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The Power of Unexpected Elements

By

photo adapted / Horia Varlan

No matter how you look at it, a “hook” is a perfect metaphor for what your opening must accomplish. Held like a “J” it dangles bait, upside down it’s a question raised, sideways it’s a crooked finger saying come hither. One way or another, the hook asks the reader to bite into your story.

Today I want to look at the barb—that element the reader never saw coming that, once set, will not let go of her imagination. Let me take you back to 2002, when I was at Sewanee Writers’ Conference, to show you how well a barb can work.

Writers jump through hoops to attend this conference, for one main reason: the opportunity to gain feedback and glean wisdom from well published authors. Yet scheduled across from their workshops, in another venue, a stream of events unspools whose educational potency was underestimated by many.

Author readings.

Sound anticlimactic? I’ll admit that at first I didn’t get Sewanee’s emphasis on readings, either. But after a couple of days, as readings mounted into dizzying dozens, a cool thing happened. I started to get to know myself better as a consumer and writer of stories. What works for me, what doesn’t.

It was at one of those readings that bestselling author Margot Livesey showed how to set a hook deeply with an unexpected element. Livesey read the first chapter from her then novel-in-progress, Banishing Verona. It began:

He had replaced five lightbulbs that day and by late afternoon could not help anticipating the soft ping of the filament flying apart whenever he reached for a switch. The third time, the fixture in the hall, the thought zigzagged across his mind that these little explosions were a sign, like the two dogs he had come across in the autumn, greyhound and bulldog, locked together on the grassy slope of the local park. He had given them a wide birth; still, he had felt responsible when on the bus the next day a man turned puce and fell to the floor. By the fifth bulb, though, he had relinquished superstition and was blaming London Electricity. Some irregularity in the current, some unexpected surge, was slaughtering the bulbs. He pictured a man at head office filling his idle minutes by pulling a lever. Meanwhile, hour by hour he emptied the upstairs rooms, slipping the bulbs from bedside lights and desk lamps.

He had just replaced the fifth bulb when the doorbell rang.

Lightbulb filaments as portent—cool, right?

At this point Zeke, a handyman who works alone because he has trouble relating to others, opens the door to a pregnant woman holding a suitcase. She claims to be related to the Barrows, who own the home. When Zeke says they won’t be back for several days, she charges in. Soon she has seduced Zeke, commandeered his house keys, bought him breakfast sandwiches, and otherwise reversed their roles. The next day, it is he who must ring the doorbell to get in. She finds a pair of coveralls—“her belly split the front like a chestnut its shell”—and insists on helping him paint, “to take my mind off things.”

While they hang wallpaper, Zeke tells her of the lightbulbs that had been exploding the day she arrived. She says that she’s never been able to wear a watch for more than a few days before it goes haywire. “The watchmaker I went to had some mad theory about personal electricity.”

[Let’s take stock for a moment. There has been no murder. No explosion. Yet the packed room at Sewanee was hushed throughout this reading, which went on close to an hour. Listeners leaned forward in their chairs.]

In the chapter’s penultimate paragraph, Zeke is the one to bring the breakfast sandwiches, although he must climb in through a side window with them now that he has no keys. He hopes to find her still in bed, warm and sleepy, so he can slip in beside her.

And this time, he thought, however stupid, however embarrassing, he would ask her name.

After this delightful revelation, Livesey told us what Zeke found when he entered the bedroom:

The bed was unmade, empty and cold to the touch, the suitcases gone. At the foot of the bed the rug was rolled up, and spread-eagled on the bare wooden boards lay the coveralls, neatly buttoned, arms and legs stretched wide, like an empty person. Only when he knelt to pick them up did Zeke discover the three-inch nails that skewered the collar, pinned the cuffs and ankles to the floor.

What???

The audience audibly inhaled and then jumped to their feet to applaud but I was like no-no-no you have to tell us what happens next!

Those coveralls, nailed to the floor, stayed with me for one-and-a-half years of shelf-scanning at my local bookshop until the novel came out.

