The hook

[Jo Zebedee]

Okay, I've found this a useful exercise on other sites and, whilst we don't have the anonymity here that works well elsewhere, I think the principle still applies. The question is, very simply, where would you stop reading and why?*

I've put up a start of an old one of mine that I might return to as an example. I'd suggest limited the excerpts to about 500 words. Put them up. This isn't a crit, it's a single question. Where did you stop?

The idea behind it is that agents/editors get loads of stuff sent to them and yours has to hook someone well enough to read on. I've heard 250 words mentioned as the amount you have to do it in. So, this might go someway to saying if your first 500 has enough to engage?

*I have found this process pretty brutal in the past, so if you're in any way worried/easily dented by criticism, this process mightn't be for you.



Anyhow, next post I'll stick up mine, and people can see if they think the process is one that will benefit them.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Okay, work away. Like I say, it's an old one that will change and I'm not in the least offended. (In fact, I know where I'd stop. )

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Captain Jack Spence stood in the silent tower, his weapon holstered beside him. The landing he was on was about half way up a plain iron staircase, hugging the inside wall of the tower. The walls were black rock, shot through with purple glass, and they bristled with sensors and lasers. He looked down to the floor below, the only exit via a narrow entranceway and through a portal activated from the tower. Once on the surface, the atmosphere was so thin a mask was required to cross to any ship.

He glanced to the top of the stairwell, easily another fifty steps above and frowned at the locked door. It was smooth, pure white, and beside it blinked an ID pad. No one in the tower could open that door: in an emergency, the auto bots in the small apartment beyond would send a request for one of the two people who could open it. He’d been up to the door, once, ostensibly to repair a sensor, and there was no noise from beyond it, nothing to tell him if the occupant was alive. He went into the small control room off the landing and looked at the monitors in the surveillance room, which he had no access to, but could see nothing against their secured visors.

He looked around the guard room. Beside him, sleeping, sat Corporal Baker, his habitual guard companion. Spence glanced at the time, calculated dosage against Baker’s weight. Another hour at most. He sat at the bank of monitors and began to work through the security system. He worked quickly, with confidence. He may hold the position of Captain here, but – he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and rubbed the false skin on his arm, so perfectly grafted it had passed all security checks. Under it lay the tattoo showing what he really was: Star Ops. He cleared the first level of security, being careful not to leave any evidence and smiled: his intelligence was right – the system had the design flaw he'd hope for. He bypassed another level and glanced up at the time. He wouldn’t finish the job tonight, but that was okay: it had waited ten years, it could wait an extra week to ensure the job was done right. His general had been adamant about that – better to do the job once and correctly, than botch it. There would be no second chance. He waited, and the system confirmed the first tier of laser sensors, whilst still picking up movement and set up to pass the daily checks on them, were deactivated from the central weaponry.

The Corporal stirred beside him and Spence put his workings to the side. He picked up an entertainment unit, stuck it in his ear, and looked, to all intents and purposes, the bored security personnel he purported to be.

 

[Hex]

Captain Jack Spence stood in the silent tower, his weapon holstered beside him. The landing he was on was about half way up a plain iron staircase, hugging the inside wall of the tower. The walls were black rock, shot through with purple glass, and they bristled with sensors and lasers. He looked down to the floor below, the only exit via a narrow entranceway and through a portal activated from the tower. Once on the surface, the atmosphere was so thin a mask was required to cross to any ship.


He glanced to the top of the stairwell, [I stopped here. I'm not massively interested in the description -- I don't know anything about Jack Spence except he has a weapon and he likes describing things. There is no tension, and nothing to keep me reading. I have this reaction often with published books, though. Generally, I'll skip down to where there's dialogue or action or something happens, and if it turns out to have mattered I might come back and read the descriptiony bit later (probably won't though). I didn't like the "He glanced..." as an excuse to describe what he was looking at either, and when I understood that the next paragraph was going to be more description rather than something happening, I gave up.]easily another fifty steps above and frowned at the locked door.

####

And since I feel I should join in if I'm prepared to be savage, here's something of mine:


The light is hot on my face; the air thick with the drifting fur of cotton. Just now, right before the dance, I'm caught in this razor-edge pause of taut muscle, sweat-damp skin, the floor warm beneath my feet.

