New authors are told write the book of your heart and your work will sell.  Write fresh, compelling, fast-moving, stories that excite you.  Remember to be true to your own unique voice.  And while you're at it, toss  in some of those tried-and-true hooks that make the book salable.

Huh?  How'd hooks get in there?  How can a story be fresh, new and  tried-and-true?  How can it be a story the author truly wants to write and include a secret baby, a marriage of convenience, amnesia (good grief!) or
twins switching places?  It can.  And here's how to do it without sacrificing your work, your
voice and your sanity.

Instead of fixating on the hooks and trying to conjure up stories about cowboys, runaway brides and dark secrets, first concentrate on the basic premise of the story and the significant qualities of the main  characters.  This is the story you want to tell, the one that's running around in your head and won't go away till you write it down, beginning to end.

Let's say the story of your heart is about two people who have no business falling in love but do.  You want a strong, independent, self-reliant hero and heroine.  These two don't like each other one bit, are heads of families that despise each other to the bone, and even go out of  their way to make life miserable for one another. But the hero and heroine can't resist the underlying attraction building between them, drawing them together in spite of everything that's keeping them apart, and driving them crazier than dancing pigs.

At this initial creative stage you forget hooks even exist and  concentrate on the story and the conflict. (Conflict is not a hook. Conflict is the story).  The most important thing is to put in the aspects of the story you feel must be there to make this the book of your heart.  After you feel good about the story, get all a twitter just thinking about it, then you decide on the hooks.

So, what are these tried-and-true hooks that threaten to louse up your creative genius?  They are elements that have been used over and over but are presented in unique ways to fit and enhance the specific plots.   Consider the movie ET, the kids have this great secret.  The story is getting ET home and a hook is keeping his presence a secret.  It's not the story, but adds to it.  In The Parent Trap the plot is getting the parents  together, a hook is the secret that the twins have switched places.  In Zorro, the heroine's parentage is a secret.  In Star Wars it's the hero's parentage.  Usual Suspects has the biggest secret of all.  Who is Keyser Soze?  These plots are totally different but use the hook of a secret in unique ways to keep the viewer guessing, add unpredictable twists and put zing to the writer's basic story.

Other hooks to mull over are the secret baby (editors love this one),  a marriage of convenience, reunited lovers, reunited enemies, bad boy/girl comes home, a feud, matchmaker, runaway bride, amnesia, misunderstood bad
boy/girl, the protector, Cinderella, Cinderfella, feuding families, sworn enemies, twin anything, etc.  Careers such as cowboys, vets, doctors, cops, ranchers, PIs, teachers, nurses and all things military are "hook" occupations.  The same is true for locations.  The Old West, the new West, New Orleans, San Francisco, New York, little-made-up-town USA are good places to set your book. The fun part is to see what hooks--and there are a
lot more--put extra oomph into your work.  Study favorite books and movies to see how using several hooks make the basic story line more interesting.

Look at Indiana Jones.  Archeology is boring.  Digging in dirt to find dead people's old stuff is downright brain-numbing, unless Indiana Jones is doing the digging.  The basic Indiana Jones' stories are about a guy looking for antiquities and someone trying to take them away.  Hooks are what make the stories fly.  Jones is a cowboy.  Hey, he has a hat, whip, wears boots, rides a horse, has great chin stubble and is sexy as all-get-out.  Close enough.  He reunites with an old lover, old enemies, has an ongoing feud, is a protector of valuable things, people, and all mankind. There are more hooks, but you get the idea.

Back to the story of the two people falling in love who shouldn't.  Just like in Indiana Jones, hooks can add to this plot and these characters, make the story more exciting and not change the basic premise.  What if the
hero's a cowboy, would the premise be the same?  What if the families were feuding, and what if someone forced the hero and heroine to marry to end this feud?  What if someone got amnesia?  Nah, that's too far of a stretch for this story and turns it into some other story we didn't plan to write.  But what about a secret baby?  That would spice up the heroine, add to the conflict both external an internal, build up the middle action and result in a more complex and satisfying ending.  Adding amusing secondary characters could make this a humorous story.  Humor's not a hook but it sure sells books.

The story now has several hooks to choose from.  It's a humorous, cowboy, matchmaker, marriage of convenience, secret baby, feud story.  But it's still the same basic premise. Hooks that don't enhance the story or
derail it in any way get ditched.  The same goes for those hooks that just don't feel right to the author.  Trying to write a book chock-full of hooks that don't appeal to you personally is a surefire way to never finish the
project.  You'll hate the story after the first few chapters and rather have a root canal than see it through to the end.

It takes a good chunk of time to map out your book, decided on your characters and figure out what hooks you want to use, but the time you spend doing this is made up when you sit down to write.  You'll work faster,
better, smarter.  Since you know where your story is going and how it's getting there, your brain is free to create and add the details that bring your work to life.    

The story of the heart combined with author-approved hooks makes for a super book.  It's fun for the author to write because it's a story begging to be told, it's saleable because it puts a new spin on proven story elements, and memorable to the reader because it blends the familiar with the fresh.

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