Hooking Your Readers in Your Story
Studies show people make judgments about others’ character in a tenth of a second—and readers, agents, and editors may decide almost as quickly whether or not to keep reading your story.
First pages and chapters carry a lot of weight: They must introduce characters and give readers a reason to care about what happens to them; set up enough suggestion of conflict or friction to intrigue; create questions that keep us turning pages; while giving readers enough information to orient us to the story and set up the journey to come.
In other words, they have to hook your readers, whether that’s your ultimate audience for your book or the gatekeepers of the industry.
But it’s not enough to open with a bang and hope readers will hang on for the rest of the ride. You have to hook us and keep us—and that’s where many opening pages and chapters falls short. Authors may spend so much time trying to craft the “perfect” grabby first lines or paragraphs that they overlook the many areas of story these opening pages must establish and develop to convince readers to get in the car and go for the ride with you and your characters.
Readers need to know who we’re going on the journey with, why we care, what makes it matter, where we’re going—and why now? We need some sense of our destination (even if it changes). Your opening pages make a promise to readers that the rest of your story must deliver on—but it’s that promise that draws us in.
Authors will learn:
- What does it mean to “hook” readers?
- How to fulfill the crucial responsibilities of your first pages:
- Establish character and make readers care about them
- Create a sense of conflict, struggle, or unrest—what’s not right in their world?
- Set up story stakes—why do readers care about your character’s issues?
- Establish the narrative perspective and voice
- Begin to set up the journey of the story—the plot
- Clearly establish the protagonist(s)’ “point A”—the beginning of their arc
- Paint a picture of the story world
- Immediately create questions in readers’ minds that engage their curiosity
- Get—and keep—the story moving
- How important are first lines, really—and what should yours accomplish?
- How prologues affect your opening chapters
- What makes readers stop reading?
Who should take this course?
Fiction authors who:
- Authors of fiction who want to learn how to immediately draw a reader into their story
- Authors who struggle with how to start a story
- Authors who’ve been told their manuscript “just didn’t grab” readers
- Authors who aren’t getting requests from submissions, or offers from publishers
- Authors who have gotten positive response to their work or submissions, but have been told something is missing or not quite working
- Authors who know their opening pages don’t have a strong hook
- Traditionally published, small- and hybrid-press published, and indie-published authors who want to hook readers who may consider only the back cover copy and first pages in determining whether to buy their book
Who should NOT take this class
- The class focuses on fiction, and writers in other genres (memoir, nonfiction) may not find the principles readily applicable
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The class focuses on adult and YA fiction, and may not apply to children’s authors
Hi, I'm Tiffany Yates Martin, founder of FoxPrint Editorial
In my publishing career working as a book editor on hundreds of manuscripts—for major publishers and New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as newer writers—I have decades of experience in pinpointing what can keep an author's story from being as effective as it can be, and how to help authors make it marketable and competitive.
As an editor as well as a teacher leading workshops and seminars in writing and editing, I've developed clear, useful, hands-on tools for helping authors learn to spot these areas, along with practical techniques for addressing them, and I'm the author of a book based on those techniques, Intuitive Editing: A Creative & Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing.
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Example Curriculum
FAQs:
When does the course start and finish?
The course starts now and never ends! It is a completely self-paced online course--you decide when you start and when you finish.
How long do I have access to the course?
How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as you like--across any and all devices you own.
What if I am unhappy with the course?
We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us in the first 30 days and we will give you a full refund.
