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.

Bullets and Ribbons

I am going to shoot some bullets at you and then celebrate my bloggy good fortune with you.

• Shelby, my dog, is doing oh so very well after her surgery. They removed her leg all the way up to the shoulder. Her incision was very long for such a little dog, but she was a champ. It took her a few days to find her new center of gravity and then she was good. She is now running, jumping, playing, etc. I find that I have much to learn from her resiliency.
• My parents are in therapy (that now makes all of us), separately, but there you go. It appears to be working. They are actually talking through their issues. There. And at home. And there have been no more instances where-in I have felt uncomfortable. However, I am prepared should that happen again. Funny, how just knowing what you WILL do takes the nerves away.
• I got botoxed for my migraines on Thursday. Yikes. I cannot see the pleasure in doing that for fun. We are now waiting and seeing. If it makes a difference in my migraines in the next two weeks, it will be considered successful. If not, it won't. Simple as that.
• I happened to catch the end of Kenny Chesney's concert on youtube. It was the kickoff for his new record: Welcome to the Fishbowl. I have seen him actually live in concert two times.
• The first time was at a fair in Michigan when he had maybe one song on the radio. No one really knew who he was. He was the Opener. I do remember someone yelling some off color remark to him from the floor and he blushed so hard that I could see it from my first row cushy seat just under the awning. I thought it was the cutest thing I had seen.Ever.
• I was thinking about that blush when I saw him the second time at the Columbia Civic Center for his No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem tour. I don't remember how many times he had been named Entertainer of the Year at that time. The Center was huge. It had a huge screen for those in the nosebleed section. And he came up in an elevator under the floor. Women were throwing their panties at him. He would catch them and throw them backstage, and never miss a beat. I sighed and quietly said a goodbye to the boy who blushed all those years ago. He was long gone. Fame had worked him over good.
• Anyway, I still enjoyed that concert. He is doing a lot more writing I think. His stuff really comes from the heart. He likes writing about that boy he was, the man he is now, and how he got here.

Okay, I guess the rest can wait. If you missed my very long V-Log. You can backpedal through here and watch it. If I ever do that sort of thing again, I will learn how to EDIT so that it is much shorter. There is definitely such a thing as too much Robin. If you want proof of that, ask my mom. She will tell you.Now, let us move on to the bloggy portion of this event.

Gossip Girl over at ~~Whatever~~ honored me with an award. These are the rules.

1. Post the rules on your blog.

2. Name five of your most fabulous moments, either in real life or in the blogosphere.

3. Name five things you love.

4. Name five things you hate.

5. Pass the ribbon on to five other bloggers. (Leave them a comment to notify them of their win.)

5 of my most fabulous moments, either in real life or in the blogosphere...

1. Every single time I have been onstage for a show. I can't really differentiate one show from another because they are all fabulous. But when I am onstage, I know I am alive.

2. All of the time I spent at summer camp. That was like soul food.

3) The moment my junior high school bully came up to me the first day of high school like we were buddies because she was lost. It was a big high school. She had intimidated the crap out of me for three years and she blew it in one day because THAT DAY I saw her for who she really was and she lost all of her power over me. In fact, they all did. They were all just insecure people trying to feel bigger. For the first time in three years, I was FREE. They only had power over me because I gave it to them. That day, I took it back. It was AMAZING.

4) The day I read ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach. It totally changed how I saw the world.

5) The day my first boyfriend said, "You're beautiful." I had been told I was pretty on the inside and had a great personality, etc. But he was the first person who ever said I was actually pretty on the outside. Until he said it, I didn't believe it. I think it is sad that you need one other person to say it before you can accept it as a truth about yourself. However, until that moment I believed all sorts of things about me but that was NOT one of them. I will always love him for that.

Name 5 Things You Love

1) A book that you cannot put down and must read in one sitting.

2) Just about any Joss Whedon series.

3) Just about any game (card, board, etc.)

4) I am still Jonesing for Marshall Mathers. Is he ever going to put out a new record????