I know without thinking that the others stand round me, poised and silent, waiting too.

Elyr meets my eyes and I feel the grin stretch my lips. His stamp shakes the floor -- a pulse, a heartbeat, a call -- and I let it take me, move my body somewhere else, where everything is muscle and beat, where everything is the others around me, moving, our stamping feet, the rhythm of our hands, the music that lets us dance, the beat that sets us free.

I divide; some part of me I have no name for tears from my dancing, sweating body. The hall fades before my eyes and I become a warrior sweeping through the desert, past the withered trees to the black stone wall that reaches as far and high as my eyes can see. The wall's not whole -- here, in my section, there are stones loose, two or three broken

Beleth has reached far; the knowledge chills me.

Yet not even Beleth can compete with the power burning through my muscles, fuelled by the energy of the dance and when I stretch out my dream hands, the magic bursts brilliant yellow, warm as sunlight, onto the broken sections. I step close to the wall, feel on my unclothed skin the cool burn of what lies behind the stones, and press my hands against them. Light spreads from my fingers and shapes the stones, melting one with another, closing the gaps that might permit Beleth access.

Dimly, I feel my body twist, leap, the rhythmic thunder of fifty feet landing at once, and the section is reinforced. Hah! Let Him come this way again.

I pull myself back to the factory floor, to the machines huddled in their coverings of cotton dust, and let the dance become all -- build power for the others, letting them take from me. When I leap again, it feels like I might never come down, like this dance may never stop.
Then the bell rings. The dream shatters.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Elyr meets my eyes and I feel the grin stretch my lips.

I got to here and I bet you know why I stopped - the I feel took me right out of it. (Although I know the scene and love it. )

 

[Hex]

I know

You critted this scene for me and said so then! It didn't seem fair to post a post-crit one, though.

 

[Boneman]

T'would be better anonymous, because I'll always read on for someone I know, but this is where I lost interest:

He went into the small control room off the landing and looked at the monitors in the surveillance room, which he had no access to, but could see nothing against their secured visors.

Too long, and the images (two different rooms, telling us he had no access and the 'secured visors') meant it was not clear enough for me.

For Hex (you do like the word 'feel'... what does that say about you?) I got here:

I divide; some part of me I have no name for tears from my dancing, sweating body

Couldn't understand why she had no name for tears, and then the rest of the sentence crashed in flames, so it was my misunderstanding of tears as in ripped apart, whereas I read lacrimal emissions...

 

[HareBrain]

Trying to treat these as though they were anonymous ...

Captain Jack Spence stood in the silent tower, his weapon holstered beside him. [Beside him? At his side, surely? Now looking for further reasons to be put off: tolerance 60%.] The landing he was on was about half way up a plain iron staircase, hugging the inside wall of the tower. The walls were black rock, shot through with purple glass, and they bristled with sensors and lasers. He looked down to the floor below, the only exit via a narrow entranceway and through a portal activated from the tower. Once on the surface, the atmosphere was so thin a mask was required to cross to any ship. [Like purple glass, but lots of complex description. Tolerance 40%]

He glanced to the top of the stairwell, easily another fifty steps above and frowned at the locked door. [More description, and not rooted in story or character yet. 30%, and skimming to next paragraph] It was smooth, pure white, and beside it blinked an ID pad. No one in the tower could open that door: in an emergency, the auto bots in the small apartment beyond would send a request for one of the two people who could open it. He’d been up to the door, once, ostensibly to repair a sensor, and there was no noise from beyond it, nothing to tell him if the occupant was alive. He went into the small control room off the landing and looked at the monitors in the surveillance room, which he had no access to, but could see nothing against their secured visors.

He looked around the guard room. [0%, out] Beside him, sleeping, sat Corporal Baker, his habitual guard companion. Spence glanced at the time, calculated dosage against Baker’s weight. Another hour at most. He sat at the bank of monitors and began to work through the security system. He worked quickly, with confidence. He may hold the position of Captain here, but – he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and rubbed the false skin on his arm, so perfectly grafted it had passed all security checks. Under it lay the tattoo showing what he really was: Star Ops. He cleared the first level of security, being careful not to leave any evidence and smiled: his intelligence was right – the system had the design flaw he'd hope for. He bypassed another level and glanced up at the time. He wouldn’t finish the job tonight, but that was okay: it had waited ten years, it could wait an extra week to ensure the job was done right. His general had been adamant about that – better to do the job once and correctly, than botch it. There would be no second chance. He waited, and the system confirmed the first tier of laser sensors, whilst still picking up movement and set up to pass the daily checks on them, were deactivated from the central weaponry.

