Finish this hook for a novel.
When I saw Mrs. Appleby heading straight toward me, it could only mean one thing: she … ?
Here are all my posts this month on writing the beginning of your novel.
Finish this Hook for a Novel
2 Secrets for Creating a Compelling Hook for Your Novel
Before I dive into the 2 secrets for creating a compelling hook for your novel, I wanted to remind you that the theme for JPC Allen Writes during 2026 is how to write a novel. With four months behind us, we’ve covered:
This month will be about how to write the beginning of your novel. The hook is the opening line or lines that snag the attention of readers so thoroughly that they can’t put your book down. That sounds like a tall order and it is, but keep reading.
No hook? No problem.
If you can’t get past page 1 of your novel because you can’t come up with a creative hook, write a lousy one. It’s not permanent. Consider it an interim hook until the permanent hook arrives. Write your opening lines and then keep going.
Now write the whole novel.
What? What about the hook? Often, especially for first-time novelists, you have to slog through a first draft before you understand your characters and their journey through the story. Only when you’ve reached the final page are you in a position to understand how to create a hook for your particular story. Go back to your interim hook and throw it out or refine it to fit the rest of your book.
2 Secrets for Creating a Hook
The two secrets are that your hook should be meaningful and project tension. By meaningful, I mean the hook should reflect what readers should expect in your novel. The exciting opening sequence that turns out to be a dream, a flashback, or a scene on a movie set is not meaningful. Readers will feel cheated.
The best hooks also project tension, either hinting at the problem facing your protagonist that will soon become clear in the first chapters or plunking the problem in front of readers with the first line.
Here are the first line of my three novels:
A Shadow on the Snow. “I’M NOT FOOLED, RAE. YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER.”
19-year-old Rae Riley receives anonymous notes that grow more threatening. That’s the mystery she has to solve, and I begin the novel with the message from the first anonymous note. I put the problem front and center in the first line.
A Storm of Doubts. “‘Just stop it!’ The shout made me jerk and get poked by a dead branch of a honeysuckle bush. Wasn’t that a woman’s voice? Not a girl’s, not my cousin Coral’s.”
Since this is a mystery, someone shouting like she’s in trouble creates immediate tension.
A Riddle in the Lonesome October. “‘We’ve got a bit of a situation here at the children’s home, Mal.’ Aunt Carrie’s voice came over the phone.”
The line of dialogue carries tension. What’s the situation? What could be happening at a children’s home? This first line hints at the tension involved in a hunt for a missing inheritance which is explained in the first chapter.
So let me know which opening lines did a great job of pulling you into a novel.
How to Make a Novel Great with Subplots
I’ve written a lot this month about plots but haven’t addressed subplots. Subplots are unique to novels because short stories aren’t long enough to handle them. How do you make a novel great with subplots? Below are three ways subplots improve a novel.
Reflect the theme
In my Halloween mystery,A Riddle in the Lonesome October, Rae deals with fear and how to handle it as a Christian. Her cousin and uncle also struggle with fear after a terrible riding accident. Her cousin and uncle’s battles allow me to explore the theme with different characters, who have different responses to it, making the story richer for readers.
Complicate the main plot
Subplots in mysteries can help obscure the solution. Many times in the novels by Agatha Christie, a lesser crime is woven into the murder, which complicates discovering the identity of the killer. Subplots can add layers of complexities to the main plot, but they must support the main plot. For example, let’s say I’m writing a mystery about the owner an old local theater getting killed in it. So a lot of the mystery has to be set in the theater. My amateur sleuth is a retired teacher who volunteers at a community garden. If I have several scenes where my sleuth talks to friends and strangers at the garden and the only things readers learn is gardening techniques, then my subplot of working at the community garden isn’t supporting the overall plot of the murder mystery.
Inject fun
Subplots can add humor, if that’s appropriate for your novel. In each of my cozy mysteries, my protagonist’s younger brothers, who’s ten, is always working on an invention. It malfunctions somehow, attacking their father, and somehow, I always make the invention a component in solving the mystery. Since I’m writing about a close family, and my teen protagonist has a sense of humor, this subplot works.
Here’s all my posts on plot this month. If you have a question about writing plots, drop it in the comments.
What are Your Favorite Plot Tropes for YA?
What are your favorite plot tropes for YA novels? An underdog story often will hook my attention. One trope I’m tired of is the poor, deserving teen who is attending an exclusive boarding high school on a scholarship. Since I’ve never met a teen who’s attended any boarding high school, I think this trope is beyond most teens’ experiences and makes it harder for teens to relate too. But my main objection is that this trope is overused.
So let me know your favorite plot tropes for YA.
Here are my previous bookish questions on plot tropes. Join the conversation!
How to Balance Plot and Character Development in Your Novel
My good friend author M. Liz Boyle posed this question: how to balance plot and character development in your novel. I had to give this a lot of thought because, although I know how I do it, I wasn’t sure how to explain my approach in a way others will understand. I’m a very instinctive writer. So when my story is veering off the rails, I rely on my gut to warn me. Since other writers can’t rely on my gut–and that might get messy anyway–here are some guidelines for balancing plot and characters.
Story Is King
When you write genre fiction, the rules of the genre set the boundaries for your novel. I write traditional mysteries. If plot twist or a character arc doesn’t serve the point of the a detective solving a mystery, I should examine it and either change it into something more supportive or eliminate it.
How do you know if an aspect of your novel is serving the story? You should be able to sum up the main problem of your novel in one to three sentences.
For example, I can sum up my third Rae Riley novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, this way:
A hidden inheritance, a family feud, a riding accident, a fake medium and rumors of bigfoot all lead to murder as Rae Riley tries to solve the riddle that will allow her great aunt to inherit a fortune and uncover the secret of the deputy she’s fallen for.
All those elements have to support solving the riddle because it’s the main engine of the story. All the plot twists and character development need to feed that engine.
But how do you strike a balance?
The best way to strike a balance between plot points and character development is to combine them. In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, Rae is getting to know her father and learning how he feels about her and how she feels about him. I can show those feelings through their interactions as they try to figure out who is stalking Rae threatening letters vandalism. If your fantasy novel features a quest, then your characters develop as they meet challenges on their adventure.
But you can still add small tangents.
What do I mean by “small tangents?” Short additions of dialogue or action that aren’t directly tied to the mission of your novel but deliver some flavor to the mix.
In Riddle, rumors of a rogue black bear circulate around the county. Rae’s ten-year-old half brother Aaron invents an alarm to blast music if anyone gets too close to the family’s farmhouse. Now the alarm provides a clue to the mystery, but just for fun, I added that every time the alarm catches a family member, Aaron interviews him or her to see how scared they were to judge the alarm’s effectiveness. As he tells them, he can’t interview a bear if it triggers the alarm.
It’s short, funny, and reveals something about Aaron. Keep your tangents brief and few to increase their impact. The more often you combine a plot point to reveal character, the more compelling your novel will be.
Here are all of this month’s writing tips on plotting a novel.
