For a general audience that includes people outside academia, my hook would be about the knowledge professions more broadly: that we live in a moment of both crisis (show this by concisely citing a range of examples from different industries) and opportunity (summarize the key features of our current moment that make exciting new knowledge-building approaches possible). This large-scale crisis and opportunity set the stage for Story-Argument, an approach to knowledge work that is actually very ancient, yet holds new potential in our digital age. Thanks for this great prompt, Martha!
Nov 6, 2023Liked by Margy Thomas, Martha B. Coven, Helen Sword
I’m co-authoring a policy-related newsletter article at the moment, and one of the other authors has raised the question of what our “hook” could be. The list in “Hook your reader” is so helpful. I don’t have the hook yet, but I’m feeling much more confident about finding one before my turn at revising the draft comes around next week.
I’m not sure if I want to start my book with Scott Powers’ suicide or not. I worry that I won’t be able to bring the drama back up to that level. The readers may fall off. I’ve been thinking about making that the climax. However, I do need to talk to his ex-wife to see if teaching played a factor in his death. I do think it’s worth mentioning anyway, because teachers aren’t “supposed” to commit suicide. They’re supposed to be happy, whimsical after-school special characters. They don’t kill themselves, either. Right?
There is also a Philip Lopate essay called “Suicide of a School Teacher.” I could refer to that. I’ve read several other tragic stories, including one about a teacher who hanged herself in her classroom. Her students found her.
I am also going to be talking about psychosis, but that may need to happen later in the book. I will be sharing my own experience of jumping out of a window (first story, fortunately) and ending up in the psych ward -- partly due to a high-stress job in an alternative school and partly due to having no buffer room to manage a crisis at home where my family was left temporarily homeless after a tree crashed into our roof during a hurricane. A bonus is that I have the story of another teacher on the other side of my state whose psychotic episode was very similar to mine. I just need to track down that teacher… BUT, I think I need to work up to those stories. No one wants to know their child has a mentally unstable teacher. Maybe if we make their lives easier, it will happen less often.
I can also begin with stats. I won’t bore you with them now, but let’s just say lots and lots of teachers are quitting and the number keeps going up. They’re being replaced by inexperienced teachers, who are barely lasting 5 years. Think about it. 5 year teachers are the senior members of many faculties in the United States. Yikes!
I need to keep reading some of the stories in my survey. I may find something there. I may even find a few stories that echo each other and pair them side-by-side in a chorus of whispers.
I’m not sure how to start this thing, but I do know it has to be gripping. It has to set the tone for the piece. And it needs to project my voice in such a way that I say to the reader, “Hey! Come with me. I want to show you something.” Then, it’s a matter of holding on to their hands.
Maybe part of the hook is to directly confront the expectation that teachers are happy. That they love their work. Maybe there is part of the story of specific people who took their own lives that could serve. And then the contrast between the expectation and outcome is what draws the reader forward to learn more?
I may be wrong, but I hope I'm wrong in a way that helps you figure this out.
I think we just shared a zeitgeist. Or maybe you incepted it in me. My husband and I were just discussing this very idea last night. I may consider approaching this book from the angle of "teachers are supposed to be..." and revealing the truth. Maybe starting with happiness is the best move. Thank you for your insight!
I don't know the answer to this prompt - - - yet. Which is perhaps why I've left chapter 1 to be written last. Great reminder that the "why" and the information won't be worth anything if the reader doesn't keep reading.
You've hit on a common practice in op-ed writing - an NYU colleague who works in communications calls it the "floating lede." You write everything but the opening paragraph, and then wait for a development in the real world to inspire a hook, so you can top off the piece and pitch it to media outlets when it feels timely.
What a great concept, Martha! I had to go and look up "lede," my new word-of-the-day:
"'Lede' is the journalistic spelling that originated in newsrooms in the mid-20th century. It was created to avoid confusion with 'lead,' the metal traditionally used in printing presses. Even though digital printing has largely replaced physical printing, 'lede' continues to be used in journalism today."
wow, what a brilliant way to focus news consumption and be ready to contribute to a timely conversation when it comes up. What a great strategy, thanks Martha!
