Hooking...

Not the profession...

Wow. I had an eye opening experience last week. If you follow the Authoress's blog, you should remember that she hosted a fabulous critique opportunity to submit your first 25 words and have commenters tell you if they were hooked or not.

Holy cow. Not hooked was my majority. I understood why. I'm not mad, I promise. So if anyone is reading this that told me my first 25 words were not hooky, it's okay!! I agree. It's not a hook. Which is why I'm really glad that I read more than 25 words on a page before making a decision about a book. I really hope that others would too. This was also a great exercise for me to see where sometimes starting with action is a bad idea. Action for the sake of action happened to be a lot of entries.

Here's the other thing, I didn't submit my first 25 words. I submitted the first 25 words of approximately the third paragraph. LOL So, if I were to do it correctly, I do wonder if it would have been different. Somehow, I don't think so. :0)

Here is what I propose today. I would love it if you chose two paragraphs anywhere in any WIP and submitted them to this blog and we'll do our own Hook Research. :0) This is why. I know a lot of people that don't read the first few pages of a book. They read the back, they open it and read a couple of paragraphs wherever they opened it. I do this to see if random middles are interesting. If I read something that makes me want to know more, well, there we go! I would like to post them starting on Friday, so you have this week to submit. Please email to me kowens1308 at yahoo dot com 


What do you think? Do you judge a book by less than a page? Does it seem unfair to have to try and recoup your novel into the first 25 words of it? Tell me!! 

Have a great Monday, cool kids!

**Thank you to all of my supporters for helping through my rough first few nights of working at this new job. I can't tell you how much it has meant to me to see your awesome comments with your smiling faces. :0) Honestly, you guys are more than cool kids. You are TOTALLY ROCKIN'!