaked inside the dusty space and saw it was true. The ancient black silk suit was gone. Only the tissue remained, the brown string torn and fraying. In that moment I knew that my mother must really be dead.

So you set up the question in the reader's mind right away:

"There was something different about the carpet in the bedroom."

Almost like a tiny paragraph hook.
 
I feel that I'm hooked if I'm already invested in a character and that character's general context/milieu. In the latter, something of the conflict and stakes will be located or suggested.

The first chapter of the first Harry Potter book is a decent example. It's basically a prologue. First we have Harry's uncle, and we learn of the uncle's attitude toward the wizarding world. Then we have Dumbledore and McGonagall who are being forced (even if D is making the decision) to leave the babe with "muggles like that." (Paraphrase.) So this is basically establishing the conflict, these two worlds at odds and the boy straddling them. I don't think I can say the hook is fully established, because we don't know much about Harry as a person at this point, he's just a babe being placed on a doorstep who already is becoming known as The Boy Who Lived. That phrase is also setting up the central question and hints at a larger conflict. So maybe we need the next chapter to understand better the situation he's facing (stuck with those muggles) and his own character. Or do we need more chapters to become fully acquainted with the implications of "The Boy Who Lived"?

This is where the fuzziness happens for me. With the first chapter, a lot of what I'd need to become hooked is already presented, although more is going to be fleshed out in the next however many chapters. I don't think a hook needs to be explicit; it, itself, doesn't contain the answers to the questions it raises, heh.

But there are many other question-answers throughout a book. For the longest time, Harry thought Snape was behind the shenanigans happening in the novel. Who's behind it? Turns out it was Quirrell/Voldemort. But I don't think these are the story hooks. Cliffhangers aren't story hooks. Microtensions aren't story hooks. Lots of Q & A movements aren't story hooks. These are things that happen throughout a novel to build tension, force curiosity, etc.; but they are not the story hooks. Or maybe they are types of tiny hooks, the normal sorts of things that happen as a plot unfolds and characters run about trying to figure out what's happening and what they should do.

Will Luke successfully hit the tiny target on the Death Star? Stay tuned.


It is an it isn't, the story hook being discussed isn't really just one thing. But I guarantee that for me as a reader, I'm not hooked by pretty words, or a single event, I'm hooked by a series of events... questions that get answered and raise more questions that I'm interested in. What the hook is is a matter of perspective and naming convention.
 
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Creed

Sage
Not here for super meaningful input, but on the subject of bait/hook/lures, here's a fantastic first paragraph from Lydia Davis' short story "The Center of the Story".


“A woman has written yet another story that is not interesting, though it has a hurricane in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting. But in this story the hurricane threatens the city without actually striking it. The story is flat and even, just as the earth seems flat and even when a hurricane is advancing over it, and if she were to show it to a friend, the friend would probably say that unlike a hurricane, this story has no center.”


Pretty good hook, no? And meta. :p
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
For this conversation, it appears that lures are kind of the traditional hook, like the sentences above: They raise questions which hopefully the reader finds interesting.

Microtensions are as the name applies, but here they could be called microlures, heh heh. These are little questions often answered in the same paragraph or at least soon after being raised.

I will define hook as this: the point at which the reader has committed to reading the book, what we could call, hooked! How original is that?

To me there are a series of lures (micro and macro) that keep me nibbling as a reader-fish, then at some point, I'm hooked. BUT hooked is not the end of the game, you still need to get me into boat or net... the end of the book.

So, since there isn't a single hook moment (IMO) I will contend that the hook is hopefully set by the inciting incident, but it could be set as late as the hero accepting their quest to answer the great question of the novel... wherever the MC makes the ultimate decision that changes the course of their life/story, or for simplicity, Act 1. The compilation of ACT 1 must have me hooked, or I'm only reading it for study purposes. Hopefully it's set before then, but! so long as the lures keep me moving, you've got a shot.

No idea if this babble makes any sense, LOL.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
There's a hook in Potter? I suppose I saw lures, but they were squishy worms not even alive anymore. No pizza... mm, pizza.

Sorry, couldn't resist taking a shot at Harry.

I feel that I'm hooked if I'm already invested in a character and that character's general context/milieu. In the latter, something of the conflict and stakes will be located or suggested.

The first chapter of the first Harry Potter book is a decent example. It's basically a prologue. First we have Harry's uncle, and we learn of the uncle's attitude toward the wizarding world. Then we have Dumbledore and McGonagall who are being forced (even if D is making the decision) to leave the babe with "muggles like that." (Paraphrase.) So this is basically establishing the conflict, these two worlds at odds and the boy straddling them. I don't think I can say the hook is fully established, because we don't know much about Harry as a person at this point, he's just a babe being placed on a doorstep who already is becoming known as The Boy Who Lived. That phrase is also setting up the central question and hints at a larger conflict. So maybe we need the next chapter to understand better the situation he's facing (stuck with those muggles) and his own character. Or do we need more chapters to become fully acquainted with the implications of "The Boy Who Lived"?

This is where the fuzziness happens for me. With the first chapter, a lot of what I'd need to become hooked is already presented, although more is going to be fleshed out in the next however many chapters. I don't think a hook needs to be explicit; it, itself, doesn't contain the answers to the questions it raises, heh.

But there are many other question-answers throughout a book. For the longest time, Harry thought Snape was behind the shenanigans happening in the novel. Who's behind it? Turns out it was Quirrell/Voldemort. But I don't think these are the story hooks. Cliffhangers aren't story hooks. Microtensions aren't story hooks. Lots of Q & A movements aren't story hooks. These are things that happen throughout a novel to build tension, force curiosity, etc.; but they are not the story hooks. Or maybe they are types of tiny hooks, the normal sorts of things that happen as a plot unfolds and characters run about trying to figure out what's happening and what they should do.

Will Luke successfully hit the tiny target on the Death Star? Stay tuned.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I will define hook as this: the point at which the reader has committed to reading the book, what we could call, hooked! How original is that?

Or maybe the point at which the reader has committed to giving the book a chance? There isn't really a point at which I'm committed to reading a book in its entirety. If I'm 3/4 of a way into a book and it starts to suck (or just stops holding my interest), I'm going to move on. The book "hooks" me when I decide "OK, I'm going to buy this and give it a shot." If there's not something to do that in the first handful of pages, I'm not going to buy the book unless it is an author I know I already like a lot (in which case I'll just buy it without really even looking).
 
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Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Ok, so it appears we need multiple hooks, of multiple sizes, with multiple lures and a heavy dose of microtension to keep things going until the very end.

So lets get practical here...

What does that look like?

Donald Maas suggests "tension on every page". And by that he means "reader tension". Make sure there is a hook on every page. He even suggests, when the manuscript is "done" to print it out, throw it in the air, collect all the pages out of order, and then read through it. Check to make sure there is tension on every page. If there isn't, find a way to add it in.

So what does that mean? How do we put a hook on every page (if that is your goal?)

Let's get into practical application.
 
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