#first line hooks

[seawaveleo]

360!!!

[novaneondream]

@candle-scm you did this to me

[writingwithfolklore]

Your Hook

                Recently I shared my first 30 pages with my mentor, and now I’m sharing her advice to all of you. (This is part 3! Find part 2 here, and part 1 here). Her biggest advice was to change my very first line.

                I already knew that the first line was one of the most important lines of the whole book. It had to be the big hook to the novel, the reason to read to the second sentence, and then the third, and then so on until (hopefully) I’ve hooked my reader all the way to the end.

                However, I missed an important detail about it. The hook isn’t just about being interesting—it’s about conveying your main character right from moment one.

                Let’s take a look at some first sentences from a few books I’ve enjoyed recently:

“Mom is dying, and we both know it.” – A Wilderness of Stars by Shea Ernshaw

“Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love.” – The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

“They say you can spot a true Shennong-Shi by their hands—palms coloured by the stain of the earth, fingertips scarred from thorns, a permanent crust of soil and blood darkening the crescents of their nails. I used to look at my hands with pride. Now, all I can think is, These are the hands that buried my mother.”- A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin (The spelling on this one is a bit off, I don’t have the right characters on my keyboard. Apologies.)

“The night harrow found me, I was digging up a fox’s bones.” – These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall

                What do they all have in common? They immediately introduce the main character’s conflict, be it internal, external, or both. They draw us in right away by saying, “this person’s life isn’t perfect—here’s why.”

                You may remember when we talked about internal/external conflict in my Character is Plot post, except I called it Goal and Objective (respectively). These are the elements that make up your character’s journey, which is the main plot, so that’s what your first couple lines are for.

                Once I rewrote my first line to match this lesson, it was immediately more compelling. That’s the whole point of a hook.

                Good luck!

[rxttenfish]

merfolk in general are just. horrible horrible polyglots. their brains are already hardwired for language and quick language acquisition that remains active all their lives, further helped by retaining a high neural plasticity for their long lives, and especially enjoy complex language and language-based play and problem solving. but they also tend to have a lot of their society arranged where there's often multiple different languages at play within the same area, and only really stops being so once you get into especially small villages that have below the merfolk norm for outside contact. every merfolk alive today knows at least two languages, but most of them know far more than that, especially because one of those two will be the common-technical language. its been standardized and wide-scale implemented across the merkingdom after their dominance, to help bridge the gap between these different languages, basically as a successful version of esperanto. but its a trade language, and is mostly used for information you might want to reach as many people as possible, such as laws or business dealings or public announcements or the like. most merfolk don't view it as and don't treat it as a language proper, and its not what they prefer to converse in if they have another choice, usually finding it pretty limiting and restrictive, which is why its called common-technical.

miranda, being a royal who is regularly in contact with many different people around the merkingdom and regularly expected to be fully able to converse with them to do her job, knows just. so many languages. i might be changing exactly how many soon, but last time i counted it was in the low teens. like its just a perfect storm of her brain being wired for swift language acquisition and having a job that requires it and a position that means shes constantly around people from all around the merkingdom. not to mention having to know english too, which isn't just not her first language, it's not even her fourth language.

meanwhile, aaravi knows english and a little bit of hindi, less because of her mother and moreso because of her nana... its not that her mother never used it with her, but she was. less focused on using it or teaching aaravi, let's say. nana mishra uses it a lot more and is more interested in teaching aaravi when she asks her, especially in the intermittent period after her mom died and nana mishra was able to come back into her life to help aaravi pick up the pieces (though not after aaravi kind of. got left on her own. for an unfortunate amount of time). its just also fallen by the wayside with aaravi's whole Everything Else and kind of having a hard time accepting her nana's help and kind of being terrified of her (of no fault of her nana's, aaravi's just. she's just really traumatized after Everything, alright. having someone try to offer her help afterwards, especially when aaravi's scared of getting singled out as half human and half monster, is just. it's not something she can bring herself to trust.)

