Miss Snark's Formula for Creating a Hook

Miss Snark was the pseudonym of former literary agent, Janet Reid. Eventually, Janet Reid started her own blog under her own name. I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants to publish traditionally, but I am sad that Miss Snark's original blog is gone. 

Miss Snark used to do something that Janet Reid never did on her blog, called a "Crap-O-Meter", where she'd critique your query letter and first 500 words of your novel (Janet Reid only critiqued queries). I found it invaluable to comb through her critiques and see what other writers were doing wrong. 

I actually got to participate in the last two Crap-O-Meters. (She liked the queries, passed on both excerpts due to the writing.) Her critiques of my writing specifically were very helpful but she had literally hundreds of submissions that I read through, picking up tips.

She really demystified good writing and was funny and articulate while doing it. I was glad to see that she retained her "snark" when she started a new blog under her own name, but Miss Snark will always hold a special place in my heart.

All of that to say, Miss Snark had a formula for writing a Hook that Janet Reid did not ever post on her blog, as far as I can tell. So, I wanted to share that here. I saw a couple of other people with blogs did the same, but you can never have it in too many places. The internet is not as forever as we want to think it is.

Here's the formula:

X is the main guy; he wants to do:

Y is the bad guy; he wants to do:
they meet at Z and all L breaks loose.
If they don't resolve Q, then R starts and if they do it's L squared.

Basically, who are the main characters, what are their goals, what are the stakes?  

I will probably never publish traditionally, so I don't need to write query letters, but this is so helpful for figuring out what would go on the back of the book. Also, to be honest, I could always figure out who the characters were and what they wanted, but never what they actually did in a story. This formula forced me to come up with a plot.

Enjoy!