Modern Story Format

The first line of The Transition by Ian Banks:

Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you’re told you deserve whatever you get.

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Shadow_Ferret said:

You have to have something in that first page to get the reader to continue reading. Not necessarily a "hook" per se, but something. A unique character, an interesting setting, a writing style that draws them in... something.

Why? Because there is so much competition for the consumer's attention and dollar and much of it is of a passive nature where there is little effort required by the consumer to enjoy it. Reading is work. It requires your imagination to be in gear to "see" everything in the story. Television, movies, you can just veg out and let the story unfold before you. And games are something between the two, you need to be actively engaged to understand and solve the puzzles, but the consumer only minimally uses his imagination because games, too, are a visual medium and the characters are shown to you, the setting is shown to you.

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This is all true, but I think many people over-estimate how hard you have to grab your reader.

A YA book sitting on my mantle begins with the MC ogling her coworker at the convenience store. There's nothing particularly incredible about the writing or the scene, and yet this book gets rave reviews from many people.

A second YA book opens with one of those cutesy lists show-casing the MC's voice (though it's nothing special) and a couple sentences about her friends. This book is less popular, but obviously still sold to a publisher and does about average in bookstores.

Many contemp YA or adult literary novels have rather slow openings.

Speculative fiction and action-adventure novels, by their very premises often tend to have more excitement on the first page, and high concept novels of any genre can often open with an in-your-face-exciting hook in the first sentence.


Different genres have different requirements for openings, although those can be subverted or ignored in a not insignificant number of cases.


I think there is more than one way to catch readers, and while first page and even first sentence hooks are common methods, you can use other techniques if you so choose. I mentioned back-cover blurbs earlier. Those can give you a certain amount of latitude with your target audience as far as when the excitement hits. The same goes for titles, or well-crafted reviews. Also blurbs by other authors, although the efficacy of those is less concretely established.

I have read a significant number of drafts and published novels where I thought to the author, "woah, friend, you need to slow down."

I've never liked the "start with a bang," even in fantasy or science fiction. You end up having to backtrack so much.

nocomposer said:

So neither of you believe there is any such...trend of late?

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I believe attention spans are getting shorter and you may need less pages about the garden, shaving, etc. before something more interesting comes along, but don't believe it is a phenomenon of reading, so much as less reading, more games, tv, etc.

nocomposer said:

This advice, coupled with a growing number of aspiring authors (and artists in general) who "want to make it", I think, is changing the way we tell stories which, in turn, is changing the way we think stories should be told.

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Not as I see it. All the great stories from yesteryear seem to have a hook as well. Chaucer to Milton to Keats to Dickens to Longfellow. Even further, to Plato, Pliny and Confucius. Even the Bible, Torah, Koran and every other religious tome. Sun Tzu's title is even a hook, The Art of War.

Newer we have Hemmingway, Hammett, Spilane, Chandler, Fitzgerald and Macdonald. Steele, Evanovich, Grisham, Brown and Roberts. Even Twilight had a hook, though subtle.

So, I guess, I don't agree with the premise. Can't provide any insight for you, sorry.

Jeff

Jamesaritchie said:

Define "hook". I think the entire "hook" advice is not only overrated, but doesn't happen nearly as often in books and movies as it does in advice forums.

But I've read as many classic novels as anyone, and the only real change I see with most of them is the language used, not with hook/no hook.

The only reason so many stories now start with a "hook" is because so many new writers believe everything they read in advice forums. The published novel I read by most of the good writers seldom start with anything like what's called a "hook" on most advice forums.

And the first sentence has to do is make the reader want to read the second. This has been true since man started writing. Langauge changes, but I really see very little difference in openings between modern novels, and nineteenth century novels, other than how language is used.

Different genres call for different things, of course, but when writers have a poor opening, it isn't because there's no hook, it;s because there's nothing there to hold reader interest, or if there is, it's poorly written.

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I think I really have to agree with James on this. I see this "gotta have a hook" much more in forums than I do in actual practice. Maybe I prefer a different sort of reading material, but I can't honestly say that any of the books that I've read so far this year had anything resembling what a lot of people would consider an opening hook.