[xbraveheartx]

My heart hurts so much hearing the stutter at the end and how he just… fades ;; ;;

[miniagula]

they make me ILL and SICK IN THE HEAD

[bobokitty]

I fucking love unreliable narrators in stories. It's gotta be one of my favorite things.

I once had an idea for a story long ago that about a crumbling nation and the king's assassination, but told through the perspective of like, 13 or 14 different characters who were there that day. Each character would have a different view on the events and would even completely contradict other tellings, and through all their accounts, the reader would piece together what actually happened. Oh, and each pov would be in a different art style that fit each character's personality. Obviously this was WAY too big of an undertaking for me, and I ended up repurposing characters for other stories ahaha.

In my foggy recollection, I FEEL like there are already stories out there that have done this. I wouldn't call it unique (no idea is; everything has been done and will be done and it's all about your own personal flare). Still, would be so cool to see done in animation or comic form. Hell, even live action if they really push the bar on styles and genres. Which, again, has to have been done already. I feel like I've seen it before. And if so, I want more.

[mlobsters]

~one minute later~

supernatural s1e13 route 666 (w. eugenie ross-leming, brad buckner)

swamp diving for a corpse laden racist truck, totally normal💁‍♂️

will he stay or will he go part 8 of ?

[remusbuzzcutt]

it’d take a lot to pry sunkiller/jarty away from my hands. they both struggled similarly but dealt with it in such different ways. my friend juli wrote about them in a group therapy setting and i absolutely fixated on it for months for some reason??

imagine barty with bpd AND npd. he used people’s emotions like it was second nature. he didn’t even think twice. with that being said, he had an avoidant attachment style. if he was showing raw emotion, it was probably for show. he wasn’t “vulnerable” without the intention to be.

imagine james with bpd, who fixated on people so much that it was all he could thing about. he was obsessive to an almost concerning degree, but that’s what barty wanted.

he wanted to be on james’s mind like that, to consume his every thought. he got off on the idea of someone thinking about him like that. barty noticed the little details, all the things that james liked so that he could use it to make james think he actually cared. it got to a point where barty was trying so hard to get james obsessed with him, he didn’t realise that the only thing he could think about was james. his mood depended on how james reacted to him, how james acted and even the tone he spoke in.

[frontlinebicepsoftheninth]

i'm like three pages into all systems red and have decided that murderbot is like if gideon nav was in ancillary justice

[hanna-writes]

If a Scholomance tv series gets made, I want the first scene to be El on the floor in her room, knife in gut, Jack on top of her with that lovely smear of blood on his mouth, as she’s desperately reaching for the mana crystal just out of reach.

Freeze frame.

“Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”

[beepboopappreciation]

how you feel about this 'bot?

BASTION!!!!!! I absolutely adore him!!!! I like to think we would be the bestest of friends ✨

He just wants to explore and learn more about life and living and nature!!! Bastion deserves everything that is good and pure in this world. I just want him to be happy. He deserves friends and hugs and only the best!!!! I love his little beep boops <3

[pishifuzul]

stop shaving and start using that razor the way it was meant to be used

[acourtofquestions]

The witch was keeping secrets, too. But were hers as dire as his?

[crypt1dcorv1dae]

I've literally never understood parents who don't let their like... TODDLER age kids play with kids of the "opposite" gender. Like wtf do you think your 3 year old is gonna get up to????? News flash heteros people aren't literally born sexual beings and you don't need to protect your sweet baby girl from the boy from her preschool class.

Which also makes boy/girl friendships later on actually LESS TABOO meaning, if your kid grew up being friends with OTHER GENDERS, they will be less likely to see others solely as potential romantic/sexual objects and can actually have positive normal friendships with people of any sex or gender. Who fucking knew that if you don't treat something as FORBIDDEN then it stops being so appealing, especially if you have a rebellious streak

[bookwyrminspiration]

how. how have you won. how is that anything but the worst, most unnatural dialogue in the history of man. die