How to Write a Good Story - All Elements

Hooks

Hooks are very important to make your audience want to continue to read on your story.

It it one of the most important aspects of a story.

If you make successful characterization, audience will engage with the characters and are more likely to care about them. This means that the audience are likely to get hooked and want to see how conflicts unsolve of the characters. This is if audience likes them and if characters feel real for the audience.

Hooks can be made in many different ways but it is all about questions. Questions that make the audience want to read on to get the answers.

Hooks can be made by: dilemmas, increasing stakes, in medias res, dramatic irony, conflicts, setting, intrigue, suspense and unusual circumstances.

Dilemmas - This is a situation where the characters has a choice. In any way, the outcome will be undesireable and equally as bad. The bigger the stakes, the better. For example, Sophie killed a man a long time ago and kept it for herself. Unfortunatelly, the police found a piece of evidence in the crime scene, hair. Now, Sophie has a dilemma, to go the police and tell them about her murder, wait till they analyze the hair and find her DNA on it, or somehow steal the evidence. With high stakes (going to jail for murder), the story hooks the audience as there are so many questions (will Sophie go to jail? How will Sophie escape jail? What will Sophie do?), we crave to find out what will happen.

Stakes - the higher the stakes, the more entertaining is the story. Just compare a character betting 5 pounds with 100 milion pounds that he does not own. 5 pounds is not much, nothing would really happen. But if the character would lose 100 milion, then much would change. First of all, audience would ask questions (How will he get so much money? What will happen if he does not have this amount of money? How will his life change because of this?). We would then read on to see how he overcomes this problem or gets overwhelmed by it and how.

In medias res - basically, this is starting a story in the middle of an action. It is very important as hooking audience at the start is the most important thing to do in a story. Action is very entertaining which hooks the audience. No one wants to start reading a story where nothing happens, only for something to start after few pages. Actions gives the audience questions (Why is this happening? Who is the character(s)?) and builds characters upon their actions by giving them attributes such as brave, weak etc.

Dramatic irony - this one of my favorite devices. It is something in the story that the character(s) don't know about, but the audience do. For example, you see Lucy in her house. In the meanwhile, you can see the murderer coming to her house. You right away want to jump into the story and tell Lucy to run or hide. This technique creates a lot of suspense as, again, audience want answers to his/her questions (What will happen to Lucy? Will Lucy escape? What will the murderer do? Why does he does it?). 

Conflicts - it can be made in many ways: character vs self, character vs character, character vs nature or character vs society. Everyone of Us has conflicts, its impossible to live without any conflicts. They are entertaining to watch while a story without any would be boring. For example, (character vs character) a man chases Josh. You ask: what he wants from Josh? Who is the man? What will he do to Josh? Will Josh escape or not? Conflicts creates so many questions that the audience crave answers for them, and the only way to get the answers is to watch/read on.

Setting - this one is quite powerful and works by giving questions. Every detail in a story has a reason for existence and therefore, audience tries to analyze the purpose of everything. Setting creates questions such as: why set here? Where is this?  What will happen here? The audience watch on further to understand why this setting.

Unusual circumstances - this one is used at the start of a story. You start of with something unusual. For example, a man eating human flesh. Starting with unusual circumstances, makes the audience ask many questions (Why is he eating human flesh? Where and when did he get it from? How did he get it? Will the victim's family find out and do something about it?), this makes the audience watch on to find out the answers for their questions.

As a writer of any kind, remember to withhold information and only to tell parts, not too much. Too much information given destroys the questions for the reader and makes them stop reading. Make your audience crave for answers and tell them answers at the right time and in right amount. If they got strong questions, they will read on.