Opening a Book with a Hook

Hi Everyone, Debra Clopton here and so very happy to be at Seekerville once more! I brought my flip flops, my manuscript drafts to edit (because it seems I can’t go to the beach without having a deadline due lol) 

I also brought along some Key Lime pie straight from Key West because I just got back from Marathon Florida on Sunday night. It’s the middle island in the Keys, the one right before the 7 mile bridge and Key West. We go there every year so the guys can fish and I get to hang out in the boat some and write on the beach most of the time. And for the last 2 years worked on edits that were due. Oh and I ate Key Lime Pie! 

The beach is a great get away though, even if I am working part of the time and I always come back refreshed. I mean with all that blue water surrounding me how can I not? It also gave me great ideas for my novella that comes out in August called of course AN AUGUST BRIDE. In that novella I got to mix beach, cowboys, weddings Tarpon fishing all together for what I believe is a very fun, entertaining read. More on that later! Now I need to teach something…and talk about my new release that I’m crazy about!

I really wasn’t sure what learning twist I wanted to use in this blog post since I have really had an amazing, fast paced, crazy 8 months of writing frenzy which has blessed me with 6 releases from Jan 20014-Jan 2015, did I mention crazy, really crazy. So there is a lot to talk about and as you can see I NEEDED a vacation in the Keys.   

What I’ve settled on is talking about opening a book with a hook. Lol yes, I’ve been fishing for a week and hope you fall for this hook, line and sinker!

I LOVE openings. They are so important and I for one don’t read a book if it doesn’t hook me instantly. So it stands to reason that I always strive to hook my reader immediately while also making my openings different. It needs to stand out from the rest.

For me, this comes naturally since many times this is how I first meet my main character. He or she pops into my mind doing something odd or involved in something that I need to get them out of. And this hooks me. I figure if it hooks me then it will hook my reader…the only problem is that the characters don’t always fill me in on what exactly is going on. Which for the reader is a good thing because it keeps them reading. For me, the author, it leaves me trying to figure out what’s going on and thus the process begins. And as a pantser who does very vague plotting before a book this is what stirs my mind.

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So, today, I’d rather show a little now instead of tell. My new novella A COWBOY FOR KATIE is in this month’s release FOUR WEDDINGS AND A KISS anthology with Mary Connealy, Margaret Brownley and Robin Lee Hatcher and it just got TOP PICK from RT Magazine and was a joy, joy, joy to be collaborating together on. We were looking for “unlikely” brides. And I’m pretty good with unlikely but I wanted something really unlikely for this historical. And I thought of Crazy Cora from one of my favorite movies, QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER. I loved the backstory that drove that character, the emotion, heartache and pain and the longing for love and redemption. And I knew I wanted to try in some way to create a similar character. Instantly Crazy Katie Pearl popped into my head as if she’d just been waiting for me to acknowledge her. And here is how she hooked me. This is the opening scene of A COWBOY FOR KATIE. This is all she gave me when she appeared in my mind. I wasn’t even sure I should actually open the book with this scene because I thought readers might think she was a little too odd. But this is what hooked me and so at the last minute I included it as the opening when I sent it in to my editor and she loved it. What this scene does is draws us into this character—at least I believe it does, you tell me. Here we go:

A COWBOY FOR KATIE

She might be as crazy as they said but Katie Pearl had learned that most men were light between the ears. She wondered which one of them she was gonna have to shoot today.

It wasn’t as if she wanted to, but if they came snoopin' around , she was willin’ to oblige them. 

“There ain’t no sense pretending you like this, Katie Pearl, no sense at all,” Katie told herself. From her perch on the wagon seat she could see the dusty buildings of town. And as Myrtle May pulled the wagon round the bend in the road Katie’s insides tensed up.

“You’re a good horse, Myrtle May. Yes you are.” She was glad to have the comfort of her old horse with her as the fire in the pit of her stomach informed her trouble was near.

Town was trouble and there was no getting around it.

Most folks in town crossed the street and walked on the other side these days when they saw her. At least if they were smart they did.

Especially if it was any of them sodbusters who’d recently come callin’ for her hand in marriage. “No siree, Katie Pearl,” she spoke aloud again, her words reassuring to her. “Them sorry no goods have seen your fingers itchin’ on the pearl handles of your Colt and some seen the end of the barrel pointing at them too.” It was true, fools. “You don’t take kindly to none of the hogwash they’ve been trying to sell you.”

Sighing long and hard she shook her head. “No, I don’t. Ain’t that so, Myrtle May?”

Myrtle didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise Katie. Her horse was a little on the quiet side. And that was okay. Katie didn’t mind the quiet—though she sure missed conversations with her pa. She just plain missed her pa.