If in your first chapter you can think of a way to include an unexpected barb, I suggest you include author readings in your promotional events. It could mean the difference between gaining a well-wisher who plunks your book in a pile on her nightstand or a rapt reader who opens the book as they await your signature, eager to both learn what happens and share her discovery with everyone she knows—and then maybe, fifteen years later, even write a column about it.

Can you envision using this technique in your work? What other stories have you read that start with an unexpected, intriguing element?

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About Kathryn Craft

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her work as a freelance developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she leads writing workshops and retreats, and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers. Learn more on Kathryn's website.

Comments

  1. Oh, Kathryn!

    You can’t leave me (and the rest of us) hanging like that. :D

    Of course, there’s the necessary hook at the beginning to snag the potential reader, however, I’ve always appreciated a little mystery throughout any book — a bit of “What was that about? I must find out more.” Otherwise, I easily lose interest.

    Even though I wasn’t hooked by the light bulb scenario, I kept reading because you said it would be good. And I’m glad I did. I have to know about those overalls!!

    Great article on the importance of hooking the reader. As I said, it wasn’t the light bulbs for me, but later on with the overalls. I don’t know if I would have read to that point or not, but your synopsis put me there and now I want more. Thanks.

    • Hard to point out all of the subtleties in one post, but if you read the opening on Amazon;s “Look Inside” feature, you might appreciate better how the accumulation of subtle questions helps lead to that final cliffhanger. Re-reading this first paragraph it’s amazing how much track she lays! Thanks for reading, Mike.

  2. Awesome insight, Kathryn. Though I agree with Mike–all the details about the lightbulbs didn’t do it for me, but once the doorbell rang, I was in and the bit about the overalls nailed to the floor was fabulous! As I work on revisions, this is great food for thought.

    • Hi Densie, thanks for your comment! I guess the lightbulbs hooked me because they were so very different—I’d certainly never read anything like that before, and isn’t fresh perspective something we should aspire to? That is the greater point here.

      There is more in coming paragraphs that leads us to believe the pregnant woman with the “personal electricity” must have been hovering nearby for a while, observing Zeke but unnoticed by him.

  3. I love that readers are so different! While the lightbulbs did nothing for Mike and Densie, I immediately wanted to know what about this man caused light bulb filaments to chose an early death. And then when we got to the overalls, I had to know how all of these things were related. The point is, different things hook different readers, and I love the way your post expressed that.

    • Hi Grace, I appreciate that too, all the time. It means there’s room for us all!

      In fact, it can be easier for some people to study craft in novels that are outside their typical genre. We are more easily beguiled by stories that hit all of our response buttons, and are soon swept away into a story we’ve forgotten we had hoped to learn from.

      Glad you enjoyed this one, but enjoy or not, we can all certainly learn from it.

  4. Fantastic post, Kathryn. It just gave me a ‘light bulb moment’ for the first chapter of my WIP. Thanks so much for such an inspirational post.

  5. Now I understand why, when I added a 145-word prologue to Pride’s Children: PURGATORY, it felt like the perfect completion. That prologue sets the barb – and you won’t find out exactly what happened until the end of the SECOND book in the trilogy (planned, and being written now).

    I’m doing the same thing with the prologue to the second volume, which must carry you almost to the end of the trilogy.

    Thanks for explaining what I did instinctively. Huh. Setting the barbs.

    • Good for you, Alicia. When what we have done instinctively becomes an indentified tool, we can pick it up and wield it more effectively, again and again!

  6. I’m hooked–in all three senses–and I’m planning how to use this device in my WIP even though it is narrative nonfiction based firmly on historical research. There must be a way–and I will find it! Thanks, Kathryn!

    • Oh yes, there will be a way, Anna! This skill is definitely transferable to narrative nonfiction. As a matter of fact you just gave me a great idea for next month’s post–off to jot it down. Thank you!

  7. I loved the visual of the hook and then, later, the barb upon it. I may need to print out a picture of just that and hang it above my desk as a reminder! It’ll remind me to place that lure at the end of each chapter as well. I’ll be looking at the opening chapter of my WIP right away! Thanks for the inspiration!

  9. I LOVE the use of the light bulbs to give us a sense of the unusual to come. I am now wondering how I can use an unusual part of my own setting in my WIP to do just this!

