Hooks: Location and Visibility

Google Earth oddity: Indian head with ipod.

I've found myself in something close to a routine now. I'm writing by 10am, and I pause to eat sometime in the afternoon, when a convenient break arises, and then I'll write again or do chores, and then watch tv for a few hours/spend the evening with my son, and then, if I'm still buzzing, and if my son's not around (he's in the Peak district on a school trip! Three days away from home! He took a torch, a joke book, and a plastic spider.) I'll continue writing.

(Crikey! I'm really not sure about my punctuation in those brackets! Anyone want to help me out?)

I finished my first draft of chapter fifteen at 1:45 this morning.

I'm feeling very peculiar, and here's why:

Half-way through the novel, we find the midpoint crisis. This is the point where the protag makes a choice, probably a binary choice, and probably the greatest revealer of his character, and from that point onwards, his course is charted and there is no return.

I knew what his choice would be, and what the incitement would be.

But writing such a scene is a unique experience.

Bob McKee is a big advocate of characters who are revealed to be more than they first appeared.

But, in crafting this change in my protag through the midpoint crisis, I became acutely aware that the change would only work (be credible) if everything was already in place. In writing this scene, I was as nervous as a lobster in Rick Stein's shopping basket, because if the change didn't begin to happen, then everything before was wrong.

A moment of truth if you will.

I knew I wouldn't sleep until I had discovered the truth, and so I wrote my way through some weird barrier.

Google Earth oddity: Parked fighter jet.

Been making some notes on this week's tv.

Sigh. What have I become?

Bob McKee made an appearance on The South Bank Show! He's a real person and everything! He came across as lovely, and far-removed from his character in Adaptation. The show celebrated the work of screenwriter William Goldman (who came across as bitter and angry).

The bit I most took away with me was when McKee praised Goldman's avoidance of dialogue in the opening scenes to Misery. I was interested because, after all the changes I have made to the opening of my ms, I'm still very keen to keep the silence - the removal of dialogue - which pervades the first few pages. However, McKee didn't explain why. (But I did! Here! N.B. Note from current solv to previous solv: The distinction you're making is between dialogue and summary.)

Stephen Hendry's 147 break was super, wasn't it! (Way to polarise the readers solv!) What really caught my imagination was, as the cue ball rolled back towards baulk with the colours remaining, the commentator remarked:

'... but the pink still looms up as a major obstacle.'

I like that. I like that, at that moment, every viewer was looking at this obstacle, this single problem which was only four balls away. Forget about the yellow and green and brown and blue: we were all looking to a specified point in the future, where we could clearly see a visible hindrance.

So the pink became the hook and the four preceding balls existed in this charged space between set-up and resolution. And, even then, we knew there was a black to find position on and to pot.

Consider the visibility of that pink - that obstacle.

Consider the differences between:

1) Mary drinks the wine. She dies. John shakes a bottle of poison at her dead body and walks away, laughing.

2) Mary drinks the wine. John shakes a bottle of poison at her and laughs. She stands, and falls, and dies.

3) Whilst Mary is powdering her nose, John tips poison into her wine. Mary returns and drinks the wine. John shakes the bottle of poison at her and laughs. She stands, and falls, and dies.

In each case, the resolution is the same: John has poisoned Mary.

In each case, the scene has turned, and a value has swapped: Mary is alive; Mary is dead.

But consider the effects of moving that hook (John poisons Mary's wine) around the scene.

Perhaps you caught The Speaker?

I accidentally watched the penultimate episode, and then deliberately watched the final.

A bunch of teenagers vied for the title of Best Young British Speaker, or somesuch.

One of the judges quoted someone whose name I should've written down:

'A good speaker speaks for others and not for himself.'

I found this to be a fascinating way to consider one's protag. Give it a bash, why not?

Last night, Timothy Spall starred in an hour-long drama called The Street.

You know you're in for a treat when Timothy Spall is starring! And you know you're in for a lot of depression too.

Written by Jimmy McGovern, it really was something special, and, to my mind, far superior to the recent Red Riding trilogy which I didn't understand at all. Tell me I'm not alone!

As ever, my writer's brain began dissecting the drama, examining the conversion of exposition into ammunition, the timing of the inciting incident (five minutes in), the conflicts and the choices under pressure ... but very soon, I was so absorbed that my writer's brain fell silent (although, before curling up, it did warn me that the drama would end with the discovery of Steve Davis).

Timothy plays downtrodden cab-driver, Eddie.

Here are a few insights from him:

'Eddie has made a huge mistake by seeing his old sweetheart. He's heading straight for a brick wall, but like all the best tragicomic characters, he just can't see it coming ...

'Eddie is ultimately a figure of benignity. There's something I really like about him. He represents decency in what we like to call the ordinary man ...

'... The decency of ordinary people and the tragicomedy of ordinary life are things that will always be with us and will always fascinate us.'

P.S. To celebrate the half-way mark (200 pages), I've renamed my novel. New title to be announced soon.

The First Chapter: The Hook

Fred was pleased to have fathered a baby before his penis turned into a hand.

