Hey folks, and welcome back to the next episode of ‘Charlotte talks a lot about children’s writing again’. Because I can, I enjoy it, and believe it or not it’s very relevant in what I do for a living. In my last post in the series I talked about the rule of threes and show don’t tell – both basic principles of children’s writing that translate over to business writing completely. In today’s instalment, we’re going over 2 more basics – hooks and points of view.
Hooks, Hooks, Hooks!
Children are well known for their short attention span. They are famous for it. But when they can’t keep their focus on their favourite toy for more than a few minutes, how do you possibly stand a hope of grabbing their attention with your new, unknown book? And let’s not forget that the average adult attention span is getting shorter, so you need to make your impression on them, too!
With an amazing opening line, also known as a ‘hook’. I could wax lyrical about hooks forever, so instead I want to show you the power of a good opening line with a few examples:
- “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” – The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger
- “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” – The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein
- “I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.” – Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
- “Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.” – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
- “If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.” – The Bad Beginning: A Series Of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
- “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” – Charlottes Web by E.B.White
Each and every one of those lines intrigues you, grips you or makes you want to know more. What is Charlottes father doing with an axe, and where is he taking it to? What is a hobbit? Why is that series of books not happy?
But hooks don’t just belong in the first line of the book, or in the first line of your blog/e-book/newsletter. They belong in the first line of every chapter, in the middle and even at the end of every chapter. Scattered throughout the content so that every time you might start to get bored, you’re drawn back in again. The hooks are what keep your reader interested, demanding to know ‘what happens next?’ So throughout your story, make sure you are including some nice big, well baited hooks for your readers to sink their teeth into.
Understand Points of View
When you come to plan out your book, one of the first things you should think about is how the story will be told. Will it be told by a narrator, yourself as the writer, or one of your characters? This will ultimately affect which point of view you choose to write in. You might vaguely remember covering points of view in primary school when you were first learning to write, but just in case, here is a brief refresher course:
First Person: First person point of view is all about me, me, me. You are telling the story form your main characters point of view, seeing the world through their eyes and sharing in their internal thoughts. So you will often start sentences with ‘I’, and see a lot of ‘me and ‘mine’ throughout. The reader will also be privy to insider knowledge – the thoughts, feelings and knowledge of the events happening. But the reader doesn’t know anything that the character themselves doesn’t know, which makes it a great viewpoint for dramatic reveals.
Second Person: Second person is a little tricky, and it’s not often found in fictional books. Instead, it’s more commonly found on blogs, everyday conversation and instruction texts, like this one. The second person point of view is all about ‘you’ ‘your’ and ‘yourself’. This entire course is written in the second person, as I address you directly. In fiction, this point of view will often be used when the writer wants to address the reader directly, or place the reader as the main character. You see this often with ‘choose your own adventure’ books, where the reader is the hero making all the decisions. But again, it’s very rare to find this point of view outside this type of story structure.
Third Person: This is by far the most common point of view used in writing. Third person point of view is characterised by the use of ‘she’ ‘he’ and ‘they’. This is where the reader gets an objective viewpoint on the events of the story from a narrator – as if they were hovering above and watching. In this type of story, a disembodied narrator describes what the characters do and what happens to them. You don’t see directly through a character’s eyes as you do in a first-person narrative, but often the narrator describes the main character’s thoughts and feelings about what’s going on. This means that the writer can weave in details that the characters character doesn’t necessarily know – like the army approaching from behind the hill or the spy hiding behind the corner who overheard everything.
Third Person Limited: This last one is a bit of a more ‘advanced’ point of view, and isn’t often taught in schools, but it can be used to great effect in fiction. In a third person limited viewpoint, the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character. All characters are described with the same pronouns as standard third person (he, she, they), but one character is followed closely throughout the story. This is usually the main character. So in essence, telling a story in third person limited is like placing a video camera over the main character’s shoulder. The reader stick with that person, knows their thoughts and feelings, but still sees everything and everyone around them.
There endeth today’s lesson. I hope this has given you some food for thought, and I can’t wait to see how you implement some amazing hooks in your next piece of content. As always, if you have any questions, just give me a shout, and I will be happy to help.