    This sort of OMG moment reminds me of the moment early on in The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard. We were in the middle of a sweet scene with two teens sneaking around at night to BOOM all of a sudden a violent act occurs that the reader does not see coming. I literally jumped up then raced back to re-read it again and again to keep that OMG heart-racing feeling going of “no way did that just happen!”. (adrenalin junkie that I am!).

  10. And the guy was hearing the whole thing from the closet!! Ack!! That was a hand-wringer. Great example, Donna.

    Think of how small a filament is—this is not an IED, right, it’s so darn quiet—yet the pattern set up is unusual. Glad it commanded your attention as it did mine!

  11. Hi, Kathryn:

    Wonderful example. There are a couple elements I think make it particularly fascinating:

    1. The hapless protagonist. The light bulbs in and of themselves are not the point. What they reveal is a not-so-handy handyman, a character who clearly is at a critical loss for command of his life. The lightbulbs, the two dogs he avoids, the man who convulses on the bus–all reveal moments where the character lacks an answer, doesn’t know what is happening, doesn’t know what to do. All are prologue to the woman at the door.

    2. Voice. The language is not showy, but it is deft and precise and rhythmic. Where the voice reveals itself most is not in word choice but in movement: from “superstition” to the comedic man with his hand on a lever. The authority is clear, and we feel in capable hands. We’re willing and ready to surrender to this author.

    3. A question, with a hint of the inexplicable. In this case its gentle, but it still obliges the mind to wonder at an answer, which leads the reader into the story.

    As the chapter proceeds, the events themselves (I deliberately avoided the word “quirky”) claim our attention, and the story clearly relies on a character whose behavior will defy logic if not sanity, but the opening itself commands us because of those three simple elements: the authority of voice, a protagonist who inspires empathy, and a question.

    I’m reminded of a post by Don Maass where he mentioned that empathy and intrigue are the two crucial elements of any beginning. Once again, he appears to be right (the bastard).

    Finally, there was something on Facebook recently about how to make the beginning of any book better by making the second sentence: And then the murders began. In this case:

    He had replaced five lightbulbs that day and by late afternoon could not help anticipating the soft ping of the filament flying apart whenever he reached for a switch. And then the murders began…

    Wonderful post. Sent me to my bookshelf to look up opening paragraphs.

    • Oh David thank you for this highly informative and entertaining comment, which is of as much value as an entire post! I could write volumes about this opening and all the ways it works for me.

      I felt compelled to focus on the barb, though, because it would not let me go for so very long. I have been reading a lot on Facebook in the past year or so, including a huge survey of readers by Sarah Pekkanen, the suggests a lack of interest in author readings. I can only believe consumers have been turned off by too many passable but ultimately ho-hum openings, because clearly, I did not forget this one!

      • That’s an excellent point. And a cautionary one: Reading out loud is often your best measure of whether what you’ve written holds up. The ear is far wiser than the eye.

  12. Great post, Kathryn. And of course you present “the learning aspect” with creative power in your presentation. I am “nailed” to the idea of examining my first pages for something that will “hook” the reader. Hope your work is going well, Beth

  14. I’ve blown lightbulbs like that — and so was hooked immediately. A fellow lightbulb exploder! Then, as the story develops and the overalls are left as they are…well, I’ve absolutely got to know more. You had me at lightbulbs — and now am even more impressed and intrigued and have to read on.

  16. I can see why the crowd was mesmerized. The beginning is wonderful, hooks us again and again as it progresses, and so many times I thought I had reached the barb you said was coming. The words–pings of filament–thoughts zig-zagging–a man at London Electric amusing himself by flipping a lever up and down–then the doorbell rings, and a pregnant, seductive woman laughs about her personal electricity. The ending of the beginning is superb. Please enter me for one of the free copies.

  17. Wow, what a way to make the reader want to know more! I’m hooked and intrigued and will definitely be adding this title to my list of must reads. Thank you for leading me to a new author I have not yet read but am excited to discover!

  18. CONGRATULATIONS to Grace Wynter, Beth Havey, and Louise Foerster—you have all won signed copies of BANISHING VERONA! I’ll be in touch to get your addresses. 🎉

 

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