The Corporal stirred beside him and Spence put his workings to the side. He picked up an entertainment unit, stuck it in his ear, and looked, to all intents and purposes, the bored security personnel he purported to be.

The light is hot on my face; the air thick with the drifting fur of cotton. [Aaargh! Unacceptable (to me) use of semi-colon. 30%] Just now, right before the dance, I'm caught in this razor-edge pause of taut muscle, sweat-damp skin, the floor warm beneath my feet.

I know without thinking that the others stand round me, poised and silent, waiting too.

Elyr meets my eyes and I feel the grin stretch my lips ["feel the grin", this and the previous semi-colon gives me bit of an amateurish feeling. 20% -- I'll keep going but ready to abandon]. His stamp shakes the floor -- a pulse, a heartbeat, a call -- and I let it take me, move my body somewhere else, where everything is muscle and beat, where everything is the others around me, moving, our stamping feet, the rhythm of our hands, the music that lets us dance, the beat that sets us free. [Bit vague, but I'm hanging in here because I sense something interesting. 30%]

I divide; some part of me I have no name for tears from my dancing, sweating body. The hall fades before my eyes and I become a warrior sweeping through the desert, past the withered trees to the black stone wall that reaches as far and high as my eyes can see. [Ooh, what is this wall? 60%] The wall's not whole -- here, in my section, there are stones loose, two or three broken

Beleth has reached far; the knowledge chills me.

Yet not even Beleth can compete with the power burning through my muscles, fuelled by the energy of the dance and when I stretch out my dream hands, the magic bursts brilliant yellow, warm as sunlight, onto the broken sections. I step close to the wall, feel on my unclothed skin the cool burn of what lies behind the stones, and press my hands against them. Light spreads from my fingers and shapes the stones, melting one with another, closing the gaps that might permit Beleth access.

Dimly, I feel my body twist, leap, the rhythmic thunder of fifty feet landing at once, and the section is reinforced. Hah! Let Him come this way again. [After a shaky start, this is getting good. 70%]

I pull myself back to the factory floor [90%], to the machines huddled in their coverings of cotton dust, and let the dance become all -- build power for the others, letting them take from me. When I leap again, it feels like I might never come down, like this dance may never stop.
Then the bell rings. The dream shatters. [Waaaah, 10% A dream? Seriously? I'd read on to see how the next section is, but this is a disappointment]

 

[Colbey Frost]

Captain Jack Spence stood in the silent tower, his weapon holstered beside him. The landing he was on was about half way up a plain iron staircase. (I stopped here. I'm sorry. Maybe because of the genres I like to read. A landing is a normal thing and 'plain iron staircase' made me lose interest. Maybe because it was plain?)

 

[Hex]

Interesting...

(it's not a dream -- I seem to have been a bit lax with my terminology, also my semi-colons).

Argh to the tears, Boneman.


EDIT: I can see the temptation to start with a dream :s

@Mouse -- You read a whole story of mine in fpp! 60,000 words of it. Now, more than ever, I appreciate the sacrifice

---

If anyone would like to do this again anonymously, I don't mind being the person who posts the excerpts!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

And hee to tolerance levels. So far, you've all got further than me with mine (which I ditched as a prologue three years ago) - I stopped at the holster line.

 

[HareBrain]

(it's not a dream -- I seem to have been a bit lax with my terminology

I did wonder, since I didn't think you would start with a dream, but I wasn't allowing myself to take that into account. Combination with bell (as in alarm clock) wasn't helpful in that respect.

 

[Mouse]

I'm at work and thought it only fair I log in to tell where I stopped reading...

As I know, and love, both Hex and springs writing, I'll just pretend I don't know you guys.

