Wing Tip #4: Hook Your Reader

Update:  Les Edgerton commented on this!  Thank you Mr. Edgerton.

Want to grab your reader and keep them spellbound?  Here's what Les Edgerton says in Hooked:

...the single biggest reason manuscripts get rejected is because the writer begins in the wrong place.  What's ironic is that manuscripts don't get rejected because the majority of the story is good and only the beginning is flawed--they get rejected because the agent or editor never gets to the good part to begin with.  A story that begins in the wrong place won't be read much past that point.  If the good stuff occurs later on, in all likelihood it will never be reached by the agent or editor.  

Mr. Edgerton knows this because he's been an editor.

What most good hooks have in common is that they have strong inciting incidents that plunge the protagonist immediately into trouble--the trouble that's going to occupy the rest of the story.

The surest way to involve the reader is to begin with an opening scene that changes the protagonist's world profoundly and creates a story-worthy problem.

He goes on to warn against Five Red Flag openings:

Red Flag 1: Opening with a dream
Never, ever, ever begin a narrative with action and then reveal the character's merely dreaming it all.  Not unless you'd like your manuscript hurled across the room, accompanied by a series of curses.


Red Flag 2: Opening with an alarm clock buzzing
Don't open with your protagonist waking up to an alarm clock ringing, or to someone shaking her awake, or to a cute little birdie chirping from her bedroom window, or to a blazing sun shining through the window.


Red Flag 3:  Being unintentionally funny
Don't write sentences like: "Was she going to come in or stay out on the porch, he thought to himself."  It's been fairly well verified down through the annals of history that when a human being thinks, he almost always does so to himself.


Red Flag 4:  Too little dialogue
One of the primary red flags for many editors and agents is the absence of dialogue on the first few pages of a manuscript.  All editors--no matter what the material, screenplay or novel or short story--look for lots and lots of nice white space.


Red Flag 5:  Opening with dialogue
This kind of opening was popular at the turn of the last century; it looks musty now.  The problem with beginning a story with dialogue is that the reader knows absolutely nothing about the first character to appear in a story.


I love openings with the promise of great adventure and an underdog.  What hooks you?