Hooking Your Reader

By Ann H. Gabhart, Author of The Refuge

“I read one of your books and now I’m hooked!!” (Amazon reviewer) I don’t like to fish. I went fishing once on a school trip when I was twelve. Didn’t catch anything. More telling is that I didn’t want to catch anything. So, I didn’t bother baiting my hook. Fast forward a few years and I’m writing novels. Now I want to catch some readers. I need to bait my hook.

Recently I asked my Facebook reading friends why they picked up a new book to read. Some said the author’s name, but what if you had never read that author before? What then? The cover made some of them grab a book off a shelf or click on a link to find out about the story. Back cover copy was a big key too. My new Shaker story, The Refuge, has an appealing cover and a snappy tag line. “Can love live again for this widow in a community that doesn’t believe in marriage?”

While a novel’s window dressing is important, the words inside are what reels in readers and makes them want to stay in the story. Some readers said they look at the first page to decide what to read. So, a dynamite first line can be perfect bait to catch a reader.

Try noticing first lines to see if the author grabbed your interest right away. You can find famous first lines online such as this one from George Orwell for 1984. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. The weather update might not grab you but the clocks striking thirteen pulls you into the story to find out why.

But what makes a great first line? You need something that not only gives a hint of the story but stirs the reader’s curiosity about what’s to come. I try my best to come up with a good beginning. Sometimes my first lines are edited time and time again, perhaps not being set in stone, or rather print, until after the story goes through many edits. Other times, the first line is in my mind even before I put my fingers on the keyboard to start that first chapter.

That was how it was with The Refuge. This line echoed in my head and drew me into the story. You can’t cheat death. I hope that line will make my readers curious enough to keep them reading the second line. We thought we could. And on and on until they are firmly hooked on my story. 

Bait the hook for your readers with every enticement you can imagine. That great cover. Fabulous back cover copy. A hard-hitting tag line. A compelling first sentence, but most important of all, tell such a good story that after they’ve read it to the end, you’ll have them saying, “I’m hooked!!”

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Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling and award-winning author of several Shaker novels—The Outsider, The Believer, The Seeker, The Blessed, The Gifted, and The Innocent—as well as historical novels—River to Redemption, These Healing Hills, Angel Sister, Love Comes Home, and more. Writing as A. H. Gabhart, she is also the author of the popular Hidden Springs Mysteries series. She has been a finalist for the ECPA Book of the Year and the Carol Awards, has won two Selah Awards for Love Comes Home, and won RWA’s Faith, Hope, and Love Award for These Healing Hills. Ann and her husband enjoy country life on a farm a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Learn more at www.annhgabhart.com.

Filling in the Blanks

By Ann H. Gabhart, Author of River to Redemption

When you’re writing fiction, you have to fill in many blanks to make a story come to life. Sometimes all those answers must come from your imagination. Other times, if you write historical fiction the way I do, some of those blanks are filled in by actual happenings that inspired you to write about that era.

Usually, when I come across history that lights up my imagination, I research the time period, read all I can about the background I’m using and then drop in my fictional characters to take part in those historical events to see what happens next to them. But when I stumbled across the idea for my new release, River to Redemption, I had to do things a bit differently.The story is based on the actions of a slave named Louis who heroically buried fifty-five victims of a cholera epidemic in the small town of Springfield, Kentucky in 1833 and then the subsequent actions of the citizens of that town in 1845. While all the other characters in the story are fictional people I did drop down into the town, the actions of this man, Louis, who actually walked Springfield’s streets at one time, inspired my story. 

Therefore, I had to find a way to bring Louis to life in my story.

I couldn’t locate much information about the man except for what he did during the cholera epidemics and how the town eventually came together to reward him for that. However, by dwelling on those events, I began to see this man, Louis. He had to be strong to dig so many graves single-handedly. He surely had a close relationship with the Lord to be willing to serve his fellow citizens in a town where he had no individual freedom. He must have been kind and humble. As I filled in the blanks of what kind of man he must have been, I began to have a vision of this man, Louis. He is not a main character, but his actions set everything else in the story in motion. So he had to be right.

Whether you are writing a story with all fictional characters or if you are dropping actual historical figures into your story-line, you have to fill in plenty of blanks about those people. You need to know more than the color of their eyes and hair. Blanks do need to be filled in about how characters look, but you also need to fill in the blanks about what makes your people tick and how they might react in various circumstances.

That’s easier for me to do with a character I invent, but sometimes you find an actual person who did something so noteworthy that you want to fill in the blanks time has erased and bring that person back to life to tell his story. That was how I felt about Louis in River to Redemption as I wrote this story.   

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Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling and award-winning author of several Shaker novels—The Outsider, The Believer, The Seeker, The Blessed, The Gifted, and The Innocent—as well as These Healing Hills, Angel Sister, Small Town Girl, Love Comes Home, Words Spoken True, and The Heart of Hollyhill series. She is also the author of the popular Hidden Springs Mysteries series, as A. H. Gabhart. She has been a finalist for the ECPA Book of the Year and the Carol Awards, and has won two Selah Awards for Love Comes Home. Ann and her husband enjoy country life on a farm a mile from where she was born in rural Kentucky. Learn more at www.annhgabhart.com.