Sensual Detail as a Hook

"Keeping the Reader Reading,"  (Part 2 of 13).

The plot hook isn't the only thing that keeps the reader reading. 

Here's two versions of THE GAME WE PLAY’s opening.  

Faith Cody lay in bed. She tossed and turned then moaned at a horrible nightmare. She heard the sound of her moan and woke up. This wasn't her room. Where was she? Why was she here? Why was the room so fuzzy?

A man leaned over her. He was blurred, too. Somehow, she knew he was going to rape her. As his hand reached her face, she screamed.

In comparison:

Light and shadow undulated around her in a drugged blur, but she could distinguish enough corners and shapes to know she lay in a strange bedroom. Rainy afternoon gray light billowed through thin, white curtains, and she could smell the sea and the freshly laundered sheets of her bed. The ceiling above her was spattered with large shadows of raindrops she couldn't see on the windows.

A man, a blur of flesh tones and angles, leaned over her. His hand became solid shape as it reached her face. Her nameless dread became terror, and she cringed away, expecting rape.

The second gives visual details -- corners, shapes, white curtains, the shadows of raindrops. It also gives details from the other senses -- the smell of the ocean and the sheets, and the feel of the wind from the open window. The reader should be in that room at this point because she can visualize it.

Getting the reader’s head into your book as fast as possible is as much a hook as the plot questions you’ve asked.  

Link to Part 1: 

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-first-hook.html

How DIfferent Should Your World Be?

 QUESTION:  Here’s what I'm wondering as I'm setting up my “alternate earth.” If the reader’s suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy your writing, how do you know what kinds of things might be too much for your readers? Might pull them out of the story as they puzzle over why someplace that’s earth-yet-not-earth has *that*?

If your world has internal consistency and follows its own logic, most readers will accept that world.  Readers want to believe your world.  That's why they buy your story.

Things like dogs, cats, and pine trees are just simple shorthand to make that world comfortable for the reader as well as make it easier for him to connect with it.  

If the reader has to learn everything from the names of the trees to the five different kinds of six-legged beasts of burden, and they really have nothing important to do with the story, he will be seriously put off.  Readers like comfortable, shorthand things like pine trees and horses.

Touches of the strange will liven up a scene to give it a sense of elsewhere, but there need only be touches.  In a scene where the hero and his friends stop at a staging inn to rest their horses and get a meal, you can have the usual things like the tavern, the stablehands, and the horses, but you can also mention a corral filled with hippogriffs who are fluttering their wings and snapping their beaks as one of the servants tosses them dead rabbits.

But detail for the sake of detail will delay the action and cause the problem you mention.  For example, the hero is walking through the woods, and a tree of living flame stops him in his tracks because of its beauty.  It begins to sing of the glory of the wind and the majesty of the rain.

The hero finally moves away and promptly forgets it, and it has nothing else to do with the story.

The reader will wait the whole novel for that scene to make some sense with the plot, but it never does so the reader gets angry.

If, however, that singing tree gives the hero a riddle he must understand to achieve his victory, then the scene is very important, indeed.  

Somewhere along the way, it would probably be best if the reader learns why the tree gave him that clue so the plot has some internal logic.

You also need to decide what your story is really about.  If it’s about the unusual political situation in this world, then most of the extra details and information should help focus on that.  If it’s about the world’s magic and how it is failing, then that’s where the details and the weirdness should be focused.  

Most of this boils down to not overwhelming your reader and avoiding info dumping to show off your incredlbie worldbuilding skills.  

Faraway Places

QUESTION: I want to set my novel in India, but I've never been there. My main character comes into India from America. Can I pull this off?

I'm a born and bred Southerner, and I can almost always tell when a non-Southerner is writing about the South. Words and expressions are used wrong, facts are wrong, the texture of the landscape and weather is wrong, etc., etc. That's one reason I rarely stray from the South as a location for my books since I'm probably as culturally clueless about other parts of the US as these people are about the South.  

I would be beyond clueless about another country, and I’d think long and hard about spending a whole novel there.  There's also the issue of not understanding certain cultural norms which can land me in a culturally insensitive pile of crap of my own making which would not just hurt the book but my reputation.  Considering all that, my answer would be nope, not a smart idea. 

If you choose to write that novel, you will have the advantage, though, of having a stranger come into India so some mistakes made in her viewpoint will be hers, not yours, in the reader's eyes.

