By Hook and By Crook

Ron's post about hooks intrigues me. I've never been good at it; my mother, who has spent much of my writing career convinced I could get on Oprah if only I would write the right book, suggested I go to sleep at night thinking, Hook Hook Hook. All this has done is give me nightmares.

There's something about a beautiful premise, though--it can be a work of art in itself. And an opening line that contains the promise of that premise...well, now, I bet those writers have happy moms.

As Ron's pick-up-line analogy implies, it's a fine line between intriguing and slutty. Here's a couple openers I like (with apologies for the wonky formatting, but I've spent a half hour trying to make it look right and Blogger just won't let me, clearly as punishment for not listening to my mother):

I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher. I found out where he lives and every night I perch on a tree outside his bedroom window and watch him sleep. He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Loom, size 34.

-Owl in Love, Patrice Kindl

First thing I did was, I stole a body. I could have made my own, but I wasn't in an artistic frame of mind.

-Repossessed, A.M. Jenkins

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything.

"Need a poo, Todd."

"Shut up, Manchee."

"Poo. Poo. Todd."

-The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness

You?

Hooks

I'm surprised by all the new posts. I thought you guys would be lying down and drinking through a straw!

I don't have the residency to reflect on, so I'll write about what's on the writer's part of my mind. I like to read short things, so I picked up THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING. I like that Best American series, anyway, and wasn't disappointed.

Here are a few opening sentences from the essays: "'I can smell the sea from here,' said the prisoner." Or, "Chunking Mansion is the only place I have ever been where it is possible to buy a sexual aid, a bootleg Jay Chou CD, and a new, leather-bound Koran . . ." Or, "The throbbing music emanating from Le Carnivore Restaurant behind our hotel grows tinnier with each throbbing beat."

Hooks, right? Get your reader's attention right out of the gate. We've all done it. As teachers we've all told students to do it.

So I'm at the local library standing in front of the narrow YA shelf and hoping something will, cobra-like, dart out and stun me. Instead, I read first page after first page and my blood sugar drops. Instead of a voice I want to hear for two hundred pages, I hear the lieder of the craft book.

I think what bothers me is the calculating tone of the hook and - behind it - that calculating tone of the advice. It reminds me too much of those old books-on-dating that included pick-up lines.

God knows I'm easy, but I'm not that easy.

RK