For me it's always the same thing: a story (which you'll see when my post comes up!). I think it's partly my love of narrative nonfiction but also my training as an ethnographer that makes this so attractive to me. I'd be interested in hearing if there are other ethnographers here that feel the same pull.
I'm trained as a literary scholar and poet, so while story is certainly important to me, so is lyric poetry -- which often functions through layering, allusion, and wordplay, not through narrative hooks, stories, and ledes (floating or otherwise)! Maybe that's why I often prefer to start with a poem rather than a story.
Thanks for the link to your article, Maggie. Isn't there some danger in hooking your reader (as you do with your title word "Barbies") but then not following through? I'd worry that I might lose my readers' trust if they feel like I'm deliberately tricking them, or baiting and switching!
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Helen Sword
That's a good point, Helen! But that is kind of the point, too. It's important for writers to be thoughtful about how they begin their writing. It's so important to be aware of audience, and I find so many beginning academic writers are not. I also find that academics tend to overanalyze too much, IMO. Let's make some room for tongue and cheek writing meant to instruct and enlighten. :-) AND...here's an update to the post as I talked to another confidant who confirmed the "bait and switch" feel - this was so helpful! https://open.substack.com/pub/maggiehuerta/p/barbies-and-beginnings?r=2lvtnq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This prompt has taken me longer to think through because I find this sort of thing (any “hook” or explanation of what I do—or study for that matter) difficult to accomplish. This relates to the periodic quandary I face within any academic writing in general. While I enjoy my subject of study, I often have difficulty finding that hook—and explaining what I study and why I study. But I also find merging the subject of my scholarly work via my micro-genre style writing is one way to potentially hook people, expressing interests, findings, and concerns in unique and interesting ways, often using myself as an example. I even wrote one poem about detailing how might I possibly make anyone understand anything in a mere 45 words. Can I?
Micro Mutant Postcard #255
How do I share my Mutant existence in any Mad detail using a mere 45 words? Seems I’ll simply have to depend on commas to span years, italics to emphasize vain vagaries, and dashes—to imagine if I may even have a future at all.
I love this, Rachael! Why 45 words? Nina Ginsberg (bicycle blogger and WriteSPACE member) writes 100-word "worldlings," a concept and name that she adopted from cultural theorist Lauren Berlant. Here's an example: https://www.bicyclescreatechange.com/category/worlding/
I really like hooks. A lot. I like opening an article with a hook. I like telling everyone whatever cool thing I’ve recently found and why it’s cool - that helps me figure out what resonates with my audience. Hooks help readers of history to understand what to expect next and why to care.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Margy Thomas, Helen Sword
I write a weekly "Teaching Tuesday" email for my college as the chair of our Faculty Professional Development committee. The TT goes out to all faculty across all departments/divisions, FT, PT, & adjunct. It also goes to the executive leadership team, the office professionals, the library staff (librarians are faculty at our college), Advising, Counseling, and a bunch of other people I can't remember right now. (Career Services, Marketing, HR, etc.)
During the pandemic, the messages here were mostly designed to keep folks' spirits up and make sure they knew they weren't alone. I find that is kind of still the heart of these, but I've gone back to anchoring them in our curricular structure for the committee -- Designing/Setting Up an Effective Course, Building Community, Communicating with Students, Fostering a Successful & Inclusive Learning Environment, Grading & Learning from Assessments, and Reflection & Revision.
This week, we're in between "Communicating..." and "Fostering ... Success/Inclusion," and I also need to share some information about an upcoming technology change at the college. I will almost definitely start the "Teaching Tuesday" with something about overwhelm and serving many masters in the faculty role. By aligning my writerly speaker with the needs/challenges of my colleagues, I create collegiality and invest them in my position before I start unpacking it. Plus, I wrote about having COVID and about still having COVID the past two weeks, so no one will find me writing about overwhelm surprising ;)
This is a great question and one it's important for me to answer as I will be writing a blog post based on my current work once The Report is done. I'm so used to a formula I tend to use in my academic writing about library stuff—"Our professional organization says this is important!"—and while this is useful for opening an argument, I think I need to do things differently for the blog post.