I was ambling through town in the rain this morning and the charity canvassers were out as usual. A pretty girl stepped before me and invited me to come under her umbrella for a chat.

A good hook, I'd say, offering me shelter from the elements and a chat with a pretty girl.

I had to decline, because I was eager to get home to type up chapter fourteen, and to give some thought to a blog post about hooks.

I had a super day last Friday, trimming my opening four chapters, polishing that opening chapter, and I believe I'm getting somewhere at last. I also read Rachelle Gardner's blog (the link's down there somewhere). She invited a host of agent chums to twitter with advice. Amongst the words of wisdom, I noticed that old chestnut: Don't write in your query letter that the pace really gets going in chapter five.

It does seem to be something of a perennial problem, and it's not difficult to understand why. Once that first set-up or chunk of exposition has been delivered, we have something to develop and to plunge into a reveal. But there is nothing for us to work with at the beginning. Furthermore, we have all that exposition to weave in asap. Without forward momentum, the pace is dead.

Remember Jack Bickham's chum? Jack eagerly tells of his chum's multiple-page description of a sunset. The protag was to fight to the death at sunrise, and so the sunset became charged with suspense.

Here's how:

1) Dear reader: Something big is gonna happen at this specified time in the near future.

2) Space.

3) Something big occurs.

Agatha Christie reckoned that the thrill of the hunt was in the chase and not the capture. And given that so much of our writing occurs between set-up (hook) and resolution, we need to charge these spaces somehow. A good hook does this.

My opening chapter paves the way for all that is to come. However, many of these set-ups are invisible and are not charged. In essence, they allow for the creation of satisfying twists, all of which come later on.

To augment this, I developed a technique whereby I would create word palettes. These are still largely invisible, but I believe they create some sort of anticipation within the reader's subconscious.

However, on a less subtle level, I have worked in a highly visible hook, and have developed this hook in increments from the first paragraph through to the 'cliffhanger' at the end of the opening chapter. I'm developing a sense that the reader needs very frequent references to, or reminders of, something that is about to occur. These spaces between set-up and resolution need to be filled with anticipation. Whilst I believe that this anticipation can be created subliminally, I have no concerns about building in a visible hook too.

To this end, and to my ... surprise? ... perhaps apprehension ... I found myself working in a MacGuffin. Woo hoo! I think I get them! There are times when we're not ready to develop something, or to present a reveal; and, yet, we need to keep the anticipation rolling in those spaces, and a MacGuffin will perform such a function, holding the reader in place until we're ready to return to the key stuff. In particular, and with so much to accomplish early on, I can see how a MacGuffin keeps the reader's attention whilst we set about laying foundations.

And how does Murakami open The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle? With a MacGuffin: with a woman who phones the protag out of the blue, and who offers anticipation, and who pops up whenever anticipation is required (presumably in those spaces where Murakami is busy constructing other set-ups and the like), and who simply fades from existence when she is no longer required (presumably because Murakami has established everything he needs by then) and is never referred to again.

Yes, I understand the difficulties of instantly grabbing the reader's attention (without resorting to melodrama!). But there are ways and means. They might feel like cheats (well, they still do to me), but really they're techniques, as valid as any other.

The hook charges the subsequent space with anticipation. Once the anticipation is in place, we can describe that sunset with all the flair and aplomb we desire.

Or, to turn that around, if we have passages in which nothing changes (typically exposition), we can charge those passages by slipping a hook before them, or by developing (or even repeating?) an already-open hook.

Hey, it's all still work-in-progress. Bear with me.

Truth and Lies

Blessed are the cheesemakers!

It's something that has really started to irk my son.

It seems that whenever we watch a film, he'll repeatedly remark 'That wouldn't happen would it!'

I suppose he's going through that stage where he's realising that there are grey areas: there's more than just goodies and baddies, and that right and wrong are points of view.

I thought I'd better do a little research before taking my protag into the farm. Really, I was looking for little details I could use, especially for the setting. Four hours later, and five pages of notes in my new notebook, I have all I need. My ideas of 'a farm' were, to say the least, rather naive. Thus far in my ms, I've made little observations where necessary, but now they all seem rather disparate. I've realised that the farm is a dairy farm, and this has provided me with all sorts of insights into the farmer's life, and the life of his daughter, and lovely parallels (and metaphors and similes and word-palette fodder) between Little Miss Muffet and udder-washing and bulls and cheesemaking.

It's number twenty in Sunset's 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes: Don't Assume You Know; Look It Up.

I've been working from memory, having once lived in a cottage next to a farm. I've been picking out pieces of recollections - the silos, the cattle grids, the calving, the smells, the pastures. Now I know what they are all for, and how they fit into the life of a dairy farmer and I have a clearer understanding of the characters who work and live on this farm.

As with all detailed research, I don't intend to swamp the narrative with references; rather, I can bind the whole with a unity of newly-discovered knowledge.

And lest we forget, the author is God - the author makes his world and decides what is and what isn't, all for the good of the story.

Two days ago, I needed a poisonous plant. I needed it to smell lovely. That's what my plot required.

I had a devil of a time finding a sweet-smelling deadly plant that grows in England. And, importantly, I needed something that the average reader would recognise by name.

