Six Ways to Hook Your Reader!

I visited Write it Sideways and found a great article by Suzannah Windsor Freedman on how to hook your reader from the very first line. Hope this comes in handy for any writers out there!

Although I consider myself an avid reader, I must admit I have a short attention span when it comes to getting into books. If you fail to grab my attention in the first few lines, I start spacing out.

Most readers are like me. Most people don’t want to spend the first 50 pages trying to get into a book.

Here are a few things I find annoying in the first lines of a story:

• Dialogue. Nice somewhere on the first or second page, but not in the first line. We won’t know who’s speaking or why we should care.
• Excessive description. Some description is good, but not when it’s long winded. Skip the purple prose and opt for something more powerful.
• Irrelevant information. The first few lines of your story are crucial, so give your reader only important information.
• Introducing too many characters. I don’t like to be bombarded with the names of too many characters at once. How are we supposed to keep them straight when we don’t know who’s who?

The last thing you want to do as a writer is annoy or bore people. Instead, try one of these 6 ways to hook your readers right off the bat:

(N.B. One of the easiest ways to check out the opening pages of nearly any book you want is with the ‘Look Inside!‘ feature on Amazon.com.)

1. Make your readers wonder

Put a question in your readers’ minds. What do those first lines mean? What’s going to happen? Make them wonder, and you’ll keep them reading.

• “Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” ~Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
• “A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.” ~Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

2. Begin at a pivotal moment

By starting at an important moment in the story, your reader is more likely to want to continue so he or she can discover what will happen next.

• “It was dark where she was crouched but the little girl did as she’d been told.” ~Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
• “I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.” ~Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

3. Create an Interesting picture

Description is good when it encourages people to paint a picture in their minds. Often, simple is best so it’s the reader who imagines a scene, instead of simply being told by the author.

• “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” ~Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca
• “She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.” ~Michael Ontaatje, The English Patient

4. Introduce an intriguing character

The promise of reading more about a character you find intriguing will, no doubt, draw you into a story’s narrative. Most often, this is one of the main characters in the book.

• “I was born twice: first as a baby girl on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” ~Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

5. Start with an unusual situation

Show us characters in unusual circumstances, and we’ll definitely be sticking around to see what it’s all about.

• “They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.” ~Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked
• “Last night, I dreamt that I chopped Andrew up into a hundred little pieces, like a Benihana chef, and ate them, one by one.” ~Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

6. Begin with a compelling narrative voice

Open your story with the voice of a narrator we can instantly identify with, or one that relates things in a fresh way.

• “As I begin to tell this, it is the golden month of September in southwestern Ontario.” ~Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief
• “I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.” ~Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

No matter how you start your book, keep your readers in mind. What will make them want to continue reading? What will potentially make them put down your book?

How does your favourite book open, and what makes it so compelling?

 Thanks for visiting and have a great week, and thank you, Suzannah Windsor Freeman, for a great article! 

Happy Labor Day

 Off for Labor Day! Back next week. Enjoy the holiday!

Interracial Love: Conflict Supreme

 

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

My newest novel One Family Now was recently released. It's an interracial love story, so this week I dug around in my interracial love story blog archive and pulled up this post. 

Back in 2017, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Denise Turney on her Off The Shelf Radio program. We discussed interracial relationships, which is what I focus on in my novels. You can click here for a link to the interview.

Also, please enjoy Interracial Love: Conflict Supreme posted below, which originally appeared in 2010, and be sure to check out One Family Now.

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Aristotle

Who doesn't enjoy a good love story? But what drives one to make it great? Conflict!
And when you throw an interracial element into the mix (pun intended) you have an intensely compelling and emotionally volatile story.

Several films address this topic including, Come See the Paradise (Japanese/white American), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (white/black American), Mississippi Masala (Asian Indian/ Black American), Something New and Jungle Fever (both white/black American).

Othello

Throughout history, interracial love has been a topic of great literature. In Shakespeare's Othello, a Moor is married to Venetian, Desdemona. Here racism is seen as Iago schemes to break up their marriage. Hoping to spur Desdemona's father Brabantino to annul the union, Iago tells him "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe."

In Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the slave Cassie is repeatedly raped by her master Simon Legree.  But she's also been in a previous relationship with her former master, who she loved. "I became his willingly, for I loved him!" Cassie says in chapter 34.

Sinclair Lewis's Kingsblood Royal tells the story of a bigoted character who discovers he has a small percentage of African blood, then falls in love with a black friend named Sophie.  When he held her hand, it was "warmer than any hand he had ever known," and when she kissed him, "he had not known a kiss like that..."  For more interracial love in literature, see Doug Poe's post on Interracial Sex in Classic Literature here.

Out of all multicultural combinations, perhaps the most explosive in our country is black and white. Make it a love story in the American South of the past--and POW!