Every time I hear the phrase used, I think about movie trailers - the ones that have all of the great special effects. I really want to see that movie! Then I go, and find out pretty quickly that the only good thing about the movie was what was in the trailer (or the hook). A fantastic hook surrounded by 100 additional minutes of useless filler. But, hey, they got me to pay my money, and let's face it, not many people will demand a refund. I certainly hope that isn't the direction that publishing is headed. (My inner cynic is showing again.)

There is no need for the very first sentence to jerk the reader into the story as if grabbed by a hook. Just that it pulls the reader in, perhaps ever so gently. Then the second must also continue this pulling process, and the third, etc. All the way to the very last.

Not that there is anything wrong with starting with a strong pull. It’s just not necessary. And the strongest pull will do no good if the remaining sentences of the story bore the reader.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

T
Speculative fiction and action-adventure novels, by their very premises often tend to have more excitement on the first page, and high concept novels of any genre can often open with an in-your-face-exciting hook in the first sentence.
.

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Though not all opens with a combat scene, and indeed, a contextless combat scene where you have no idea of where and why this is happening can be offputting too.

There are also a surprising number of successful and well-regarded fantasy novels, including some that were written recently, that open pretty slowly. There are even some I thought were dull as dirt and couldn't get into at all, but that are popular overall.

Roxxsmom said:

Though not all opens with a combat scene, and indeed, a contextless combat scene where you have no idea of where and why this is happening can be offputting too.

There are also a surprising number of successful and well-regarded fantasy novels, including some that were written recently, that open pretty slowly. There are even some I thought were dull as dirt and couldn't get into at all, but that are popular overall.

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I don't disagree with that, nor was I saying contextless combat scenes were the major hook which those genres could use that other couldn't.

But, for example, N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon uses the technique of opening with a scene involving the high concept behind the book, and many books even manage to squeeze theirs into the opening sentence.

The opening sentence--or paragraph--has to:
a) make you want to read on, to get more context
b) convince you the author knows what he's/she's doing
Every successful opening of a book is "a hook" in this sense, but not all of them are "I looked at the grenade rolling over and morphed into my alpha badger form."
Some can be

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.

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Others can be:

I looked past Wally Gibbons at the woman who had just come into the Cavalier Restaurant and felt the same as every other man in the place.

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And if enough people find the opening intriguing and the structure and rhythm--confidence inspiring--then it's a "hook", without the need for levitating ninja cyborgs to appear in sentence one.
Not that I mind levitating ninja cyborgs--far from it--just saying they don't have to be in every opening sentence.

A memorable first line is definitely cool. I remember when I was a kid and read Little Women for the first time. My mother saw me with it and piped up, "'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' said Jo, lying on the rug."* She had read the book years before and that first line resonated with her so strongly that she still remembered it.

Yet, not every book has one. I'd be interested to see examples of wonderful stories that don't start with a hook.

I'll go first. Watership Down, possibly my all-time favorite novel, doesn't have a hook. The first line is

"The primroses were over."

The entire first paragraph describes a bunch of rabbits grazing peacefully.

Now by the end of the first chapter, a lot has happened, but if Adams had posted that first paragraph here, it would have been ripped to shreds.

I can see it now:
...All you've described is some plants and grazing rabbits. There's no conflict.
..."The warren was at peace?" That doesn't make me want to read on.
...this reads like a botany manual. You don't need to list so many types of plants, one or two would be plenty.

(For what it's worth, the last line in the book ends, "...as the primroses were just beginning to bloom," bringing the story full circle, but people who put the book down at the first paragraph would never learn that).

Yet, that first paragraph is crucial. It gives the readers a glimpse of just how much the rabbits are sacrificing when they decide to head off cross-country. They're not trapped in some post-apocalyptic wasteland where any change is bound to be an improvement. They're not going on some quest for an amazing treasure. They're leaving behind their families and a safe comfortable home because some scrawny nobody claims to have had a vision of "something bad coming." They're curious and feeling a bit adventurous, and that's about it.

What other awesome books don't have hooks?

*Note: All quotes here are from memory and may not be exact.

I'm reading a book that does a terrible job with a hook.

