From Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain;

“A hook is a device for catching, holding, sustaining, or pulling anything — in this case, a reader.”

Every story needs a high concept hook. Every sequence, every scene, and every sentence needs a hook.

Story –> Acts –> Sequences (A.K.A. Stages) –> Scenes –> Moments, for lack of a better word.

What is a moment? You know the writing is good when the writer doesn’t need a character to say anything, the actor can just do it through a look. You can write a look. And that would be a moment. Something inside of a scene, we’re talking the atomic structure of a scene. A smirk, a glance, a brief gimpse of action or description. A small movement that makes up the larger scene.

When I first begin developing a story, I’m starting at the highest level, the story level. “He goes here and does this, and then this happens.” This is the high level summary. Then I usually frame out the three acts, but I don’t pay particular attention to the 3-act structure because it’s so big and vague that it’s really not important til later on when you’ve got more of your story developed and can see whether the overall thing breathes in larger arcs the way it should.

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“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

-Henry Ford