Howdunit. Группа авторов
enough to come to the attention of one, will also read at least a few pages.
The first scene or chapter usually introduces the setting and the main character and kick-starts the plot, or sets the groundwork for it. It also sets the tone for what is to follow, and it must also raise a lot of questions we want answered or set up situations we want to see resolved. It gives you more than enough opportunities get your hooks into your readers. You need to give them a feel for the world they’ll be spending the next few hours in. The books we enjoy most are the ones that envelop and absorb us the most completely, that give us a place, or places, to inhabit, interesting characters to love or hate, action and dialogue that we want to go back and spend time with day after day, a fully realized world that we can immerse ourselves in. When you finish a book like that you should be feeling both joy and sadness. Sadness that it’s over, of course, but also joy because you had the experience, and you can have it again and again with more of that author’s books. If you understand that as a reader, you will also understand it as a writer. It will be your task to create that world, to provide that experience for others. It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning a series or just a stand-alone; the more you give the reader that glorious sensation of immersion in the fictional world you have created, the more successful your books will be.
The opening scene is where you must set your first and most powerful hooks. Think of it as a seduction. They need to know what kind of world they will be entering and what sort of ride they may be in for. For the hook is all about creating a world. It’s OK to be subtle, but make sure you set up possibilities, hints, whispers, a vivid setting, something that grabs the reader’s attention and makes her want to keep reading. Make the reader fall in love with the story. It’s as simple as that. And as difficult.
And after that? Don’t let up. Keep the hooks coming. My first editor went over my first manuscript with me, page by page. There were yellow Post-it notes everywhere, and around page thirty or so I noticed that she had written in pencil at the top of the page: ‘Something should happen now.’ Something happened five pages later, but she had sensed that my pacing was off, that I had set up a hook that didn’t pay off quickly enough, and I knew I needed to cut five pages from my first thirty to make something happen sooner. That was an important lesson to learn.
Of course, a hook may be greater or lesser in magnitude. There are big hooks, of which you will need fewer, and little hooks, of which you will need many. Yes, we may be hooked by the big concept – will the protagonist stop the serial killer before he kills and skins the young journalist we have come to like. But while all of that big stuff is important, and should always be in your mind, you should not lose track of the numerous little hooks you need to keep the story moving along. ‘Something should happen now.’ Maybe just a little thing. But something. Maybe in a subplot. One example is a relationship. The protagonist is having problems with his girlfriend, say, or his wife, or family. We should care about this and want things to be resolved. Or it could also be a health issue, the result of an X-ray, or a work problem – conflict with one’s boss or partner, perhaps – but it is all grist for the hook mill. You have so many opportunities. Don’t waste them. It’s like the fairground plate-spinner or juggler. The more plates your protagonist has to keep spinning, or the more balls in the air, the faster your reader will turn the pages. And if once in a while he lets a plate fall and break or drops a ball, then it means he’s only human, and the broken plate or dropped ball can work as a narrative hook itself, perhaps misdirecting us for a while.
A crime novel – by which I mean here a mystery, usually involving a murder, a police detective, private eye or talented amateur sleuth – is often more cerebral than action-filled, which can cause hook-related problems of its own. Raymond Chandler once wrote, ‘When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.’ He was describing the experience of writing for the pulps, but his words are often taken as advice about how to move on the action when you think the plot is in a bit of a slump and you need to re-hook the reader. It works. I know; I’ve done it! But you can only get away with it once, especially if your books are set in the UK, where guns are not so prevalent.
In a crime novel, you have a huge variety of possible hooks at your disposal, many things you can substitute for the man with the gun, either of greater or lesser intensity. Most obviously, you can place your protagonist in harm’s way. Some of the most effective lesser hooks are information, a revelation of some sort, or secrets and lies. It is always a good idea to hint early on that someone has a secret or is lying about something and to delay the revelation of what this is. You control this revelation; you can use it when you want, when you feel ‘something should happen now’.
There are numerous little questions raised in every chapter of every story, and each one of them is capable of becoming a narrative hook, so you need to exploit them to the best of your abilities and use both the question and its answer as a means of getting the most tension and best pacing out of your writing.
A good example in crime fiction is forensic information, all of which will eventually be pieced together to help form a solution to the puzzle (or a red herring, at least). First you get the crime scene sorted, the trace evidence packed away and sent off to the various lab departments. You’ve probably got fingerprints, possible DNA, hair, a footprint, a tyre track, a dodgy alibi, a mysterious stain, a witness or two to track down. The answers to all these questions can be spread out throughout your novel almost at will, and the information they provide can be used as and when you feel that ‘something should happen now’. Revelation is also a kind of action, especially if it is not the answer you have led the reader to expect.
Crime writing isn’t formulaic, as some critics would have us believe, but there are certain structural possibilities in the genre that may act as signposts along the road and help keep you travelling in the right direction. These will also offer opportunities for further narrative hooks. For a start, there will be the crime. It’s usually murder because, as P. D. James most perceptively pointed out, the taking of another life is one thing that can’t be undone. And it means the stakes are high. The victim is dead, and it’s left to society, or its representative in the form of the investigator – private or official – to find out why and, if possible, restore some sort of balance and order. This kind of situation is intrinsic to a crime novel and is a gift in terms of narrative hooks. A good writer makes the reader want to take the journey with the detective and find out who and, perhaps more important, why this victim was killed in such a way. You don’t have to do anything extra to get this hook – it’s a gift of the genre.
P. D. James also pointed out that this restoration of order can never be complete and does not always include justice. It also doesn’t preclude any of the devastation and heartbreak such a crime leaves behind in the community and the lives and psyches of those individuals involved. Catching the killer never brings back the victim; nor does it bring peace to those who, through being serious suspects at some point, may have lost their livelihoods, families and friends. Make readers care about these characters, however minor some of them may be, and you will have even more narrative hooks. It would be well to bear this is mind as you build up the characters and their relationships, along with the picture of a community under stress, as you will be setting hooks there that heighten expectations for something to happen later. Relationships will be altered, something will be lost, and perhaps something else will replace it. All these things you can prepare for by the judicious use of narrative hooks. Remember: ‘Something should happen now.’
A crime novel – any novel – with dull characters is destined to fail. A strong plot and a fascinating setting are important, but unlikely to compensate for a failure to create interesting people. This is not to say that the characterization needs to be exceptionally sophisticated. Agatha Christie’s murder suspects were usually drawn with a few brief strokes, and characterization was not her greatest strength; yet her people are recognizable human types, their presentation sometimes enlivened with touches of humour, for which she had an underestimated talent. This element of universality helps to explain the enduring popularity of Christie’s work with people the world over, many of whom have never visited an English country house or met