Captain Jack Spence stood in the silent tower, his weapon holstered beside him. The landing he was on was about half way up a plain iron staircase, hugging the inside wall of the tower. The walls were black rock, shot through with purple glass, and they bristled with sensors and lasers. He looked down to the floor below, the only exit via a narrow entranceway and through a portal activated from the tower. Once on the surface, the atmosphere was so thin a mask was required to cross to any ship.

He glanced to the top of the stairwell, easily another fifty steps above and frowned at the locked door. It was smooth, pure white, and beside it blinked an ID pad.

Stopped there. To be honest, it doesn't even feel like you. Too much describing something I'm not interested in and not enough actually doing anything.

The light is hot on my face;

I stopped dead there. My brain went first person present, nooooooo! Then it went into a mini rant.

I might post the first snippet of my current WiP when I'm home from work later. I'm afraid I don't know it from memory!

 

[Juliana]

Springs: first two paragraphs were very descriptive. There was a thread of intrigue in there, but it needs to be stronger. By the time I finished the third paragraph, I was interested in the story, but I would need to get there first.

Hex: very intriguing; good to know its not a dream, though, as that bothered me too. Also (and this is pretty minor), in the first line, 'drifting fur of cotton' pulled me out for a bit as I've never heard of cotton fur. I found I went back to reread that and it broke the flow a bit.

 

[Juliana]

I'm going to post something new I'm playing with; it's middle grade, though, I hope that's okay?

--------

Oscar Miller dragged his feet all the way down Butternut Avenue. “You’re so lucky!” his friends always said. “You’re so, so lucky.”

But Oscar didn’t think he was lucky. He didn’t want to live in a 200-year-old apartment above a haunted bookstore. He hadn’t asked for a mother who was a part-time witch, mixing up potions in the kitchen along with batches of half-baked brownies. He had never said he wanted a mad scientist for a father, carrying out experiments in the basement, or a little sister in a hand-me-down lab coat several sizes too big.

Oscar just wanted to be a normal twelve-year-old. He wanted parents with ordinary jobs and a sister who wasn’t always sketching scientific diagrams on scraps of paper. He wanted a regular home, like his friend Steve, whose father was an accountant and whose mom ran the local Brownie pack.

When he reached the Magical Spectagical Bookstore, he stood for a long time outside, pretending to admire the new window display. The old-fashioned hanging sign with its picture of a bubbling cauldron swung gently in the afternoon breeze. Oscar sighed and pushed the door open.

“Hiya son! How was school?” Dad stood behind the sales counter, gift-wrapping a book for old Mrs. Carter, who beamed at Oscar in a friendly sort of way. The store was cool and dim after the bright sunlight outside. Spotlights lit up the bookshelves making scattered pools of light. A soft, jazzy bit of music filled the darker corners. It was very peaceful. The noisier customers, the families and school friends, didn’t come round on weekdays. Oscar liked Saturdays best, when his parents were busy in the store, and the hustle and bustle made life with the Miller’s seem almost like anyone else’s.

 

[Hex]

That kept me going all the way through, Juliana -- I'd have read more very happily.

I thought things slowed a little here: "When he reached the Magical Spectagical..." because I didn't know that was his home so I didn't immediately pick up the relevance of his standing outside etc.

 

[Mouse]

Hex - some of yours was first present and some first past, wasn't it? I like first past. First present feels too much like I'm being spoken down to, though. Anyway, Ink is brill and as I trust you know what you're doing, I kept reading! Whereas with these wee bits, if I'd not known that was you, I'd have just put it back on the shelf.

Juliana - I read all the way to the end on yours. I liked the voice. Didn't have a clue what a 'Brownie pack' was though.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

This, by the way, is what I replaced the prologue with (I should also have said it was from a second book, but it should still hook I think.) I struggle to get this pov voice and played with changing it in case it was weak, and then decided I liked this version better. Let's see if my instincts were right.

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As the ship’s engines shut down Averrine Pettina looked through the small viewing window. Outside, the moon’s surface of black rock, shot through with purple glass, led to a tower which seemed to have been organically formed rather than built. Remote-activated weaponry swung to focus on the ship.



The door to her cabin opened, revealing her captor. Despite the innocence of his features his blue eyes had a cold edge as he held out a breathing mask. She didn’t reach for it.



