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My buddy in Chicago said my novel's first chapter was 'all setup, no hook' so I rewrote it to start with the car crash, but now I'm stuck on chapter three.
Do you think a harsh critique early on helps you push through or just kills your drive to finish?
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barbara_hall92d ago
Honestly that specific kind of critique can mess with your head in a weird way. It makes you chase a single reader's idea of a hook, which might not even be right for your story. Now you've got a crash in chapter one but no plan for chapter three, so the fix was just surface level. Sometimes a harsh note points out a real problem, but the suggested solution can send you down the wrong path. Gotta figure out if the issue was truly no hook, or just setup that needed to be more engaging on its own terms.
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