I'd like to have a word with my subconscious ...

Bad dreams, nightmares, and anxiety dreams all damn night.

*Truepenny's hopes for a productive and incisively-prosed day go down like the Hindenberg*

OTOH, my dreams included guest appearances from Duncan and Methos, Johnny Depp, David Bowie as the Goblin King, and a great many interesting books. So it could have been worse.

The worst dreams all seemed to take place in forests, on a crinkling, shushing carpet of dead leaves.

pondering

Mirrorthaw likes the new novella! *small happy dance*

Now to tidy it up and send it out and see if anybody else likes it.

We are both uncertain of what to do about one particular issue. This novella--like the other eight stories I've written with this narrator--are very much, and very deliberately, in the school of M. R. James. Not pastiches, because James wasn't interested in sex and psychology, and I am, but old-fashioned and decorous horror stories. Very much in that Jamesian mode--which is rather at odds with current trends in short-story writing.

In particular, this style of narrative does not feature an opening hook. I can make it do so, and am torn between my knowledge that that would very likely make it more appealing to editors, and my personal feeling that that's not how that type of story--and this story in particular--works. I think the slow build is worth it (it's a 10k novella, I do have space), but I am well aware I am in the minority.

And so I'm wondering what other people think. Do you have to have a hook in a short story, or are you willing to give the author enough rope to hang herself with?

hooks

Rather than type the same response three or four times, I thought I'd just make a new entry, because I've hit an interesting problem of nomenclature.

pameladean, matociquala, and papersky have all said basically the same thing: the first line had better catch the reader's interest. Which, yes. I agree with Pamela, though, in not calling that necessarily a hook--or, at least, what people mean by hooks when they tell you your story doesn't have one. By the definition of hook that includes Possession, Watership Down, and Spindle's End, I'm in clover, because that kind of thing I can manage.

What's tripping me up now is that I can't quite figure out how to define what I meant by "hook" when I said I was worried about not having one. It's something to do with the idea of starting the story at a dramatic moment and then using flashbacks to give context ... what is that called, and is it a good thing or a bad thing?

(Yes, I know, it's a situational sort of thing, but I guess I'm asking another structural question. I don't know. I have a headache and am not at my best, so if anyone can untangle my tangle, I'd be grateful.)