A blog for aspiring freelancers

Anyone interested in travel writing or freelance writing may want to take a look at the blog I've created to publicize my workshops. 

Bill Vossler on work lists

Like many other people, I often make a "to do" list. Bill Vossler, whose excellent advice I commented on earlier this year, has a rigid but highly effective approach to such lists:

       Start with number one on your list. Get started, get it done, and cross it off or remove it from your list. Then you're ready to go after number two. Remember, no deviating, and no skipping around.

He explains five key points in this short article.

A golden opportunity missed

Some years ago, in a self-published book written by an American about his frustrating experiences studying martial arts in China, I came across a marvelous potential hook, buried midway through the volume. In a photo caption which bookstore browsers would almost certainly likely miss were the words: “...holding the sword I had to use on the day I left the school.”

I've no recollection of the image it referred to, but the words have stayed in my mind. As soon as I read them, I realized the author should have put them in the book's very first paragraph. Had he done so, he would've hooked a good few readers. They would've said to themselves: “What on Earth happened? Did the author have to fight his way out of the martial-arts school? Who tried to stop him leaving and why? Was blood spilled?”

And they would've continued reading until they found out.

Since then, whenever I'm close to finishing an article, I scour it for potential hooks.

A classic start to a book

The first 90 words of Redmond O'Hanlon's 1996 travel book Congo Journey are superb:

     In her hut in Poto-Poto, the poor quarter of Brazzaville, the feticheuse, smiling at us, knelt on the floor, drew out a handful of cowrie shells from the cloth bag at her waist, and cast them across the raffia mat.

     Lary Shaffer and I, despite ourselves, leaned forward on our wooden stools, studying the meaningless pattern; the shells, obviously much handled, shone like old ivory in the glow of the paraffin lamp. The feticheuse stopped smiling.

     “One of you,” she said slowly in French, “is very ill, right now.”

I'm going to list the reasons why I think this works so well.

Firstly, before even reaching the end of the first sentence, we want to read on, if only to find out what a feticheuse is. Later, the reader discovers that a feticheuse is a shamaness; the word derives from the French for “fetish,” and fetishes loom large in the second half of the book.

Secondly, when we read “The feticheuse stops smiling...,” we know something is wrong. You want to find out what it is. Who is ill, and what's wrong with him?

Thirdly, the beginning of the book is sprinkled with clues that we're not in safe, familiar Western territory. The lady lives in a hut; there's a raffia map on the floor; the tools of her trade include cowrie shells; there's no electricity, just a paraffin lamp. Readers of travel books want the exotic, and O'Hanlon delivers the goods from the get go.

The message here is that you don't need to start your story at the very beginning. Find an engaging episode (“the hook”) that'll draw the reader in, and then backtrack if explanation/elaboration/elucidation is needed.

In my next post, I'll discuss an instance where an author had the raw material for a great hook, but failed to use it where he should have.