Friends Don't Let Friends Write Books Without Hooks. Episode 343

Hooks, tropes, high concept. Comps. The publishing world tosses those phrases around like juggling balls, and I for one (as usual it’s KJ here) had a hard time understanding them for ages, especially the idea of a hook. But now I get it. A hook, in short, is the thing that gets someone—agent, editor, reader, movie-goer, etc—to say, following a one or two sentence description of the book: SOLD. Fiction, non-fiction: same deal. So a hook COULD be high-concept. (What if a kid wished to be Big? What if you woke up and discovered your whole life was a TV show with you as the unwitting star?). It could also be a mix-and-match situation with a pair of comps or a single comp (Cujo, but a cat). Or it can steal from something high concept: The Princess Diaries, but with the Japanese royal family (Tokyo Ever After). Groundhog Day, but in Brooklyn with a girl in the ‘80’s whose dad is now sick (This Time Tomorrow). Sometimes the hook is right there in the title. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Dial A for Aunties. The Gift of Failure.The thing about a hook is that it’s rarely the full story. It’s a “come for the X, stay for the Y situation”: you pick up the book because you love a good restaurant reality show family battle, but then it’s the small town story that keeps you reading. Or it’s just that there’s a lot more to the story—as Sarina says, the whole “but then what happens?” A hook does not make a book—and a lack of hook does not mean a bad book. It’s just a whole lot harder to tell you what a book without a hook is about, and therefore to sell it. It can be done. But I, for one, am not doing it again. Have you written a book with a hook—or without one? Wondering if you’ve got hold of a hook or a trope? Is there a particular hook (hello, “but in publishing”) that always gets you? We’re chatting in the comments—or head for the chat itself to see what else we’re talking about. You can also find us on Facebook.Books and Links from the Pod:The S**t No One Tells You About Writing PodcastA Very Merry Meet Cute, Julie Murphy & Sierra SimoneThe Bromance Book Club, Lyssa Kay AdamsIn a Holidaze, Christina LaurenBeach Read, Emily HenryPests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany BrookshireBeaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila PhilipListen, World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman, Julia Scheeres & Allison GilbertThe Chain, Adrian McKintyThe Plot, Jean Hanff KorelitzKarin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Girl, ForgottenEpisode 71 Building a Relationship with Your Bookstore#AmReadingJess: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila PhilipPests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany BrookshireGhosts of the Orphanage (March 2023), Christine KenneallyKJ: A Very Merry Bromance, Lyssa Kay AdamsAll I Want for Christmas, Maggie KnoxWitchmark, C.L. PolkSarina: Pieces of Her, Karin SlaughterThe Night Shift, Alex FinlayHEY NOVELISTS—Did you finish NaNoWriMo? Would you like to know what to do next with that pile of words you worked so hard to create? Here’s a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches dedicated to walking you through the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision—and they have put together a host of free resources to get you started. Check out  www.nanonowwhat.com to learn more about these fantastic book coaches and how they can get you from NaNo success to a draft that’s ready to pitch or publish.Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe