Monday, October 26, 2009

That's What Hooks A Reader Author Pat Bertram

How cool is this! Pat Bertram is visiting The Haunted City Writer here in St Augustine Florida as part of her worldwide blog tour promoting her new release  DAUGHTER AM I
Welcome aboard Pat!

 Murdered grandparents? Octogenarian (former) mobsters? GOLD? Good Stuff! Read the excerpt & give it a test ride. Today Pat is going to post about what hooks a reader. Now pay attention. Don't slouch.

See y'all at the bottom of the page.



The age of writing long descriptive passages (or even short ones) at the beginning of a novel is long past. Today people want to be drawn immediately into the story without wading through unnecessary verbiage. An editor might look at the first five pages before tossing aside your manuscript, but potential customers will give you a mere twenty seconds to draw them in. Once you have caught their attention, they might read a little further, and perhaps they will even buy the book. They certainly will not wade through the first five, ten, fifty pages until they get to “the good part.”

That “good part” must be right up front, especially if you’re a first-time writer. That’s all you have going for you — the ability to get off to a fast start and capture the reader’s attention. Your name certainly won’t do it; no one knows who you are yet. Your credentials might help, but only to establish your credibility after a potential reader has been hooked. And they will never be hooked by your ability to turn a clever phrase.


So what will hook the reader? A character. Always a character. No one reads a book for a description of the weather, a place, or an issue. They don’t even want a description of the character. They want to meet him, to see life through his eyes, to bond with him. They want to know what he wants, what his driving force is. And they want to know who or what he’s in conflict with.

Without conflict, there is no story, but without a character for the reader to care about, there is no story either. Character and conflict are inextricably combined, and together they create the tension necessary to sustain a story. I know you think it’s okay to let the tension rise slowly, which it is, but the tension level at the beginning must be high enough to let the reader know something is going on.

A practiced writer knows how to adjust the tension by temporarily letting up on the main conflict and interjecting intermediate conflicts, or even adding inner conflicts to shadow the outer ones, but all conflicts must be somebody’s conflict. For example, you might be concerned about war, but seeing a specific soldier dealing with his experiences makes you care, maybe even makes you cry. And you will want to know what becomes of him.

That’s what hooks a reader.


Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.





Geez.... Now that's what I call a blog post.

Have a snappy, grab ya by the throat opening for a work in progress? Somethin' that's gonna make folks want to read more? Do you have a comment on this topic that you'd want to share to kick off some lively debate? Maybe some brave souls would include some ideas or examples in the reply section & we can all make fun of ya. Nah, wouldn't do that. Post a comment that's gonna make me want to give somethin' away this week. I do that sometimes - 'cause I'm JaxPop.

Thanks for stopping by. Now go buy Pat's book! Buy all of 'em!