It was just her now. And though things were fuzzy in her head since the tornado, she was making it.  If only she didn’t have to go to town for supplies.

She tugged her pa’s hat low over her eyes and gritted her jaw down tight.

“You can do this, Katie Pearl. Yes you can,” she assured herself, then mumbled, “Long as you don’t have to shoot somebody you’ll be just fine.” 

Okay, what do you think? This was how Katie came to me. I knew nothing else at that point. I didn’t know why she thought she was going to have to shoot a cowboy. I knew her pa was dead from a tornado and I knew that town made her nervous and folks walked on the other side of the street. And I knew that she found comfort in talking to herself and her horse. Why?

It was something that I had to find out. I included it as the opening because it made me care about this character and I knew something had happened to her and I wanted to find out what it was and I wanted to fix it. I am after all a self-described “fixer” that is what drives me. I love this story and Katie Pearl is a character that will go down as one of my all time favorites and I hope you’ll want to read her story. Reviews have been great so far and I’m so pleased.

Now, in my upcoming AN AUGUST BRIDE a similar experience happened. I knew I was writing a story set in Corpus Christi, Texas and I needed a cowboy and a fun premise and a beach wedding. That was all I knew. Well, I had recently been at an event and there was a woman wearing a tight, gold sequined halter top evening dress that made me think of a mermaid. Obviously, that dress stuck in my mind because when I put beach, cowboy, and damsel in distress together I saw “mermaid.”

Here we go, ANAUGUST BRIDE:

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Kelsey Wilcox hated weddings.

But, she loved her cousin. Loved her enough to endure a weekend of wedding torture.

Leave it to Tiff, though, to drag out the agony, opting for two days of wedding “fun”, starting with this fancy rehearsal party, complete with music and dancing. And romance. 

Fun—like a toothache.

Kelsey tugged at her gold sequined dress and struggled to readjust her attitude—the floor length dress wasn’t helping. She’d found it on the seventy-five percent off rack, refusing to pay more for something she’d never wear again. The thing itched, weighed a good ten to fifteen pounds and was totally not Kelsey.

But Tiff had loved it.

So, here Kelsey stood feeling like a total fake.

Come on, Kels, attitude adjustment, remember.

Right. Kelsey fixed her gaze on the vivid, orange sun beginning to lower over the sparkling, blue Corpus Christi Bay. She loved balmy August evenings.

Loved walking barefoot across the beach, the touch of the fading sun on her skin and the soothing  sensations of warm sugar sand sifting through her toes. She drew on that now—needing every ounce of calm she could find before heading into the wedding party.

Good girl, calm, relaxed. Better, much better.

  

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Debra here again, so this was how I met Kelsey and I hope that she draws readers in like she did me. We as readers each have our own preference on what hooks us though. So what hooks me might not hook you. But what you learn is that your openings will be true to your voice. And that is what builds your readership because they recognize your voice in the first sentences of your books. 

Do you see the similarities of these two openings? One is historical and one is contemporary but both heroines are involved in something that is causing them angst and building conflict. 

Okay, so I so wanted to show you my heroes and how they react to these heroines but space won’t allow it. I will tell you that Treb Rayburn is about to be totally confused when he meets Katie. And Brent Corbin is about to believe he sees a drowning mermaid when Kelsey gets in trouble. Both were so fun to write.

So this is what I know:

1.                          I’m not the greatest teacher in the world because I do fly by the seat of my pants so much, but readers do tend to enjoy flying with me so it works and I am hoping I have conveyed something here that might help you.

2.                          Start your book with something that hooks you. These two openings did that to me. And the action that came in finding the answers drove me as a writer and I believe will pull my readers all the way through to the end. (of course I know story structure so even if you fly by the seat of your pants you must learn the bones of a novel too)

3.                          Make sure that when you hook the reader that there is enough there to set the hook so that the story reels you all the way in to the end. If not, ad more.

Okay, hope I helped, hope you are enjoying the Key Lime Pie and I’m here to answer any questions you might have—in between bites of this tangy, good stuff. 

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I’m working on revisions of my new single title for Harper Collins that comes out Jan 2015 and will be sharing the fantastic cover soon. Also some exciting news coming about An August Bride that I hope to get to share. 

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Now I have to get back to the first draft of book 2 in my New Horizons series, I have a heroine who is wearing a fluffy white rabbit suit in July heat and struggling with a flat tire on the side of a lonesome Texas road. How she got there I do not know…but I am about to find out and so is my hero Rafe Masterson…Did I mention that I love my life, this is the best career ever!!!