[스크랩] Double Jeopardy: Hooking the Reader's Brains and Heart

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

Grand dame author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro* hit the nail on the head when she said:

There are two hooks that need to be felt for the reader to really buy into the story. The intellectual hook, and the emotional hook.

She went on to explain (I'm paraphrasing here) that the intellectual hook is the plot stuff. The things we want to know because an interesting question has been raised. The emotional hook is the stuff we need to know. The things that we've become emotionally invested in and what to see how it turns out.

If these two things aren't in the first fifth of the novel, then odds are you won't hold on to your reader. You might keep them reading, because one or the other is compelling enough in their own right, but you won't get them the same way. They won't be thinking about your book long after they've finished it. Or talking about it with everyone they know.
I thought this was great advice.

Books that really wow us have both these things. You care deeply about a character and just have to know how their problem turns out. Peak, by Roland Smith, a fantastic story about a 14-year-old boy who gets into trouble for climbing skyscrapers and is sent to live with his father, the world's best mountaineer, who happens to be about to launch an expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest. Kids climbing Everest. How can you not get hooked by that?

Besides a fantastic intellectual hook -- does he make it to the summit? It has a great emotional hook -- what will it cost him to reach the summit?

Blue Fire gave me problems in the first few drafts because the emotional hook just wasn't there. Nya's problems were interesting enough, but you could have easily set the book down and come back later. When you need to know what happens, you don't put the book down. A lot of my revisions went into developing that emotional hook so you need to know what happens with Nya and how she gets out of it. 

From a plotting standpoint, two hooks driving your narrative gives you double the opportunity for great storytelling. If one hook isn't cutting it for some reason, you have the other to fall back on. You can even play them against each other for super tight tension. Add in your inner and outer conflicts (which will no doubt be connected to your hooks in some way, but you might approach them from different directions) and suddenly you have a lot to choose from as you plot. And a lot to dump on your protag.

Intellectual hooks are pretty easy. A great story question, a neat twist, a fascinating premise. You've offered the reader something they haven't seen before (or haven't seen in this way before) and you keep them on their toes, always guessing what will happen next. It'll be plot related, since figuring out the puzzle is an intellectual activity.

Emotional hooks are tougher, especially in plot-driven stories. In order to ping the emotion, readers need to care about the protag. If you aren't sure how exactly to do that, starting with universal themes can help. A child in trouble, a lost love, grief, etc. Things that everyone can relate to and emphasize with. Once you've identified that, work your own twist into it so it fits your story and helps tell the tale you want to tell.

Chances are, your intellectual hook will be connected to your external conflict, and your emotional hook will be connected to your internal conflict. Depending on your story, (plot driven or character driven) you might be developing one over the other, since we tend to obsess over plot in our plot-driven stories and characters in our character-driven stories. So take a little time and look to see how you can develop the other side of your story into something as strong as your main narrative. A thriller with characters we love will only be more thrilling. A literary journey that keeps us guessing will only suck us in more.

It might even help when you go to write those evil queries. You'll have two key elements to use as a foundation, and know exactly what you need to say to get those hooks across.

*This was at World Fantasy in 2009

출처: http://blog.janicehardy.com/2009/11/what-i-learned-at-world-fantasy-week_04.html