VOICE & HOOKING YOUR READER

1. VOICE & HOOKING YOUR READER

2. VOICE Voice is what gives your writing personality, flavor & style – a sound all its own You must say what your truly think and feel, not what you think someone else wants to hear Think about your readers as you write, and write directly to that person. Be conversational.

3. Some books are magnetic, while some are really boring. One of the reasons could be the narrative hook. Knowing this, authors share an important literary technique to keep their readers engaged in the stories, which is hook or narrative hook that keep readers’ interest alive in the book. 

4. The Narrative Hook • A literary technique in the opening of a story that “hooks” the reader’s attention • Ideally, the hook is the opening sentence, but it may appear later in the opening of a narrative and may be several sentences long.

5. Dramatic Action Hook (Most Common) • This makes the reader wonder what the consequences of the action may be • The reader’s interest is immediately engaged, and later the author flashes back to earlier in the story to explain how the action developed

6. Hooks play an important role in suspense thrillers and mysteries, but they can be used in any genre • Hooks should only be used if it fits in with the story • A hook should deliver what it promises • If an exciting scene is set up at the beginning, it should be resolved so that the reader is not cheated into reading a story that is otherwise boring and uneventful (crook-hook)

7. Other Various Hooks Authors Use… Question-Posing: • They assured me that my choice would change nothing. But, how could it not? Could you sit down at sixteen years old and choose between your father and your mother, knowing the other will be devastated? • You just won the lottery. We’ve all imagined this scenario from time to time. What would you buy? Where would you go? What would change? Well, what if I told you that you didn’t need to win the lottery at all? Would you believe me?

8. Immediate Danger • “Twelve hundred pounds of charging bull hit the wooden railing chest high and somersaulted into the stands. Faces frozen with horror moved in desperate slow motion to escape the enraged beast.”

9. Emotional • “With a sly smile, Ned Parsons raised a toast to his deceased neighbor, whose death greatly pleased him.”

10. Dialogue • “Hurry or you’ll be late for the stoning!” called my mother from the bottom of the stairs.

11. Vivid Description • “The beating sun warmed my back as I raced toward the waiting yellow school bus. Nestling in to the worn, green, leather seat, I was greeted by the jeers of my buddies. My face bore a content look as the bus rumbled down Elm Street, leading me into the worst day of my life.”

12. Interesting Fact • “Shock has been known to kill ten year olds. It can cause their brains to catch fire or their hearts to stop dead still. These facts raced through my mind as I stood dumbfounded in front of my 4th grade classmates.” • Every cell in the human body is replaced over the course of about seven years. That means, not one part of me from that April day ten years ago is still with me today.

13. Shocking Statement • Nothing you learn in the first seventeen years of your life means a thing. This was crystal clear the day I turned eighteen. • There is no such thing as free will. If it existed, I would have had a say in when, where, and to whom I was born.

14. Action • “Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.”

15. Juxtaposition(placing the boring next to the exciting) • “I was stocking some kitchen shelves with Campbell’s soups when the rhinoceros burst through my ceiling and crashed through the floor into the apartment below.”

16. Cheesy/Funny • The wind dry-shaved the cracked earth like a dull razor – the double edge kind from the plastic bag that you shouldn’t use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would have something to ride.

17. From “100 Best First Lines From Novels” • “Call me Ishmael.” ~Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

18. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” ~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

19. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

20. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” ~William Gibson,Neuromancer(1984)

21. They shoot the white girl first.” ~Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

22. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” ~Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

23. “It was a pleasure to burn.” ~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

24. “You better not never tell nobody but God.” ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

25. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

26. SHOWING VS TELLING • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZcPKZUdPgk

27. NOW YOU TRY • The following slides are pictures of various subjects I am going to give you approximately 7 minutes to work on a hook and creating the back story to the picture. There is no wrong or right, just focus on a strong hook, word choice, sentence fluency, and ideas/content. These will not be completed pieces, just hook starters – write as much as you can in 7 minutes.

31. ANADIPLOSIS • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UY5iU9v1so

32. Now on the following pictures, incorporate anadiplosis and at least 2 other devices in each story – choose from simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, imagery, analogy, allusion, rhetorical question, foreshadowing, alliteration, irony, sarcasm, symbolism, oxymoron, onomatopoeia, satire, paradox

34. WATER

37. HOMEWORK • Now choose one of these starts to perfect. You will create a first draft of this narrative piece – choose one of the hooks you learned about, then create your background and develop a working story. Focus on the 6 traits rubric I gave you. Try to keep this max 3 pages. • Must be typed and in MLA format • Do not use things, stuff, or a lot • Try and get sentence structures to vary in length • Must incorporate at least 4 devices – anadiplosis and anaphora are required (for the other 2 push yourself beyond the simple ones). Please highlight them blue and label them • Really tap into your voice • Play around with diction • Paint a visual picture for your audience – MAKE US WANT TO READ MORE!  • Show more than tell • Watch verb, adjective and pronoun use!