For a general audience that includes people outside academia, my hook would be about the knowledge professions more broadly: that we live in a moment of both crisis (show this by concisely citing a range of examples from different industries) and opportunity (summarize the key features of our current moment that make exciting new knowledge-building approaches possible). This large-scale crisis and opportunity set the stage for Story-Argument, an approach to knowledge work that is actually very ancient, yet holds new potential in our digital age. Thanks for this great prompt, Martha!
I’m co-authoring a policy-related newsletter article at the moment, and one of the other authors has raised the question of what our “hook” could be. The list in “Hook your reader” is so helpful. I don’t have the hook yet, but I’m feeling much more confident about finding one before my turn at revising the draft comes around next week.
I’m not sure if I want to start my book with Scott Powers’ suicide or not. I worry that I won’t be able to bring the drama back up to that level. The readers may fall off. I’ve been thinking about making that the climax. However, I do need to talk to his ex-wife to see if teaching played a factor in his death. I do think it’s worth mentioning anyway, because teachers aren’t “supposed” to commit suicide. They’re supposed to be happy, whimsical after-school special characters. They don’t kill themselves, either. Right?
There is also a Philip Lopate essay called “Suicide of a School Teacher.” I could refer to that. I’ve read several other tragic stories, including one about a teacher who hanged herself in her classroom. Her students found her.
I am also going to be talking about psychosis, but that may need to happen later in the book. I will be sharing my own experience of jumping out of a window (first story, fortunately) and ending up in the psych ward -- partly due to a high-stress job in an alternative school and partly due to having no buffer room to manage a crisis at home where my family was left temporarily homeless after a tree crashed into our roof during a hurricane. A bonus is that I have the story of another teacher on the other side of my state whose psychotic episode was very similar to mine. I just need to track down that teacher… BUT, I think I need to work up to those stories. No one wants to know their child has a mentally unstable teacher. Maybe if we make their lives easier, it will happen less often.
I can also begin with stats. I won’t bore you with them now, but let’s just say lots and lots of teachers are quitting and the number keeps going up. They’re being replaced by inexperienced teachers, who are barely lasting 5 years. Think about it. 5 year teachers are the senior members of many faculties in the United States. Yikes!
I need to keep reading some of the stories in my survey. I may find something there. I may even find a few stories that echo each other and pair them side-by-side in a chorus of whispers.
I’m not sure how to start this thing, but I do know it has to be gripping. It has to set the tone for the piece. And it needs to project my voice in such a way that I say to the reader, “Hey! Come with me. I want to show you something.” Then, it’s a matter of holding on to their hands.
All of these sound like really powerful opening hooks, Robyn!
Maybe part of the hook is to directly confront the expectation that teachers are happy. That they love their work. Maybe there is part of the story of specific people who took their own lives that could serve. And then the contrast between the expectation and outcome is what draws the reader forward to learn more?
I may be wrong, but I hope I'm wrong in a way that helps you figure this out.
I think we just shared a zeitgeist. Or maybe you incepted it in me. My husband and I were just discussing this very idea last night. I may consider approaching this book from the angle of "teachers are supposed to be..." and revealing the truth. Maybe starting with happiness is the best move. Thank you for your insight!
I don't know the answer to this prompt - - - yet. Which is perhaps why I've left chapter 1 to be written last. Great reminder that the "why" and the information won't be worth anything if the reader doesn't keep reading.
You've hit on a common practice in op-ed writing - an NYU colleague who works in communications calls it the "floating lede." You write everything but the opening paragraph, and then wait for a development in the real world to inspire a hook, so you can top off the piece and pitch it to media outlets when it feels timely.
What a great concept, Martha! I had to go and look up "lede," my new word-of-the-day:
"'Lede' is the journalistic spelling that originated in newsrooms in the mid-20th century. It was created to avoid confusion with 'lead,' the metal traditionally used in printing presses. Even though digital printing has largely replaced physical printing, 'lede' continues to be used in journalism today."
I'll be floating my ledes from now on!
wow, what a brilliant way to focus news consumption and be ready to contribute to a timely conversation when it comes up. What a great strategy, thanks Martha!
Look how smart we are!
For me it's always the same thing: a story (which you'll see when my post comes up!). I think it's partly my love of narrative nonfiction but also my training as an ethnographer that makes this so attractive to me. I'd be interested in hearing if there are other ethnographers here that feel the same pull.