Something New

I'm black, and my husband is white, but many years ago I began to think how sad it would've been if we'd lived a century earlier. Back then, we couldn't have married. That thought inspired me to write my first novel, Escape, about the abolitionist son of a wealthy merchant who falls in love with a slave he helps to escape.

After reading Essie Mae Washington Williams's memoir Dear Senator, I wrote my second novel, The Governor's Sons. Ms. Williams's memoir told of her black mother's love affair with her white father, future South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond.  In my novel, a rich white law student plans to sacrifice everything and move overseas for the black woman he loves.

All through our country's history, interracial love has ignited conflict.  Forbidden Fruit by Betty DeRamus and  Martha Hodes's WhiteWomen, Black Men are two fascinating non-fiction accounts on the subject.

The topic of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson's black mistress, was swept under the rug by history, and Jefferson's white descendants, until DNA tests revealed that her descendants, were Jefferson's as well.

Although there was an enormous amount of rape and exploitation of black women by white men in the United States (especially the South), there was also love.

If a plantation owner chose a slave as his "wife" and actually lived with her, he'd become an outcast from the community.  To prevent being ostracized, some white men, assuming the facade of bachelors to friends and family, would set up separate housing and provide financially for their black "wives" and children. And then there were those white men who chose to have two families, one white and the other black, hidden away in the shadows.

Thank goodness it's a different time!  Although still a touchy topic among both the black and white communities, at least as human beings we can freely love whomever we fall in love with.  As the old cliche goes, "love has no color."

Do you know of an interracial love story to share?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

One Family Now Available Now!

 

My newest novel One Family Now is now available on Amamzon.com! Please take a look inside here.

If you think there's conflict in your family, wait until you read about Jessica and Geoff, a young couple separated by devastating circumstances, but decades later given a second chance!

Unsuspecting Jessica Leigh, a poor black girl from a disadvantaged family, believes wealthy college student Geoff Worth to be her knight in shining armor. Yet with no explanation, he ends their relationship, leaving her shattered and pregnant. 

Twenty-six years later, Jessica and Geoff rediscover each other because their sons become friends by chance. Eager to mend their relationship and start afresh, Geoff reveals the ugly truth surrounding their past. Because she was deemed an unsuitable match by his powerful political WASP family, Geoff was forced to end his relationship with Jessica to prevent her from falling victim to a deadly “accident.” 

Though their passion reignites, Geoff’s explanation of what transpired over two decades earlier is ignored by Jessica’s over-protective sister. She suspects Geoff’s family of being responsible for their father’s murder. Geoff’s mother refuses to accept Jessica because of a past scandal. And the two sons, once friends, find themselves pitted against each other as enemies once their relationship as half-brothers is divulged. As Jessica and Geoff examine the intersections of their parents’ lives, they uncover a history checkered with adultery, bribery and rumors of murder. How can Geoff and Jessica be together without losing their families?

I hope you'll be sure to check it out here and if you enjoy it, please leave a review. Happy reading

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Charles Thomas: Inspiration to Integrating Pro-Ball

It's baseball season, so today I'm republishing a post about Charles Thomas, the man who inspired Branch Rickey to integrate professional baseball.

Below is information compiled from the American Dental Association News. Not only was Thomas an extraordinary athlete, he went on to become a dentist.

Charles Thomas was born in West Virginia in 1881, but his family moved to Zanesville, Ohio, when he was 3 years old. In high school, Thomas was a star athlete in baseball, football and track.  In 1903 he began college at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio where he played fullback on the football team. 

While at Ohio Wesleyan, he met Branch Rickey, the future Brooklyn Dodgers' executive, who was also a two-sport college athlete. When Rickey's playing days ended, he became Ohio Wesleyan's baseball coach and recruited Thomas to replace him as the team's catcher.

At the time, Thomas was Ohio Wesleyan University's only black ballplayer. Several times, Thomas-led teams were refused admission onto their opponents' field because of his skin color.

It's said that Branch Rickey's vision of integrating America's pastime stemmed from his time at Ohio Wesleyan in the early 1900s, and several accounts reveal that Thomas had a lasting impact on him.

During a 1903 road trip, the Ohio Wesleyan baseball team traveled to South Bend, Indiana. When Thomas was refused lodging at a hotel, Rickey asked that Thomas be allowed to sleep on a cot in his room.

Later that evening, Rickey found Thomas upset and crying. According to Rickey, Thomas said, "It's my skin. If I could just tear it off, I'd be like everybody else. It's my skin..."

Years later, Rickey told the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber about Thomas. Barber recounted this story in "Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns."

"For 41 years, I have heard that young man crying," Mr. Rickey told Mr. Barber. "Now, I am going to do something about it." 

To read more about Charles Thomas and Branch Rickey, check out Black Pioneers of College Baseball.

Had you ever heard of Charles Thomas? Thanks for visiting and have a great week!