Quick! You’ve got less than a minute to convince me your story is worth my time. What do you tell me? You’ve got to pique my curiosity with mystery and potential, while still conveying the bulk of the plot, theme, and general tone. “No problem!” you say. But when you sit down to actually figure out how to pitch your novel in such a stellar way, you may realize that conveying the parts that will most interest audiences isn’t always easily compatible with also conveying the technicalities of the plot—at least not within the confines of such a short description.
This is because your story’s hook and your story’s heart aren’t the same thing. What your story is really about—its heart, its core—may not be its hook at all. Fortunately, when you realize this, it suddenly makes the job of combining both into your pitch or back-cover summary much easier.
A story’s hook is the element that makes readers curious enough to pick up the book. A story’s heart is the deeper essence that makes the story matter after they do.
This revelation goes beyond just learning how to pitch your novel in the most effective way. The differences between your story’s hook and your story’s heart will affect every page you write. The sooner you figure out which is which—and how to best optimize them both—the better your book will be.
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What Is Your Story’s Heart?
Your story’s heart is what it’s all about, way down at its core. This is the soul of your story. If it’s a love story, a thriller, a coming-of-age story—that’s going to be a fundamental aspect of your story’s heart.
But we’re talking more than just genre here.
The heart of your story is its essence. It’s the point. It is the meaning that shines through the technique. It is the reason this story will matter to readers after you’ve hooked them with your premise.
The easiest way to figure out your story’s heart is to ask yourself two questions:
Question #1: Why Are You Writing This Story?
If the answer is, “I love romance” or “I want to make a difference in young people’s lives” or “I had an idea for a political drama set on Mars”—then that’s a great starting place for identifying your story’s heart.
But keep digging. Why this romance? Why these young people? Why Mars? Why this political drama instead of any other?
Question #2: What Is the Story Really About?
Rikers High by Paul Volponi (affiliate link)
When a fellow writer asks what you’re writing, what do you tell them?
“It’s a story about a kid who ends up in the prison on Rikers Island, where he is inspired to turn his life around, thanks to the school there.”
Maybe that was the exact answer Paul Volponi gave regarding his YA novel Rikers High. It’s a snappy summary of his story’s main thrust. Other stuff happens in his book, but this is the point. This is the heart.
Examples of Story Hearts
Consider the beating heart of a few more stories:
A man with the ability to jump through space to anywhere in the world is captured by people trying to harness his abilities. (Reflex by Steven Gould)
A weakling prince is sold into slavery, where he searches for faith and grows into a warrior while fighting as a gladiator. (Light of Eidon by Karen Hancock)
Edward Rochester’s first wife struggles to maintain her sanity in the face of his casual cruelty and their loveless marriage. (Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys)
A teenage girl is forced into a politicized gladiatorial gameshow, where her refusal to play by the rules challenges a corrupt system. (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)
A young girl’s anthropomorphized emotions must learn teamwork when a traumatic move to a new town coincides with the girl’s shift into adolescence. (Inside Out)
A laundromat owner is pulled into an endangered multiverse, which forces her to confront her fractured relationships with her family. (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
You’ll notice these are all streamlined descriptions of these stories. They don’t incorporate subplots or plot twists, because those things are ultimately extraneous trappings to the true heart of the stories. When you’re pitching your story, don’t worry about the extras. Just focus on the true essentials.
What Is Your Story’s Hook?
Your story’s heart should also be specific enough to stand on its own. For example, “a story of star-crossed lovers” will never be as effective as “two star-crossed teenagers fall in love and, when their families object, end up committing double suicide” (which is, of course, Romeo & Juliet). But even when your story has a fabulously specific and unique heart, your hook will almost always be even more specific and unique.
Remember, a story hook is the element that makes readers curious enough to pick up the book. A story heart is the deeper essence that makes the story matter after they do.
In the Writer’s Digest feature “Meet the Agent” (March/April 2014), literary agent Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein encouraged authors:
Really think about your novel’s hook. What makes it stand out? How is it different from all the other novels in my inbox?
The hook is what grabs people’s attention. We’ve all read coming-of-age stories. We’ve all read ill-fated love stories. We may even have read stories about kids in juvenile detention or teenagers killing themselves for love. These ideas may be at the heart of some really stupendous stories, but without a hook to grab curiosity, readers will never take a deeper look.
To identify your story’s hook, ask yourself these questions:
Question #1: Why should audiences care about this story?
If audiences were automatically going to be interested in anything you wrote, you wouldn’t need to bother with the hook. You could tell your tale and trust that audiences would share your interest just because. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.
So why will audiences think this story is interesting? What will make it stand out from the rest of the coming-of-age stories and tragic love stories?
What question will audiences want answered? What will make them think, “Okay, I haven’t seen this version before”?
Question #2: What is the single most interesting and unique element in this story?
You may be stumped after that first question. Lots of us are. We don’t always start writing a story because it’s unique or has a built-in hook. We start writing because we love its heart. But to find your story’s hook, you have to look past the surface.