I'm trained as a literary scholar and poet, so while story is certainly important to me, so is lyric poetry -- which often functions through layering, allusion, and wordplay, not through narrative hooks, stories, and ledes (floating or otherwise)! Maybe that's why I often prefer to start with a poem rather than a story.
This is great. Thank you, Martha!
For academic writers (and probably for non-academic as well), it's also important to think about how we not just "hook" the reader in the beginning (though that is very important), but how we keep them reading through our work. I've written about this here: https://open.substack.com/pub/maggiehuerta/p/barbies-and-beginnings?r=2lvtnq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for the link to your article, Maggie. Isn't there some danger in hooking your reader (as you do with your title word "Barbies") but then not following through? I'd worry that I might lose my readers' trust if they feel like I'm deliberately tricking them, or baiting and switching!
That's a good point, Helen! But that is kind of the point, too. It's important for writers to be thoughtful about how they begin their writing. It's so important to be aware of audience, and I find so many beginning academic writers are not. I also find that academics tend to overanalyze too much, IMO. Let's make some room for tongue and cheek writing meant to instruct and enlighten. :-) AND...here's an update to the post as I talked to another confidant who confirmed the "bait and switch" feel - this was so helpful! https://open.substack.com/pub/maggiehuerta/p/barbies-and-beginnings?r=2lvtnq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This prompt has taken me longer to think through because I find this sort of thing (any “hook” or explanation of what I do—or study for that matter) difficult to accomplish. This relates to the periodic quandary I face within any academic writing in general. While I enjoy my subject of study, I often have difficulty finding that hook—and explaining what I study and why I study. But I also find merging the subject of my scholarly work via my micro-genre style writing is one way to potentially hook people, expressing interests, findings, and concerns in unique and interesting ways, often using myself as an example. I even wrote one poem about detailing how might I possibly make anyone understand anything in a mere 45 words. Can I?
Micro Mutant Postcard #255
How do I share my Mutant existence in any Mad detail using a mere 45 words? Seems I’ll simply have to depend on commas to span years, italics to emphasize vain vagaries, and dashes—to imagine if I may even have a future at all.
I love this, Rachael! Why 45 words? Nina Ginsberg (bicycle blogger and WriteSPACE member) writes 100-word "worldlings," a concept and name that she adopted from cultural theorist Lauren Berlant. Here's an example: https://www.bicyclescreatechange.com/category/worlding/
I like this a lot! The way it requires you to distill is such a skill builder.
I really like hooks. A lot. I like opening an article with a hook. I like telling everyone whatever cool thing I’ve recently found and why it’s cool - that helps me figure out what resonates with my audience. Hooks help readers of history to understand what to expect next and why to care.
I write a weekly "Teaching Tuesday" email for my college as the chair of our Faculty Professional Development committee. The TT goes out to all faculty across all departments/divisions, FT, PT, & adjunct. It also goes to the executive leadership team, the office professionals, the library staff (librarians are faculty at our college), Advising, Counseling, and a bunch of other people I can't remember right now. (Career Services, Marketing, HR, etc.)
During the pandemic, the messages here were mostly designed to keep folks' spirits up and make sure they knew they weren't alone. I find that is kind of still the heart of these, but I've gone back to anchoring them in our curricular structure for the committee -- Designing/Setting Up an Effective Course, Building Community, Communicating with Students, Fostering a Successful & Inclusive Learning Environment, Grading & Learning from Assessments, and Reflection & Revision.
This week, we're in between "Communicating..." and "Fostering ... Success/Inclusion," and I also need to share some information about an upcoming technology change at the college. I will almost definitely start the "Teaching Tuesday" with something about overwhelm and serving many masters in the faculty role. By aligning my writerly speaker with the needs/challenges of my colleagues, I create collegiality and invest them in my position before I start unpacking it. Plus, I wrote about having COVID and about still having COVID the past two weeks, so no one will find me writing about overwhelm surprising ;)
This is a great question and one it's important for me to answer as I will be writing a blog post based on my current work once The Report is done. I'm so used to a formula I tend to use in my academic writing about library stuff—"Our professional organization says this is important!"—and while this is useful for opening an argument, I think I need to do things differently for the blog post.