Check out part 1 and part 2 of this little series on how to make your writing accessible and welcoming, and how to hook readers so you can reel them in.
Your responsibility as a writer is to compel readers to read your work.
When you’re writing a longer piece, the hooks need to keep coming, and they need to deepen as they go. And they should all be answered, or closed, before the end, so nobody is left hanging.
The vast majority of longer-form writing (novels, screenplays, even short stories) get boring after the first few pages.
Sadly, the vast majority of writers don’t have adequate hooks to pull the reader in deeper and deeper as they go. They don’t make readers yearn to see how everything will turn out.
An obsessed protagonist facing insurmountable odds against a powerful antagonist for a worthy cause is central to hooking readers with a story.
In addition to this fundamental hook, you can also use the more superficial hooks listed in part 2 of this series to keep readers engaged, to make people call your work “a page-turner,” to make your screenplay the one development executives stay up till 2 a.m. reading because they can’t put it down.
Any manuscript that compels someone to read it in one sitting is going to get an offer.
A page-turner is a series of “arcs of interest.” These are set-ups and payoffs, hooks of various lengths that keep readers engaged in a plot.
One way to visualize this series of arcs is a diagram I made for a recent novel (not yet released), which beta-readers indeed called “a page-turner.”
For every hook, I began an arc where it set up, and then I closed the arc when it paid off. Note how many of the hooks start and stop near act breaks, making a clean, three-act structure with a midpoint.
Each color indicates a type of hook: character relationship, plot question, internal, external, A-story, B-story, and C-story. The numbers along the bottom are the chapters.
This is a visual representation of what an engaging story should look like:
Try analyzing your favorite movie and make one of these diagrams. Try doing the same with your own longer work.
Okay, get writin’!
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