Little Hooks Catch Bigger Fish

Last week I wrote about the importance of establishing 'Normal World' before having something super-dramatic happen.  When I give this as feedback people often say, 'But I've been told to start with a hook, that's why I started with the car crash/presumed dead father turning up/announcement of pregnancy.'

But the event itself is not a hook.  The hook is the promise that a dramatic event is in the offing. 

Think about these scenarios:  

1.  You are told that thousands of people have just died in an earthquake in Paraguay.  

2.  You are told that your neighbour has been in a hit-and-run incident and is in a coma.

We are upset by both these events,  but the chances are that the one that really affects you is the second because you know your neighbour and also because it could have been you.  You are directly involved.  It's not the size of the drama that matters, it's the degree of involvement. 

So, if we were writing this, we'd need to establish the characters, whether they were the neighbour or a Paraguayan.  This sets up the dramatic event - remember, it's knowing the characters that makes it dramatic, otherwise it's just another headline in the papers.

But the event is not the hook.  The hook is a promise that there will be an event.  

I haven't watched Casualty for ages, but it always started with the viewer seeing a series of characters doing things - crossing the street while talking in a mobile phone, about to climb a ladder to fix a roof tile, getting into a car saying 'It's all right, I'm not over the limit.'  Part of the fun was guessing which one was going to end up in hospital. That was the hook.

Hooks are usually small.  

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.' 

(From Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.) Where or what is Manderley?  Why is the character dreaming of it?  Then we learn that Manderley is a ruin - why?  What's happened? And all the time we're learning how the place is ruined, we're also learning that the narrator knew it when it was a great house.  We want to know what happened - that's the hook. 

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..." I probably don't have to carry on for you to recognise this one from Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen).  The same is true for:

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.) 

These are not dramatic events.  But they're promises of what is to come.  We know that P&P is going to be about getting married well, and AK is going to be about unhappy families.  Detective stories start with the body - dramatic, yes, but the hook is that we're going to discover who dunnit.  It's not about the body.  

The order runs: Hook (the promise), the characters (so we care), then the event.  Remember: The hook is the promise of the event, not the event itself.