Author Insight: Sucked Into the Story

What type of storyline or hook gets you every time?

"I love me some tear-jerkers, so pretty much any story where someone is dying or in danger of dying has my vote. I also like a lot of kissing and swooning." - Sarah Ockler, author of Bittersweet. 

"The kind where someone needs to make a genuinely hard choice: one where there's really no obvious right or wrong way out, and they have to decide what's really important to them.  Of all things, the first example I can think of is a video game: Dragon Age forced a couple of those wonderful-terrible choices, and that was part of what made it eat my brain and play it four times, and now I'm thinking it might be good to run through again…

Alternately, I'm a sucker for really soft, understated, sweet-sober love stories; the kind where what's actually said is so quiet, so formal, but the subtext is like Niagara Falls." - Leah Bobet, author of Above.

"I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories and sci-fi, or any combination thereof. Basically, I love the show LOST." - Aaron Karo, author of Lexapros & Cons.

"Boy meets girl.  Boy loses girl.  Boy gets girl back.  I don’t actually write those, but what the hell, I like them a lot." - Ann Stampler, author of Where It Began.

"There’s nothing I love more than a good small town horror story. I also (and this is probably leftover from the many hours I logged as a teenager watching Lifetime movies) love anything involving kidnapping, cults, or switched-at-birth." - Robin Wasserman, author of The Book of Blood and Shadow.

"I love a book that surprises me in some way." - Alissa Grosso, author of Ferocity Summer.

"Anything where people can't keep what they want. Anything where forgetting is necessary. Anything about the basic limits of the human condition. That bleak enough for you? I love it. I love it all." - Kendare Blake, author of Girl of Nightmares.

"This is going to make me sound sick, but I love mystery stories about children being murdered in small towns." - Jennifer Bosworth, author of Struck. 

"I’m a sucker for a good mystery, and if there’s a death or other high drama in the first chapter, I’m usually hooked." - Cat Patrick, author of Revived.

 

 "Bad boy, good girl. Every time. Also, I enjoy homesteading details, so stories that take place of farms interest me." - Gwen Hayes, author of Dreaming Awake.

"I’m a sucker for 'stranger comes to town' stories. Or, in the case of Swoon and Swear, estranged stranger returns to town." - Nina Malkin, author of Swear.

Find out Thursday what storylines always hook the rest of the authors!<< Previous