I couldn't find what I needed, so I made it up:

Nurses' Nightshade.

It sounds lethal. I decide it smells good. And, in choosing the name, I allude to (foreshadow) an imminent reveal.

I decided what I needed and I couldn't find it in reality and so I made up something credible.

Research gives us knowledge.

With that knowledge, we afford ourselves a wider variety of informed choices.

But we should always endeavour to make those choices work for the story.

I think this is what Sunset means when he says that fiction has to be more logical than real-life.

Storm clouds over a dairy farm.

The First Chapter

The Orange Peelers: Maria Pace-Wynters

This has been torturing me. For some reason I have begun to doubt my opening chapter.

Here's the killer question:

Is it a bad idea to open with exposition. If so, why?

To palliate my thoughts, I've been reading the opening chapters to recent Man Booker nominees and winners (because they are my chosen genre and they are hopefully representative of reasonably contemporary reading trends). I've also pored over relevant chapters in my library of 'how-to' books. And I did a little research online.

So what do you reckon?

I'm not concerned about rewriting. I'm happy to rewrite. And, if I conclude that I need to hide the exposition and open differently, I'm confident such that I've learned how to hide exposition and engage the reader. (When I say 'confident', I mean 'deluded'.)

I just need to know which way to go. I need to be at peace with my decisions.

Let's start with Sunset Bickham.

He says Don't Warm Up Your Engines!

And what he means by that is begin with forward movement.

That's to say, don't open looking backwards, and don't open in a static manner (descriptions!). Open with someone's response to threat.

In a good few Man Booker winners/nominees, you'll find people sat around drinking tea* and chatting in the first chapter (e.g. Hyland's Carry Me Down, Desai's The Inheritance of Loss) or thinking back to something that happened (e.g. Enright's The Gathering [N.B. In the second chapter, Enright has her characters sat around drinking tea]). None of these books open in the middle of a bloody battle, and they all contain descriptions, some of the sky, some of the walls.

How come?

Robert McKee helps us expand on Sunset's advice:

A Story Event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict.

McKee goes on to suggest that, ideally, every scene is a Story Event.

And that's how we can determine exposition.

If a scene contains no change of value - if there is no swing from happy to sad, or wisdom to stupidy, or anger to peace, etc., then the scene only describes and its inclusion probably needs to be reconsidered. Scenes turn, from positive to negative, or negative to positive.

It's that word again: CHANGE.

In Hyland's Carry Me Down, John is inviegled into assisting his father in the humane destruction of kittens, and by the end of the first chapter, he discovers that he can tell whether a person is lying or not.

In Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Sai and her family are menaced by gunmen and they learn of a gathering insurgency.

Enright's protag in The Gathering is haunted by the past and its devastating effects on her and her family, and prepares to exorcise her ghosts.

Value charges switch from positive to negative, or negative to positive.

Lives are changed in all manner of ways, but always by some form of external or internal conflict.

The lives of these characters are different by the end of the first chapter (possibly the second in the case of Enright's protag). The old life has gone, and a new one opens before them.

It's important to note that each opening chapter points towards the protag's future; each opening chapter suggests to the reader that the journey has just begun!

Clearly, there is a place for description (and we don't need to go into that here), provided that the author understands that it stops movement.

Yes, the author needs to set stuff up, and that can be a pace-drainer too.

And the reader requires this stuff early on, otherwise they'll just go off and fabricate their own preconceptions. (For a frightening example of this, check out the mass reaction to Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent, and consider the similarities between preconceptions and prejudice!)

All of these things are okay.

Just be sure that they are wrapped in change, and that the change which concludes the opening chapter points a fat finger towards the following chapters.

To my question:

Q. Is it a bad idea to open with exposition?

A. Yes, because exposition is devoid of change and does not inherently pave the way for the rest of the novel.

My question was flawed, however, because I took set-up and descriptions to be exposition in their own right, and neglected to consider the entirety of the opening chapter.

So, for now at least, I have found comfort and am happy with my chosen path.

However, as ever, I would gratefully welcome all thoughts on the matter!

*Check out the tea-making and see how many things are actually achieved in each case!:

I walk to the far counter and pick up the kettle, but when I go to fill it, the cuff of my coat catches on the running tap and the sleeve fills with water. I shake out my hand, and then my arm, and when the kettle is filled and plugged in I take off my coat, pulling the wet sleeve inside out and slapping it in the air.

[The Gathering: Anne Enright.]

Eventually, the fire caught and he placed his kettle on top, as battered, as encrusted as something dug up by an archaeological team, and waited for it to boil. The walls were singed and sodden, garlic hung by muddy stems from the charred beams, thickets of soot clumped batlike upon the ceiling. The flame cast a mosaic of shiny orange across the cook's face, and his top half grew hot, but a mean gust tortured his arthritic knees.

[The Inheritance of Loss: Kiran Desai.]

There is a pot of hot tea in the middle of the table and we each have a cup and plate. There are ham and turkey sandwiches on the plates and, if we want more to eat or drink, there is plenty. The pantry is full.

[Carry Me Down: M.J. Hyland.]