Hangers Aren't Just for Closets

Remember when I posted about hookers? Actually, it was just about good hooks for the first chapter of your novel, but hookers got your attention, did it not? Today we are jumping to the end of the chapter and seeing what grabs you... the hanger. It is that pivotal sentence that decides whether or not you keep on reading. Hopefully, the storyline is so good that you keep on reading even if your hanger is only mediocre, because I have turned a lot of pages over the last few days and discovered that even the best writers don't always pull off excellent hooks or hangers every chapter. Instead, they rely on that little thing called character development and strong storyline to push the whole thing along. However, it never hurts to start and end your chapters with punch. At least sometimes....



So, Falling for Fiction and Cassie Mae are running a bloghop/contest looking for submissions of our best Hangers of our current Work In Progress. The top three get judged and winners get selected. Works get critiqued. It is kinda sorta a big deal. Anyone who has even this tip of this iceberg figured out understands that they need lots of eyes on their writing in order to whip it into shape. Edit Edit Edit is the name of this game. And if you can get someone to look at it to help you actually figure out some of your excesses, plotting errors, etc. you can really start to make things happen with your WIP. So moving on to my Hangers for this Event...


I had no idea what I was going to tell him, but the truth was out of the question.


He was so solid. I felt so amorphous. I hoped that what he had was contagious.


It made me so mad I nearly socked him in the eye.


and just for fun:
Was that really all that was left to me? I realized that it was.


Like the last time, I went sifting through my book collection to see what Hangers the published authors came up with to see how it was "done." Here are their offerings:

Richard Bach in The Bridge Across Forever:

Grounded and rich and homeless, I hit the streets on a planet of four billion five hundred million souls, and in that moment I began looking full-time for the one woman who, according to the best people who ever lived, wasn't there at all.


After that, when I looked for him, everything went dark.


Don't forget! I shouted wordless, across decades. Never forget this moment!


Janet Evanovich in Three To Get Deadly:

We all stood staring at door number three.


"That's Lula," I said. "She's got the runs."


Our eyes met, and Vinnie laughed his nasty little laugh and I knew he had something good for me.


Deborah Smith in A Place To Call Home:

Some brands of kindness are hard to abide.


The world is spanned by small bridges between people. He'd crossed another one.


I exhaled as if I'd been holding my breath for years.


And that gives you some idea as to how hard it is to find good hangers. I had a terrible time finding good hangers in THREE TO GET DEADLY, and it is my favorite Plum book in the series. But the hangers were, by and large, terrible. Even Richard Bach's book was tough to pull a good hanger from, which shocked me. Deborah Smith's book was full of them. Of course, I really love her books; they almost always make me cry. But that is really neither here nor there. The point was hangers.

It made me feel better that even published authors have a tough time with writing a good hanger. Or maybe I should have gone to the library and pulled out a Patterson novel. All of mine are in storage. Don't know. In any event, this was definitely a learning experience. Win or lose, I learned something. So, that makes it a win. Yay!

Let's Talk About Hookers

Well, I was just doing some innocent blog reading when I came across Gossip Girl's most recent post. She is participating in this hop thing wherein you post hooks from the beginning chapters of one or more books you are reading/have read. I suppose the idea is to make you think about what makes a good hook for the budding writer or even a writer withering on the vine.



I learned a couple of things in trying to do this exercise. First, this is not as easy to do on your Kindle as it is with a real, live book. Second, be careful of paper cuts with a real, live book when you are flipping around like a crazy person just trying to find the next chapter. Lastly, I inwardly bemoaned the loss of so many of my real, life books. Space has become a SERIOUS ISSUE, and almost all of them have been donated to the library. Hence the luxury of spending the money on a Kindle. I love my Kindle because I can make the print as large as I like, but rebuilding my book collection would essentially take forever. Of course, I tell myself I can always check out any book I really want to read again at... the library. *sigh* And that works most days. Most importantly, after I came up with ten hooks by other authors I finally understood that they wanted ten hooks that I had written from my own writing. Ugghh. That left me with quite the conundrum. The only serious writing I have done is my book I started and put down because I just got LOST in it.

However, I knew where it was.