“We have two ways we can do this,” he said. “You can put the mask on and walk to the tower. Or I can have you dragged to it. I really don’t care.”


She didn’t reply, still not sure why Lichio le Payne was escorting her. She hadn’t seen her b*****d son, Kare, since they day he’d overcome her, taking both her empire and her powers. Her demands to meet with him had been ignored. She’d stopped asking when le Payne had made it clear that there were other, worse, conditions which could – would – be applied if she continued. Looking at him, grim-faced, holding a gun in her presence - in her presence - it was hard to reconcile him as the man whose mind she had invaded, terrorising him until he’d knelt in fealty before her.



If she had her power he’d do so again. If. She searched her mind, as she had every day of her imprisonment, and found only the hard wall where it had once been. The block her son had placed was seamless and inaccessible. She glanced out at the hard rock landscape, and reached for the mask. Le Payne watched her put it on, and indicated for her to leave the cabin. He prodded her with his gun – prodded her, like a cow – to the front of the ship, and pulled his own mask on. At the bottom of the gangway a small squad of soldiers waited and anger rose in her - not red and urgent, but white, slow burning, made to last and endure.



Le Payne forced her from the ship, holding her elbow firmly as she took four paces to a gaping hole in the rock before them. She stepped into it, descending a short flight of stairs to an antechamber. As the portal above sealed, artificial light came up, reflecting off the masks, giving the soldiers a faceless quality that almost frightened her. She pushed the fear away, refusing to be cowed by this boy and his squad. A moment later, le Payne removed his mask.



“Air’s stabilised,” he said and his men removed theirs. Averrine waited a moment before doing the same. Le Payne took her mask, setting it to the side while his squad moved into the main body of the tower. She looked at the mask, knowing she was trapped without it, and back at le Payne, who watched her, his eyes missing nothing. She stepped forward, towards the door into the tower.


“Wait.” His voice was firm, showing no emotion. She thought of defying him and stepping through, challenging his authority over her.


“I’ll have you restrained if you do,” he said.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm going to post something new I'm playing with; it's middle grade, though, I hope that's okay?

--------

Oscar Miller dragged his feet all the way down Butternut Avenue. “You’re so lucky!” his friends always said. “You’re so, so lucky.”

But Oscar didn’t think he was lucky. He didn’t want to live in a 200-year-old apartment above a haunted bookstore. He hadn’t asked for a mother who was a part-time witch, mixing up potions in the kitchen along with batches of half-baked brownies. He had never said he wanted a mad scientist for a father, carrying out experiments in the basement, or a little sister in a hand-me-down lab coat several sizes too big.

Oscar just wanted to be a normal twelve-year-old. He wanted parents with ordinary jobs and a sister who wasn’t always sketching scientific diagrams on scraps of paper. He wanted a regular home, like his friend Steve, whose father was an accountant and whose mom ran the local Brownie pack.

When he reached the Magical Spectagical Bookstore, he stood for a long time outside, pretending to admire the new window display. The old-fashioned hanging sign with its picture of a bubbling cauldron swung gently in the afternoon breeze. Oscar sighed and pushed the door open.

“Hiya son! How was school?” Dad stood behind the sales counter, gift-wrapping a book for old Mrs. Carter, who beamed at Oscar in a friendly sort of way. The store was cool and dim after the bright sunlight outside. Spotlights lit up the bookshelves making scattered pools of light. A soft, jazzy bit of music filled the darker corners. It was very peaceful. The noisier customers, the families and school friends, didn’t come round on weekdays. Oscar liked Saturdays best, when his parents were busy in the store, and the hustle and bustle made life with the Miller’s seem almost like anyone else’s.

I read to the end happily, but I did start to find the last two paragraphs a little slow and would like it to kick off soon.

 

[Juliana]

Springs, I didn't immediately recognize it (only read book 1) and it still hooked me nicely. I read the entire section with pleasure. First paragraph works well.

Thanks for the comments on mine; I was wondering if there was too much description. Springs, good to know I am at a fine line between okay and starting to bore - will keep that in mind (this is very much a new wip).

 

[Colbey Frost]

Remote-activated weaponry swung to focus on the ship. (Could be a nice opening line.)

EDIT: I like this one over the other one for sure.