This shall be my superhero name. Hmmm, maybe it’s a tad inappropriate…
The hook. That jazzy little nugget that keeps your reader reading past the first few pages. But you can’t just stop there, oh no no no! You have to keep on hooking until your book is like the scratchy side of Velcro and your reader the fuzzy fur that sticks.
Oh, I do like an analogy.
Anyway. This week, as you may have guessed, I’ve been all about hooks. More precisely (after some much needed advice from the writing guru that is Simon Hall @thetvdetective) I have been looking at the hooks in my chapter endings.
I have a habit of ending chapters. And that, my friends, is not how a chapter should, errr, end. You don’t want the reader to put the book down at the end of a chapter; you want them to read the next one. And if, heaven forbid, they do put the book down you want to make sure that they damn well pick it up again.
Remember my foreshadowing angst? I do. I really do. Even more so now that I am having a similar angst in the shape of chapter endings and getting that gosh darn hook just right. I’m terrified that I’ll give too much away. Or, worse, I won’t give enough away and the reader will give up. Give up!
A final sentence phrased just so, a hint that something big is coming, something you really don’t want to miss. A little promise to your reader: read on, you won’t regret it.
I’m ready C L Taylor’s new book, The Missing, at the moment. Taylor is intimidatingly good at chapter hooks. Each ending makes you want to read on, or makes you second guess everything you thought you knew, or leads you to believe you have the answers before mercilessly ripping them away and leaving you gasping for air. I told you, she is SUPER good at chapter hooks.
And, as the best way to learn to write well is to read well, I’m going to delve back into this bad boy and see if I can’t learn a few tricks!
Rebecca Tinnelly 