Quote

As a writer, there are times when you have something to say, and yet no particular 'hook' upon which to hang the missive you are burning to release.

Sometimes a writer just needs a hook.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, 'Oh, that's the hook right there,' I'll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.

Character design, like story design, requires a hook to grab the reader's attention.

Hooks need to be predictable and not predictable at the same time.

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable.

I don't go back and read my own stuff too much, but there are times where I second-guess myself and said I could have done something different, like a line of dialogue.

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.