What dost thou think of the following hook sentence?
Sarah Monroe is rescued from years of unjust imprisonment, but can she survive the difficult simplicity of living in freedom or let her long hidden secrets destroy both her and the man who's given her one last chance at love?
I'm terrible at these, so take my comments for what they're worth--not much.
ReplyDeleteI like the first and last clauses.
But I want to know how she's rescued more than I want to hear about simplicity of living in freedom (which strikes me as a vague phrase that is eating up your precious word count), and I want to know what the long hidden secrets are.
I've read a helpful formula that goes like this:
Protagonist (not the name but the character description) wants this (the thing she wants most in the world) but this (antagonist of situation) stands in her way.
So...
A wrongly-accused woman newly freed from prison, wants to accept the man who offers her a last chance at love, but [specific] secrets from her past threaten to destroy them both.
OK mine stinks. And maybe the woman wasn't actually in prison. But the beauty of going with this formula is that you hook the reader in with an interesting character we can sympathize with, and you tell us what she longs for, and then you tell us why she's in danger of losing that goal. That makes us want to read to find out if she will overcome or not.
Thank you Sally!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping to query soon.
This is SO hard!
I agree with Sally - those were some of my first thoughts. I love the idea of the woman becoming free, but what threatens to return her to bondage or prevent her from love?
ReplyDeleteYou're getting ready to query?!?! How exciting and daunting! :) Good luck.