But applied to writing and the narrative hook? An itch is brilliant.
I once attended a conference where Larry Brooks was keynote speaker. Afterwords, I immediately bought his book Story Engineering. Here is a small slice of what he has to say about hook:
“What is this wondrous little tease called a hook? Doesn’t matter, as
long as it’s visceral, sensual, emotionally resonant, and makes a promise of an
intense and rewarding experience ahead.
It’s a simple something that asks a question the reader must now yearn
to answer, or it causes an itch that demands to be scratched.”
I love that analogy, an itch that
demands to be scratched.
I'd also add an extra dimension: A
writer should never scratch her reader’s back--at least, not completely, and definitely not until the
end of the story!
Figuratively never scratching a reader’s back means we leave
them wanting more. We never satiate. Our reader feels the need to continue on our character's journey until that journey reaches its satisfying
conclusion. In Manuscript Makeover, Elizabeth Lyon calls this creating movement and
suspense, and I'll tackle the "how-to" for that in an upcoming post.
That itch—the narrative hook—is worth its weight
in gold when it creates reader empathy.
From Manuscript Makeover, by Elizabeth Lyon:
“When narrative hook alludes to the character wound and need, it
reaches into the deepest part of the reader’s heart and sets the frame for the
entire novel.”
In other words, the reader is invested, the reader cares. Larry Brooks also says, “the more the
reader cares, the more effective the story will be.”
Great advice, right? Find
more in the two phenomenal craft books below.