It starts out with a fight/chase scene that actually occurs about 1/3rd into the book. There are a lot of parts of it you don't understand because they're explained later, and when you actually get to the part of the book where this chapter should have been, it feels like there's a hole, because you're supposed to remember what happened 130 pages ago precisely.

What's worse, the next two chapters, from different POVs, aren't exactly slow, either. Either of them would have been a good place to start the book, but no, the book had to go for the exciting scene torn out of the middle. And with all these reference we could not possibly understand, it really does feel like the scene was torn out of the middle -- I'm wondering if it was the editor's choice to do that rather than the author's.

On nonexistent hooks...

Turgenev's On the Eve

On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two young men were lying on the grass.

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These guys are students--one is in philosophy, the other in art. They discuss things slowly. Very slowly. It's like The Wind in the Willows without cute animals. Or any movement whatsoever. Then, at length, they start philosophizing:

'Have you noticed,' began Bersenyev, eking out his words with gesticulations, 'what a strange feeling nature produces in us? Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy.
What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else--I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?'


'H'm,' replied Shubin, 'I'll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. She will utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a harp string, but don't expect a song from her.
A living heart, now--that will give you your answer--especially a woman's heart. So, my dear fellow, I advise you to get yourself some one to share your heart, and all your distressing sensations will vanish at once.
"That's what we need," as you say. This agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of a kind

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Only then, when they go back from the river to the local settlement--do other characters begin to appear and the seeds of conflict are sown. Me, I love this.

And also Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov, which starts like this:

ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place

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So you want me to tell you something interesting about Karamazov? What's the rush? Sit down and listen to me retelling a banal family saga for three chapters, and then, maybe then, I'll start showing something interesting...

Well, on second thought, Dostoyevski's is a pretty trashy thriller beginning, for the time.

Ah, the 19th century

My take (and much of this has been said, but not all together in one convenient ready-to-cook package):

1) If you do not have a publishing track record to speak of, you need to get a reader interested fast. Readers are willing to cut more slack if they've enjoyed someone's work in the past, because they trust the author to some extent. New authors have yet to earn that trust.

2) First sentences can be big--but has anyone here ever put a book down after one sentence? (I exclude ones that actively offend sensibilities in some way.) A hook doesn't have to be the first sentence, or perhaps even the first paragraph, but by the end of the first page, a new author should give a reader a reason to turn it and not simply put the book down/click the next one. That's a decision point. So is the end of the first scene, or even the end of the first chapter if they're short enough.

3) It doesn't have to be action. It can be suspense. It can be a question, overt or implied, that lodges in a reader's head. It can even be prose of such staggering power or loveliness a reader feels compelled to keep going. Whatever approach, it has to engage someone.

4) What works for one genre may not work for others. Then again, it might.

RedWombat said:

But...but...WHAT ABOUT THE EXPLODING GRANDMOTHER!?

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From memory, its the opening line of "The Crow Road". (Or maybe you know that and I'm not getting your joke never know around here.)

I like your version too.

And on the original subject I think there are openings, openings with hooks, and openings with very quotable first lines

"It was the best of times and the worst of times"
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man, in possession of a fortune, must be in want of a wife."

And that is even harder to do than a hook.

In media res, yes. Forced cleverness, no. (As other people have already said.) Jane Austin wrote other books, but none of them have the first line quoted in that way, ditto Dickens.

As others have pointed out, the hook doesn’t have to be the size of a ship’s anchor. It can be subtle. To work it only needs to entice a reader to read beyond the hook.

I’ve noticed at least three kinds of hook: those about action, characters, or setting.

• A shot rang out. Sanshr ducked behind a dumpster, drew her chazer, and lofted a spybot high into the night sky.
• Jessica Santos was tiny, beautiful, and had a mischievous air. Donnie thought life with her would always be interesting, but perhaps never comfortable.
• Green Valley looked like every person’s idea of home. Or so thought Alyse as she drew her motorcycle to a halt high above it in a rocky pass.

I like hooks which are immediately followed by some context for it. Especially ones which introduce at least one important character (maybe but not necessarily the main character).

Hooks can also combine more than one type of hook, and include context.

Cheerleader Bethany Rossiter died the first time on a football field one day before her sixteenth birthday.