One Minute. That’s how much time a story has to hook me. If a story doesn’t hook me, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad story, but it won’t be a good fit for Apex Magazine.

This sounds harsher than it’s meant to be, but that’s because of the phrase “hook me.”  There needs to be something that grabs my attention and intrigues me enough to want to keep reading. It can be related to plot, character, voice; it can be a single sentence that’s so beautifully written that I need to keep reading to see if there are more of the same within the rest of the story.

Any of those things can be a great hook for an Apex story or, alternatively, might be executed in such a way that I can tell it’s not a good fit. My goal in this article is to help writers see what often doesn’t work and how to make it better.

VOICE

Let’s start with voice.

I’ve read many stories where the sentences read the same. There’s no flow and rhythm. It’s what often happens when writers “tell” the reader what the character is thinking, feeling, and doing instead of “showing” through descriptions. The sentences end up about the same length, making one statement, and then moving on to the next.

Now, what can you do to improve your voice? What can you do to hook a slush reader like me?

First, vary your sentence length. Get creative! What do you want to highlight in your readers’ minds and make them stand out?

As writers, there are several tools we can use to achieve that. We can write one-word or two-word sentences surrounded by longer ones; look at the paragraph above. There are also several stylistic devices we can use: alliteration, assonance, imagery, metaphors, similes, and repetition, to name a few. Every writer’s voice is different and every writer must discover their style on their own. It will develop naturally over time.

Here’s another tip that you’ll find helpful. When an author writes giant block paragraphs, there better be something amazing hidden within. If not, it will exhaust and bore the reader, exactly the opposite of a hook. Readers need natural breaks while reading; it is a part of the rhythm of the writing. It’s why we have punctuation.

And paragraphs.

Here’s an example of a story that starts off with a great voice. Its first two paragraphs drew me in with the rhythm and flow of the sentences and I loved the choice of words. “Remembered Salt” by E. Catherine Tobler.

CHARACTER

Moving on to character.

How can you hook a reader with a character? Conflict. Many stories start with a character doing something. I don’t know why they are doing it or how they feel about it. I don’t know the character and what’s at stake. So why should I care?

The first thing I want to see in a character is something that makes them endearing. Show their feelings, have them say or do something that will make them likable. Or go the opposite route, make us hate them. What we need is an emotional beat, a link between the reader and the character. Something that will keep us turning the page.

It’s possible to earn that emotional beat with plot, but for now, I want to focus on making the character shine. If it’s not done through actions, then do it through description. Depending on the genre, there are many ways to describe a character within a scene that will make them stand out as someone special. Holding your audience’s interest through your characters should be one of your main goals as a writer.

Characters that lack emotion and don’t stand out won’t hook an editor. I want to cry with them, bleed with them, scream, shout, and love with them.

So, give them emotions and make me feel something about and with them.

The example for character is a hard-hitter, literally. In “The Clown Watches the Clown” by Sara S. Messenger, I was immediately engrossed in the character and needed to find out more about them. Reading on wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity.

PLOT

Finally, plot.

This is the big one, folks. Voice and character are super important in the speculative fiction short story markets. We want to see them shine in our stories, but we also need a plot that works. There are so many great stories out there that could be fantastic to read, but I can sense within the first page when it’s just not the right fit. These are stories where I’ll jump ahead to see if they’re going to do anything special or different that saves the piece, but that’s most often not the case.

When I talk about a plot that hooks me, what  I’m really interested in is a plot that is a good fit for the publication. There are tons of creature features or medieval fantasy stories that I might enjoy, but I can quickly tell the market is not a match.

So, what is it that we look for? What will hook me while I’m reading in the slush?

To put it simply, we want stories that will make us think. Stories that will make us replay them in our heads, that we will come back to over and over again. Some may call them high-concept stories, but I would rather call them stories with meaning.

We generally don’t want stories that only want to shock,  or stories that describe a kind of cool idea: what if this or that…

What we value most is an idea that is intriguing and matters to us in some way, whether that is shown through character or voice. However, it’s the plot that can quickly point in a different direction than what we are looking for.

That being said, it’s still possible to surprise us. Give us horrible creatures and make us love or hate them. Don’t just have them wreak havoc; make them have an impact in the world at large or for a single character. Make us feel something.

Speaking of horrible creatures, sometimes they are human and in Marie Croke’s “A Lullaby of Anguish” I was confronted with horrific images within the first paragraph. I didn’t know all the details yet, but I wanted to know more about what had happened and the consequences that followed.

IN CONCLUSION

In conclusion, a story needs all of these things, but it can be enough for one of them to shine through at the beginning. Enchant your readers with your voice, thrust them into the life of your characters, and intrigue them with the events that your story will unfold.

Those are the things that will hook me.