Oh What a Beautiful Friday...With a Side Order of Hooks (For Writers, That Is)

The Spring around here has been...confused. We'll get a run of 3 or 4 days of nice, warm, shorts-wearing weather, then BAMMO! Back to winter. Um. I'm tired of winter. I'm ready for spring. Mostly, I'm ready to eat out on the patio, under my wonderful new patio cover. Today, beautiful sunshine but dark clouds on the horizon, and now it's creeping my way. More wispy clouds in the sky obscuring the sunlight than actual sunlight. This may call for drastic measures. I may need to bake some brownies to dispel the gloom.

So. Was planning on doing a writing prompt today, but my brain is occupied with mundane Life things---errands, laundry, the realization I have nothing in the house fit for Easter Dinner. Seems to stifle the creativity. Go figure.

Instead, I'm IMing with Sherry (big surprise), talking about the Bat Retreat that I hosted at my house over last weekend and what we need to do to further our goals for our writing careers, such as they are. One of the Bats gave a workshop about Hooks. She went faster than I could write, so I have the types of hooks written down, but not much description about them. However, looking at them, the meanings are mostly apparent---I could figure it out if I sat down just applied myself. (Again, however, today, I have what I'm going to call "Life Calls Brain"/"Life Calls Syndrome" and leave it at that.) I tried googling to maybe find the info Tina Bat used in her presentation, but so far, no luck. What I've found is good information, however, and I'm going to share the links here, with a brief overview of what each site offers.

The Writer Today blog post: 10 Writing Hooks. Ten suggestions for catching the reader's interest from the start.

Open Your Book With a Hook (by Barbara Dawson Smith): Concrete examples of hooks used by BNRomanceA's. I love Barbara's comment: "Novels are about people, not lovely scenery!" So, so, so true.

Hooks-Writing a Romance Novel (by Christie Craig and Faye Hughes): Terrific for the beginning writer, or the writer who's been around a while and wants a refresher. Good tips with solid examples.


Writing Hooks (Not Crooks): Discusses hooks vs "crooks"---the old bait and switch---luring the reader into the novel with a "hook" that really has nothing to do with the over all story (thereby making it a "crook" instead).

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As for the writing prompts. Nice idea. I would like to continue, but I can already tell, and I'm not very far into it, that doing it 3 times a week is just not going to happen. I think I'm going to scale it back to Tuesday and Thursday for writing Prompt Days. Would like to keep up with this crazy thing, however, better than I've done in the recent past, so I'm going to designate Friday as "Link Day" with a central theme and links to webbies that address the theme. Next Friday, the 29th, "Plot Points."

Until next week, Happy Easter to all who celebrate.

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