What hooks you? What DOESN'T?

[sunstruckdream]

What do you consider to be a good hook-in, whether in your own work or someone else's? To be more specific, what can/should a good prologue or first chapter do to pique your interest and make you want to read on?

Personally, I like to be confused. I don't like to know everything right away. Tell me bits and pieces a few at a time, and if it's set up well, I'll want to go on to get the big picture.

And...to complete the question posed in the title...

What DOESN'T hook you? What puts you off and makes you drop the book after ten pages (if that)?

For me, it's BAD confusion. There's a difference between setting something up by omitting things in an artful and intriguing manner and being just plain incomplete, scattered, or messy. If it seems like the author doesn't even know what the whole thing is about, it's not something I'll want to finish.

...your turn...

 

[Tariel]

What hooks me is a character. Give me somebody to care about in the first paragraph and I will keep reading just to see what happens to him/her.

Similarly, if there isn't a character introduced at the very beginning, I most likely won't get very far.

 

[Lessien]

Let's see....there's actually quite a lot that hooks me. One of them is a character, like Tariel said--an interesting character and a good reason to care what happens to him or her. Or a character you don't like, and then what role they'll play in the story.

An interesting situation hooks me, too. Give me a character racing through the sky on the back of a flying St. Bernard, eating chocolate and singing "Stairway to Heaven" off-key, and you'll have hooked me for a good forty pages or so. Unless, of course, you explain in the next paragraph why said character is doing all of the above, which brings me to my next point....

What I don't like is when everything is explained right away. In the example above (with the main character on the flying St. Bernard), if the next paragraph immediately explained that he was doing what he was doing because he got that dog as a birthday present and he loved "Stairway to Heaven" and chocolate and needed to get away from his evil stepbrother, then all the mystery is gone and I won't keep reading. There's no reason to.

I also don't like too much mystery. It's confuzzling.

 

[GrinningDwarf]

In media res usually works for me. Show me a Rebel blockade runner being run down by an Imperial Star Destroyer. But...like others have already said...don't tell me everything I 'need to know' about the said blockade runner or Star Destroyer. Right now, I don't need to know why the blockade runner is running, or about the Empire that spawned the Star Destroyer. The only thing I need to know in the first ten pages is that the Star Destroyer is huge and the blockade runner doesn't stand a chance...but that there is somebody on board who needs to get away.

Too much detail at the beginning can turn me off. So can too much self-absorbed angst in the main character.

One early Star Trek novel turned me off around page 15 when it referred to Sulu as 'the inscrutable Oriental'. And this was not one character's point-of-view of Sulu...this was the 'omnicient third person' point-of-view of the author. The book went immediately into the wastebasket.

 

[Jeriel]

Hmm. Confusion tends to make me put a book down actually There has to be something else that really interests me to convince me to read on.

I like something that sums up the story subject - I don't mean something that gives away surprise endings or plot twists or anything like that, of course (that would defeat the long read). It doesn't need to explain everything. Just something that lets me know whether it's going to be worth it or not, and if the subject is even interesting to me. Personally, it drives me crazy to feel clueless towards the subject or general content, or to feel like important information is being withheld for the wrong reasons. Suspense has grabbed me too, sometimes.

I can't stand it when there's too many characters (which is ironic actually, because I love Dickens and he tends to put in a LOT of characters. Once I get to know his character I love them, so I guess it balances out). I usually do better with one or two main characters who I am certain WILL NOT BE Mary Sues.

Setting turns me off. If it's a story placed in a setting I've read fifty other stories about, I'm hardly ever interested - unless it is unique enough to hold me.

So when I'm beginning to read a story, I like to have a basic idea of what it is going to be like. More than anything, I just like to feel like the plot is well-written, well-planned, interesting, and I am going to be a part of a truly good story that won't waste my time.

Sorry that was longer than I meant it to be...

 

[Tariel]

Hmm. Confusion tends to make me put a book down actually There has to be something else that really interests me to convince me to read on.

I like something that sums up the story subject - I don't mean something that gives away surprise endings or plot twists or anything like that, of course (that would defeat the long read). It doesn't need to explain everything. Just something that lets me know whether it's going to be worth it or not, and if the subject is even interesting to me. Personally, it drives me crazy to feel clueless towards the subject or general content, or to feel like important information is being withheld for the wrong reasons. Suspense has grabbed me too, sometimes.

I can't stand it when there's too many characters (which is ironic actually, because I love Dickens and he tends to put in a LOT of characters. Once I get to know his character I love them, so I guess it balances out). I usually do better with one or two main characters who I am certain WILL NOT BE Mary Sues.

Setting turns me off. If it's a story placed in a setting I've read fifty other stories about, I'm hardly ever interested - unless it is unique enough to hold me.

So when I'm beginning to read a story, I like to have a basic idea of what it is going to be like. More than anything, I just like to feel like the plot is well-written, well-planned, interesting, and I am going to be a part of a truly good story that won't waste my time.

Sorry that was longer than I meant it to be...

Don't be sorry. Writers can't help but write

I hate it when authors withhold information because they're the all-powerful writers and can do that. I do, however, enjoy being teased, I like that well-written feeling of, there's something going on here and you're going to need to keep reading to find out what it is. The problem is, there's a fine line between the two

 

[sunstruckdream]

Huh. I don't like TOO much information withheld - I mean, I'd like to know what the book's ABOUT, please - but generally I like when the writer makes you hang in there and work for it. But as you said, there's a fine line...

 

[Tariel]

Huh. I don't like TOO much information withheld - I mean, I'd like to know what the book's ABOUT, please - but generally I like when the writer makes you hang in there and work for it. But as you said, there's a fine line...

yeah.