Why did you need to write this story? Why couldn’t you just re-read Romeo & Juliet and call it good?
Start looking for the single most interesting element your story has on tap. To narrow that down even more, consider what’s unique about your story. More often than not, that’s where you’ll find your hook.
Your hook may be:
- An unusual character
- A fresh character relationship dynamic
- A high-concept premise
- An ironic situation
- A unique POV voice
- A subverted trope
The hook needs to create a spark of curiosity.
Examples of Story Hooks
So what are our original example stories’ hooks?
Reflex: A man can jump through space. That’s relatively unique (especially compared to, say, super-strength). Even better? This potentially super-powered story doesn’t follow any of the obvious plot tropes from the comics. It’s not about a superhero using his powers to save the world. It’s about a freak being hunted, tortured, and having to figure out how to save himself.
Light of Eidon: Consider the elements this story offers: a prince, a weakling, a gladiator, a warrior, a faith crisis. In themselves, none are unique. But combined, they create interesting mashups. A weakling prince as the hero? Don’t see that one very often. A captured prince fighting as a gladiator? Nope. Throw in that crisis of faith (which is really the heart of the story), and suddenly some extremely interesting possibilities begin to surface.
Wide Sargasso Sea: This one has an instant built-in “unique factor”: it’s a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, told from the perspective of the mad wife in the attic. The hook is built right into the premise.
The Hunger Games: Here, the story’s elements include a teenage girl, a gladiatorial gameshow, a corrupt government, enslaved performers, a love triangle, and a revolution. Of course, we’ve seen dystopias. We’ve seen survival stories. We’ve seen oppressive regimes using spectacle to control the masses. But children forced to kill each other on live television? That’s new. Even better, the theme isn’t just about whether Katniss will survive the arena; it’s about whether she can survive without her humanity intact.
Inside Out: Again, this one starts with a high-concept hook built in to its premise: the story takes place inside a girl’s mind, where her emotions are literal characters running the show. Immediately, that gives writers all kinds of possibilities for everything from comedy to symbolism. But that is just the stage on which the story can then ask deep questions such as, “What if sadness is necessary?”
Everything Everywhere All at Once: The hook is obvious here: an immigrant laundromat owner discovers she can access the skills and memories of infinite alternate selves across the multiverse. The story takes all that chaos and weirdness—hot dog fingers, googly eyes, talking rocks, bagels of doom—and roots it in the relatable ordinariness of a mother who doesn’t know how to understand her daughter. Although the multiverse is the hook, the fractured family beats at its heart.
Once you’ve got your story’s hook figured out, you may be able to work it right into the description of your story’s heart (as in the descriptions of Rikers High and Romeo & Juliet above). If you can, so much the better, since that practically answers our next question for us…
How to Combine Your Story’s Hook and Heart in a Novel Pitch
Now that you’ve differentiated your story’s heart and its hook—and narrowed them both down into short and specific tags, which should come first in your sales pitch to an agent or audience?
The hook always comes first.
Remember: nobody cares about the heart of your story until you first hook their curiosity. Present the most interesting and unique thing about your novel right up front. Don’t save it. Give it to them immediately. If you can’t grab them right away, you’re sunk. So bring out the big guns!
Depending on the medium you’re working in (query letter, synopsis, back cover copy), you may be limited by how much space you’ll then have to share the heart of your story. In some instances, it might not be necessary to include it all. All you really care about is reeling people in. They can discover your story’s heart when they read the book!
However, although the best novel pitches often lead with the hook, they are anchored by the heart. If you are required or have the opportunity to share your story’s heart, do it as pithily as possible. Always try to phrase it as a hook of its own.
- Never tell people what a story is about: “It’s a tragic love story.”
- Always show them: “Two teenagers fall in love at first sight and turn suicidal when their parents object to their getting married a few days later.”
Once you have your story’s heart and your story’s hook well in hand, you’ll be ready to meet any potential agent or reader with confidence. But don’t wait until then! Figure this stuff out before you start writing your first draft. Doing so will help you focus on what your story is really about and empower you to build a heart and a hook that will live up to any sales pitch.
Want More?
If you’re looking for even more writing instruction, I’m excited to be participating in the WorldShift Summit for Speculative Fiction Writers, a free online conference running August 17–22.
WorldShift brings together 30+ authors, editors, and writing teachers for presentations on story structure, character, worldbuilding, revision, publishing, and much more. Registration is completely free, with each day’s classes available to watch for 24 hours.
I’ll be teaching The Hidden Architecture of Meaningful Fiction: 7 Elements That Give Stories Weight, a brand-new class exploring practical ways to create greater depth, cohesion, thematic resonance, and meaning in your stories.
→ [Join me at WorldShift for free]
There’s also an optional All-Access Pass if you’d like lifetime access to the entire conference, including all presentations, transcripts, speaker bonuses, and live events. See you there!
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you balance your story’s hook and heart when learning how to pitch your novel? Tell me in the comments!
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The post How to Pitch Your Novel: The Difference Between Your Story’s Hook and Heart appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.
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Author: K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland