Welcome to Week One of our story structure contest! This week's item is your Hook! |\| What is a Hook?|\| A hook is the first bit of your story, which draws you in and makes your reader want to read more of it. Here, we get introduced to our characters and their internal conflict! The hook is internal conflict, which is simple: desire vs fear. Despite popular belief, the internal conflict starts long before the inciting incident shows up to destroy your protagonist’s life. In fact, that conflict has been boiling just below the surface this whole time — otherwise, your inciting incident wouldn’t matter. See, external conflict (the plot) is all about what happens; but internal conflict (the story) is about why it matters. |\|Examples of a hook|\| Todays Example is from the hit movie, FROZEN! The hook opens with our two protagonists, Elsa and Anna, playing together. We fall in love with the two girls and are enchanted by elsa's magic. The Internal conflict comes into play for the first time when Anna gets hurt playing with Elsa. I'd explain it more, but I don't want to take up so much space, so if you've seen it, you know. Coming out of it, we see both Anna and Elsa's conflicts emerge. Elsa is afraid that she is a monster who will hurt people, and Anna is upset that Elsa abanded her and is scared of being alone. We can see both of these in the lyrics of For The First Time In Forever, and I'll probably pop that in the project for you to listen to. Anna meets Hans, and due to her fear (also called a misbelief or fatal flaw), falls for him, leading to a fight between Anna and Elsa that becomes next weeks item, the inciting incendent! |\| Prompts for a good Hook|\| - What does my protagonist think will bring her true happiness or contentment? And how is her fear stopping her from going after it? - What is my character’s misbelief and what happened in their past to create this misbelief? - How can I show my audience in the FIRST FIVE MINUTES why “what’s happening” MATTERS to my protagonist, given their desire, fear, and disbelief? |\| Conclusion |\| Well, that's it for this week! Check below for how to enter the contest and improve your understanding of story structure!
|\| How to enter |\| Remix this project with your hook! it can be written in the little text boxes here, linked with a text page/Word document, or however you'd like! This will be due April 17th, and my favorite will be shared a week from then! I'll release a new one of these weekly, and we can build an amazing story together! See ya!