 

[sunstruckdream]

...Isn't it frustrating when the writer is clearly trying to be all ambiguous and artistic, but is trying way too hard, and consquently you have no clue what in tarnation could possibly be going on with these random characters??

GAAAHHHH!

...sorry. Pet peeve.

 

[Lessien]

Oh my gosh, I hate that too! When an author is trying to be all mysterious and stuff and they throw in a ton of random characters and don't tell you anything about them....UGH!!!!

I also hate it when authors tell you bits and pieces about characters, then go back to the present, then back to the character....I once read a book that opened with the main character trying to get out of a weird yellow mist so he could follow this girl, and then it immediately cut to a paraphrased flashback about how the girl he was chasing was kind of "big" and he had teased her, then back to the mist, then back to how he and that girl had somehow been transported to another world, then the mist again....you get the idea. And all that was before the first chapter had ended! Needless to say, I didn't go on to the second chapter.

 

[Jeriel]

Don't be sorry. Writers can't help but write

I hate it when authors withhold information because they're the all-powerful writers and can do that. I do, however, enjoy being teased, I like that well-written feeling of, there's something going on here and you're going to need to keep reading to find out what it is. The problem is, there's a fine line between the two

Yes! That is exactly what I meant

 

[sunstruckdream]

Oh my gosh, I hate that too! When an author is trying to be all mysterious and stuff and they throw in a ton of random characters and don't tell you anything about them....UGH!!!!

I also hate it when authors tell you bits and pieces about characters, then go back to the present, then back to the character....I once read a book that opened with the main character trying to get out of a weird yellow mist so he could follow this girl, and then it immediately cut to a paraphrased flashback about how the girl he was chasing was kind of "big" and he had teased her, then back to the mist, then back to how he and that girl had somehow been transported to another world, then the mist again....you get the idea. And all that was before the first chapter had ended! Needless to say, I didn't go on to the second chapter.

uughh...that would have upset me too.

 

[Cordelia]

What do you consider to be a good hook-in, whether in your own work or someone else's? To be more specific, what can/should a good prologue or first chapter do to pique your interest and make you want to read on?

Personally, I like to be confused. I don't like to know everything right away. Tell me bits and pieces a few at a time, and if it's set up well, I'll want to go on to get the big picture.

And...to complete the question posed in the title...

What DOESN'T hook you? What puts you off and makes you drop the book after ten pages (if that)?

For me, it's BAD confusion. There's a difference between setting something up by omitting things in an artful and intriguing manner and being just plain incomplete, scattered, or messy. If it seems like the author doesn't even know what the whole thing is about, it's not something I'll want to finish.

...your turn...

I have to be made to care about what's happening and who it's happening to. The author has to write with real insight, authority and perception to be able to hook me. This is rare: off the top of my head I can think of maybe a dozen books that have ever really done this to me.

Pointless description turns me right off: bland details about the weather and someone's appearance, trite or cliched dialogue, etc...

 

[avatarblade2000]

WHAT HOOKS?
-interesting character (who matures)
-unique situation (that escalates)
-teasers for further developments
-thematic elements that build and deliver
-the occasional chronological speed-bump (events told out of order)

WHAT DOESN'T?
-tasteless explicitness
-wordiness, like useless adverbs and adjectives (amateurish)
-anything bashing God without there being some sort of "proof" to back it up (yeah, proof...such a useless word)

There's more, but...homework hinders me from writing further.

 

[Doubtless]

On the topic of prologues, will it be harmful to my story to have a prologue which people read, then go to something leagues away, then about halfway into the book are told more about the prologue? Let's put it this way: secret council meets in prologue, but the book mentions that council only in talking of things that say nothing about their meeting. Later on in the book, the council is explained or met. Will that cause too much confusion?

My personal style is to make someone do something or something happen that has some strange meaning, but you can't really understand it. Then, I totally lose the reader in what's going on, and (hopefully) they put the mysterious occurrence on the backburner (the subconcious), and then suddenly, they're reminded of it, when the thing which it preluded occurs, and they go "Ohhh...." At least, that's what I hope they'll do.

~ Eric

 

[Lessien]

Oh, yeah. I'd say that's fine. I read one book where, in the prologue (set during the Civil War) a bunch of mysterious old guys meet on a stormy night and one guy warns them that what they're doing is wrong, then rides off. The story then switches to present day, focusing on a young lawyer who has been given a mysterious inheritance. The old guys' meeting isn't explained until much later, and that book is one of my faves.

 

[Jeriel]

I guess I always thought prologues could be explained anywhere in the story, as long as they "flowed" with the plot well.

 

[sunstruckdream]

Yeah...I've done that a few times. I think it's fine. I actually think it's useful...I feel like it's a good way to hook people in if you show them the connections between the stories one parallel at a time....

 

[NavyGuy7]

Usually the first thing that has to hook me before i consider a book is a description of the book. If that description does not hook me, then, well, tough luck. Sometimes, though, it's the title that hooks me. So it really depends. Oh, and fantasy tends to hook me best, whereas realistic fiction (i.e. a story about events in our modern society, where the characters and their story are the only fictional parts, but realistic) tends to not hook me.

 

[Jeriel]

Usually the first thing that has to hook me before i consider a book is a description of the book. If that description does not hook me, then, well, tough luck. Sometimes, though, it's the title that hooks me. So it really depends. Oh, and fantasy tends to hook me best, whereas realistic fiction (i.e. a story about events in our modern society, where the characters and their story are the only fictional parts, but realistic) tends to not hook me.

oh yes! I think titles are so important! An interesting title definitely gets my attention.