5) Pretty much anything that touches my heart and makes me laugh, cry, feel inspired. This can come in pretty much any form and that is what makes it so great. The world is full of inspiration and hope and love and beauty. I love all of it. I want to eat it, swim in it, pour it over my head, pet it ( if it's my dog), hold it close, and let it go.

Name 5 Things You Hate

1) Cruelty

2) Disrespect

3) Lack of compassion

4) People who take advantage of those weaker than themselves. Manipulators. Liars.

5) Arguing over politics and religion. You're just asking for trouble.

Pass this on to 5 Other Bloggers.

1. Liza at Middle Passages. She is in a writing thing and needs blogging material.

2. Jasmine at Yellow Rose of Texas. Just because.

3. Chris at A Deliberate Life. To help her get back into the blogging thing again.

4. Mary the Food Floozie. Because I would like to read about something other than food...lol.

5 Mary at Spilled on the Kitchen Table. This is actually up her alley:-)

SHIFTING YOUR REALITY

Why do you blog? Let me change that question... why did you start blogging? Sometimes we can start for one reason, but continue for a different one.


I started blogging, aka writing, because I needed to write again. I needed to do something productive, and I needed someone other than me to read it. In fact, in my mind, I had this picture of my blog working out sorta like the movie FIELD OF DREAMS. If I write it, they will come, was my mentality when I opened my account. I was all enthusiasm, sure that I was going to set the blogging world on fire with my mad writing skills. I look back at that and laugh now. Not with sarcasm, but a full belly laugh. It's funny, right? Because if you're reading this, you know how hard it is to build a loyal readership. Well, I guess it took Kevin Costner some time in the movie, too. He had to build a baseball field, etc. It's not just flipping a switch.

The thing I didn't anticipate was how much enjoyment I would get from reading other people's blogs. I didn't see that coming. In fact, if I have limited time and have to choose between writing my own and reading my subscriptions.... it's a tough call. Sometimes I will choose to read what you guys are writing, unless I have something that I really want to get down on paper, because I LEARN so much.

Here is the kick in the teeth: if you know something to be true, but you don't utilize that truth and make it your own, it does you no good. Now, doesn't that just suck lemons? One of my favorite bloggers, Phoenix, wrote an excellent post about not allowing negative people, events, etc. to suck her energy anymore. This may or may not be a new concept for you. It's truth is undeniable. Negativity sucks our energy. Our spirit. Eventually that may mean our good health. As long as we keep that door open, it keeps sucking. It comes at us as people and things. If you don't know what I am talking about, think about whatever steals your joy. That is the culprit. What has you stomping around and cursing and wanting to throw things? There it is. Anyway, I read that post and it did a flashsideways with my current book (yeah, that was a LOST reference ~ couldn't help it).

If you have never read Richard Bach's books you're missing out. Period. Being on vacation made it hard for me to work on my own novel, but did enable me to read more of RUNNING FROM SAFETY by Richard Bach. Even though I could have gulped it; I savor his books like a fine wine. Therefore, I am still not quite halfway finished. That does move my actual finish date up from Thanksgiving to Halloween:-) I am digressing....

So how does this wonderful book and Phoenix's blog flashsideways? Well, she figured out that getting angry and allowing negativity to suck your energy steals your joy. In the chapter I had just finished Richard was talking with his wife about how pointless it was to get angry. She reminded him that she had seen him angry plenty of times. He then sets about explaining that it's because in that instant he forgets that it's just a game. He gets caught up in that he might lose this or that, or is afraid of something being taken away, that he becomes angry. However, once he remembers that it is a game (his perception is restored), then the anger becomes just a mood of the game, and it fades immediately.

If you're scratching your head right now, that's okay. I tried to explain something rather complicated in a few sentences that he knew required a book. The thing that both of these people have in common is that they are taking their reality and shifting it. People change their reality all of the time. I know that is true. I have read it on here. People are shaking their boxes and changing their lives. They are cutting out the negative and only letting in the positive and it is changing their game. Me: I keep pulling the pain card with my migraines in my game, and I am really tired of that. I am ready to change games. Like I said, if you know something to be true, but you don't utilize it and make it your own, then it does you no good.