Hooks

I can't find the file where I save my practice hooks, so I whipped up a few on the spot. As my interests tend toward fantasy, supernatural and the weird, these reflect that.

As Doreen walked down the aisle next to her father, she looked at the love of her life, and saw Death's superimposed over his face.
Ok. Little wordy, could be better.

Doreen looked through her gauzy veil and saw Death's face instead of her fiance's.
Shorter, stronger, better. But the usage of look and saw weakens it.

 As Doreen lifted her veil, her eyes met Death's face in place of her husband's.
This is much better. It uses different, stronger action verbs, and is more interesting overall. It tells the reader that a wedding is taking place, and begs the question of what's going on. Is she marrying Death himself who had been posing as a mortal man? Or is this some kind of omen she's seeing? What's going on?

This hook needs editing and polishing, but if I were going to start a story, I'd go with this.

Another set of hooks.
Yvonne ran down the path.
And??
Yvonne was out jogging and ...
Passive verbs - avoid them if you can! It takes practice to break the habit of using passive verbs.

Yvonne jogged down a path through the woods and a dog tackled her.
Better. But kinda boring. However, it's ok to have two or even three sentence hook sometimes.

Yvonne jogged through the wood and something tackled her. She crashed with a yelp, and then heard, "I need help!" There was nobody else around, except for a big red dog.
More interesting. Yvonne is out jogging, gets tackled by a dog and it apparently talks. It still needs polishing, but this is the best hook out of the bunch.

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