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There was no CaT Gazette last week to due me being both in Hawaii and sick as balls (again). At any rate, we should be getting back to a normal schedule here.

For those of you following my vacation travel thread, I'll post the last updates when I get the chance. Life has been surprisingly uncooperative in getting those things up.

I added a section to my userpage recounting my history on the wiki. You can read through it here.

Signups for Summer Fanon Con have begun, so make sure to get in there and get busy while you can! Signups will run for two weeks.

I often ponder whether my feelings of being unappreciated are due to legitimately not being appreciated or simply my neverending insecurities not receiving constant reminders of appreciation.

Lesson 11: Deus Ex Machinas

Say you're walking through a library and you have to decide between two books to read. You pick up one book and you look at the first line.

"Patrick yawned as he got out of bed. He had a busy school day ahead of him, and he didn't want to be late."

Enthralling.

So you put that book down and pick up the other one. The first line reads as follows:

"There was no way around it; he would have to jump if he wanted to live."

Naturally you check out the second book so fast you accidentally create a trail of sparks that sets the first book on fire. But what is it about the second book that makes it more appealing? For all you know, the first book's plot could eventually lead into one of the best stories you've ever read, but that hasn't done it much good. What gives?

The reason for all of this is that the most important part of the opening is the Hook.

The Hook is the part of your story that the readers see first. It can anything from a single word to an entire paragraph, but the important thing is to make it interesting. If your hook is interesting, people will probably want to read the rest if your story to see where you go with it. If it isn't, they won't really care.

So, how do you make a hook interesting? Well, there's a little thing humans have called curiosity. Give your audience a mystery to ponder, and they'll be putty in your hands. The mystery can be anything from "who stole my brownies" to "why are Captain Picard and Satan dueling each other with lightsaber chainsaws on top of Mount Vesuvius" just so long as you communicate that A: There is a question to be asked, and B: That question is worth answering.

Okay, so you've got your hook. What now?

To continue your story's opening, you should make sure you establish several things:
 * The type of story you're telling.
 * If your introduction gives the audience a particular genre and tone and it suddenly switches later on in the story, the audience might end up feeling confused and mildly betrayed by your indecisive tomfoolery. Only switch gears like this if you're aiming to create an intentional subversion, and even then, be careful with how you go about it.
 * Your main character.
 * If your beginning doesn't introduce your protagonist, it will be difficult for your audience to know who they're supposed to be caring about in this story.
 * Your setting.
 * If you're working with a fantasy setting, you should establish early on that you're working with more Mordor and less New York. If you don't, the audience might get confused when a story with a modern-day setting suddenly has elves in it with no explanation as to why.

Outside of that, there are way too many different variations on openings for me to cover how each one does and doesn't work. Openings can cover anywhere from a prologue to the first chunk of your story, just so long as you make sure everything is established fast enough to get people interested.

For more episodic mediums, you don't necessarily need to follow the conventional hook-establishment formula after your first episode or two, but you should still use a two-step version of the formula:
 * Establish what the episode is going to be about.
 * Introduce any important new characters or ideas that play a big role in the episode, even if it's just as a brief unclear cameo before they debut properly later in the episode. This will help you avoid Deus Ex Machinas, which we'll expand upon next week.

Obviously I haven't been able to cover absolutely everything about openings, but I think I've covered enough to give you a fairly solid start. Get out there and start hooking some readers!



Art Corner

Ultimate All Star Redesign

By ChromastoneandTabby

I wasn't really satisfied with this thing's first design (and neither was anyone else really) so I decided to redo it. I was a bit iffy on the white markings at first, but the people on the Discord seemed to like it.

Nothing to report for this issue.

Well, that's it for this Sunday, folks. I hope you enjoyed the fifty-fourth issue of The CaT Gazette, and I'll see you next week! Feedback and support are appreciated!