From Jo Ann Hernandez:
It’s a story. Maybe you might think it’s not much of a story, but it’s all I have in my defense. I could tell you exactly what happened, but that wouldn’t be enough for you to understand.
I need you to understand. I need you to know why I did what I did. Maybe then you won’t think too badly of me. Maybe then you’ll be able to forgive me. Or at least you’ll know the truth. People say the truth is subjective. That I’ll tell you the story in a way to make myself look good. But I can’t. I don’t think there is anything I can say that’ll make me look good. After all, I am guilty. But only guilty of wanting things to be better. Of wanting to do good. I mean, I loved her. I really did. I think she even loved me. But I guess now we’ll never know, will we?
Developmental Edit
A protagonist at odds with themself is a good kind of protagonist to have. A protagonist who’s done something wrong at odds with themself gives you a wonderful, wide field to play in.
Freaky? check
Contains pithy lines? check
Raises a question? check: What did this person do?
Drop-kicks us off the end? check: Whatever it was, it shut someone up for good.
What does this tell us about the book we’re starting? There’s a guilty character defending themself to us about something that can’t make them look good, something that has removed the option of finding out how this woman felt about the character.
Do I want to follow this character through an entire novel? Mmmm. . .maybe not. He doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to know. I personally am not entertained by unredeemably dark characters—I’ve worked at a Battered Women’s Shelter, and I know there’s already too much of that in real life. Unless he gets really creative and interesting right away.
Genre? The ominous mood-setting sounds like thriller to me. It could be horror, but it’s tricky to do horror in the first-person voice of the perpetrator.
Do we need to know who the character is, how they got here, where they were before? Clearly, that’s the story we’re about to hear. But a detail or two to show how this story is unique might be a good idea.
Do we need to know what’s going to happen next? I think we already do—the character is going to tell their story.
Does this drop us into a moment in the character’s story? No, this is build-up, the author preparing us for a terrible narrative, setting a mood through which she wants us to interpret the story. This is very common in hooks: we writers work ourselves into our stories by beginning to write before the first exciting event. That’s how we get up-to-speed.
Let’s talk about structure. Because this is a mood piece, it relies incredibly heavily on word choice. Silly mood can be conveyed with a lot of chatter. Smart-aleck mood can be conveyed with a certain amount of well-chosen loquacity. A threatening mood, however, needs simple, straight-forward, preferably brief language to contrast with the creepy information, forcing the details rather than the author’s tone to carry the weight. Particularly with a dark mood, there’s a real danger of trying to tell the reader how to feel. This must be avoided at all costs. What does the first-person dark mood tell us about this story? Character-driven.
This hook is also attempting something very difficult: this narrator is asking something from the reader—understanding—even while implying that who they are and what they’ve done is highly unsympathetic.
Can this hook be made any simpler and briefer, while kicking off with a pithy line and emphasizing the character’s honesty and possibly lovability to avoid alienating the reader’s sympathies?
Copy & Line Edit
People say the truth is subjective. That I’ll tell the story in a way to make myself look good. But I don’t think there is anything I can say that’ll make me look good. I think she loved me. I guess now we’ll never know, will we?