And I only had to find three decent hooks at the beginning of three chapters. And I had done a LOT of writing. Of course, you want excellent, outstanding, fabulous hooks. But you get what you get. And, once again, I find that one sentence often doesn't tell the tale. Sometimes you really need two to SINK IT. Better yet, that first paragraph. If it is SHORT.

So, here are my hooks from the novel I thought I might never pick up again...

"Two years," Jake said.

It was all I could do not to hold out my hand and make him pinkie promise. I smiled at the thought of Jake's reaction to that. He would think I was certifiable. I wondered if he even remembered the pinkie promise made so long ago.


The knot in my stomach had settled in at 9:00 and was becoming increasingly painful by the minute.


Jake grabbed my arm as I turned into the empty room. "Explain that. What do you mean by ALL OF IT?" he thundered. His words echoed around the room.

Yep. Those are the hooks from the long-forgotten novel. Or so it would seem. Now I am thinking about it again. Buggers. I know my brain. It will work this until I can find a way to bridge the gap from the middle to the End. Egads.

I didn't see any specific rules about how many hooks you needed for this post. It appeared to me that ten or so was sufficient. So, I set that as my goal. I picked out three books. Two I have read before. One several times. One only once because it just broke my heart. And the last I picked up at the library today. Some books are just too darn expensive for my Kindle! And I so enjoy actually turning the page. *bigger sigh*

It has occurred to me that I need a fourth book because I only have nine hooks, so I am adding one from my all-time favorite series by Janet Evanovich. Yep. Stephanie Plum. That series cracks me up. So we will start with that one.


Favorite Series Ever:
One For The Money by Janet Evanovich

There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me- not forever, but periodically.



And the one that I have read numerous times:
Running From Safety by Richard Bach

My truth has been a long time refining. I've explored and drilled for it with hope and intuition, filtered and condensed it the best I could with reflection, then run it through my engines, wary at first, to see what would happen.


It must happen to us all, I thought. We pack up what we've learned so far and leave the familiar behind. No fun, that shearing separation, but somewhere within we must dimly know that saying good-bye to safety brings the only security we'll ever know.


"Leslie, why don't I forget the whole thing? I have a lot better things to do with my life than to play with my own imagination."


Every word in my mind shattered, I was silent for an answer. He's right, I thought at last, this is his country. Those few times I reached for an old memory, here is where I came: dry, dead, lost, everything that used to be, turned to dust. After a while I had shrugged, happy childhood but a terrible memory, and learned to live without my youth, most of it. Here it lay.

I know that some of them offer more than one sentence hooks, but I think that they are short enough to qualify for a hook. So.... moving on.



Haven't read yet, but next up:
City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare Book Four in The Mortal Instruments series

"You know what's awesome?" said Eric, setting down his drumsticks. "Having a vampire in our band. This is the one thing that's really going to take us over the top."


"Your girlfriend?" Alec looked astonished. So did Maryse. Simon couldn't say he was unastonished himself. "You dated a vampire? A girl vampire?"

"It was a hundred and thirty years ago," said Magnus. "I haven't seen her since."



This is the book that broke my heart:
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

CLARE: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he is okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.


HENRY: Matt and I are playing Hide and Seek in the stacks in Special Collections. He's looking for me because we are supposed to be giving a calligraphy Show and Tell to a Newberry Trustee and her Ladies' Lettering Club. I'm hiding from him because I'm trying to get all of my clothes on my body before he finds me.


HENRY: I wake up in the middle of the night with a thousand razor-toothed insects gnawing on my legs and before I can even shake a Vicodin out of the bottle I am falling.


And there they are... 10 hooks. Some took a few sentences, rather than just one, to really make the hook great. And, of course, some are only really funny if you are familiar with the characters. Anyone who has read the Mortal Instruments series will appreciate those hooks. The rest of you probably not so much. Ah well. I like how she mixes the humor into the seriousness of her subject matter, but that is just me. Anyway, the exercise made me appreciate the art of a well written hook. If you would like to participate, go to Cassie Mae's page or Falling for Fiction and jump on the hop. Granted, you don't have much time... so hurry. Of, course there is still Hangers in a few days (whatever the heck that will be!), and I have no doubt it will be interesting.