Hooks

Some folks labor under the mistaken impression that series are easy to write. After all, you have the characters--more or less--already roughed out. Characters are not enough. The main difficulty as always is the necessity for a plot.

I have two or three series in the hopper. Since I refuse to tell the same story over...and over...and over...most of them are simmering somewhere on a back burner. At the moment, I'm working on two very different stories, both in the middle of their series.

Part of series work (for me) is re-reading the earlier stories so I don't forget obscure little plot points and details. No one can remember every single detail and you really cannot note everything in your series bible. Yesterday I found myself spending a LOT of time looking up stuff in the earlier books.

One of the things I noted about the other stories was the various hooks. The hook is the bit of the story that grabs the reader (hopefully). And there was the problem. I have no hook.

The thing is...it's hard to have a hook with no plot. The plot is that one or two sentence description of the story. No plot. Hmmmm. I should probably address that, shouldn't I?

Then I might be able to devise a hook.

Back to the drawing board.

anny