The culture and landscape will be so vastly different that anyone from outside would be overwhelmed by its alien quality and miss much of the nuances. Essentially, that means that she will view India as an impressionistic painting, not as a photographic image, so that certain things will connect with her senses and others will be missed.

My major suggestions are to read recent travelogues about that area as well as watch TV show travelogues. It would not surprise me if YouTube isn’t full of American adventures in India.  Memoirs from Americans or Europeans living in India should also prove to be a valuable resource about the clash of cultures.

The Internet is a wondrous resource, and it's very easy to connect with people from all over the world. When you have your work in a readable form, try to find people who know that area to read those parts of the books. That should help, too. 

The Book BIble

I found the book bible for my first novel last week, and it reminded me of how useful one is to have.

A book bible is a paper or digital file that contains all the information collected before, during, and after the book is written.  

Most mentions of a book bible come from authors writing a series, but one is pretty darn useful for a standalone novel.

In POWER’s book bible, I had drawings of the layout of the hero’s house complete with where all the secret hallways, trapdoors, etc., were located.  The compass points were used so I wouldn’t have someone in a bedroom watching the setting sun when the bedroom faced east.  The outside of the house and grounds had their own map.

The horses two characters ride at the beginning have their descriptions and names listed.

Because the main character has a cousin and a brother involved in the plot, I did a family tree.  

Research sources were listed with Dewey decimal numbers and the library or the personal bookshelf where they were.  (This was pre-Internet.)  For later books, I created a file specific to the book in my browser's bookmarks.

I did drawings and descriptions of some of the magical memorabilia in the house, and I listed tricks I could use in various scenes.  

One page was nothing but names I could use for random characters.  Each name was dissimilar from the main characters so readers wouldn’t be confused by a similar sounding or spelled name.  I also picked names that were common in the area where the novel was set.  

Every character had their description, etc., with other details.  If I “cast” the character as an actor I’m familiar with, I’d write that down, too, so I’d be able to hear the correct voice in my head when I wrote dialogue for a character who had been elsewhere for a lot of pages.

I started the novel with most of my info in the bible on the major characters, but I added info for them and others as I created it.  

I usually added things to the bible after I finished writing for the day, or I’d go back over it before I started writing so I wouldn’t lose my writing rhythm.  

Another handy page or two to have, particularly if your book is a fantasy, is a word bible.  Each character’s name, made-up words with a brief definition, place names, and unusual capitalizations are listed.  When your book is edited, this list will keep the copy editor from hassling you about words that may appear to be misspelled.   

Some pages were there for thinking through various plot points, considering possible scenes later in the novel, and general mental doodling.  

All this may appear to be a lot of extra work, but it will be worth it for rewrites, etc., and, maybe, that standalone may turn into a series, and the bible will be worth its weight in gold for the time saved.  

Making Your Series Stand Out

These days, the book market is glutted with books so it’s hard to make your novel stand out.  

One way to make your book series original is to use your own life experience or location.

Two authors who have done that are Cassie Alexander and Ilona Andrews.

Author Cassie Alexander is a nurse, and her urban fantasy series heroine in NIGHTSHIFTED is nurse Edie Spense, but Edie works in the magical wing of a hospital where vampires, weres, and other magical creatures need medical help.  The details are extremely realistic, and most of the action is in and around the hospital and Edie’s job.  She doesn’t wear leather or carry a sword, but she is a magnificent fighter who protects her charges with her knowledge and courage.  

The married couple Ilona Andrews uses the city of Atlanta in a more traditional urban fantasy.  But in the Kate Daniels series,  Atlanta has been changed and destroyed as waves of magic enter the world and destroy technology and buildings.  Famous landmarks are twisted bits of slag and magic where the heroine chases bad guys.  The real world with its familiarity becomes wickedly unfamiliar.  I found it so amusing that I bought a copy of the first novel for my niece who lives there, and she got a great kick out of this altered Atlanta.

The husband half of the Ilona Andrews’s pseudonym is former military, and the spot on battle scenes show this background so the scenes are not generic or ridiculous as so many others are in urban fantasy series.  The werewolf community is essentially paramilitary, as well, which adds a nice addition to the usual pack system.

So, if you want to stand out as an author, you must not only create great characters and a hard-charging plot, employ world-class craft, and careful worldbuilding,  you should also find something different and uniquely your own in your life or interests to create a great series.