Testing the Rule

H.W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965), distinguishes five possible senses of "the exception proves the rule." Sense #1 is the legal interpretation "Exception probat regulam [Lat.], the exception proves the rule. A legal maxim of which the complete text is: exceptio probat [or (con)firmat] regulam in casibus non exceptis--`the fact that certain exceptions are made (in a legal document) confirms that the rule is valid in all other cases.'" ; senses #3, #4, and #5 are popular constructions of the saying, which Fowler regards as more or less slipshod. But he thinks more highly of sense #2, which we may state this way: an apparent exception to a rule may serve on closer examination to strengthen it. By way of example he writes:

"We have concluded by induction that Jones the critic, who never writes a kindly notice, lacks the faculty of appreciation. One day a warm eulogy of an anonymous novel appears over his signature; we see that this exception destroys our induction. Later it comes out that the anonymous novelist is Jones himself; our conviction that he lacks the faculty of appreciation is all the stronger for the apparent exception when once we have found out that, being self-appreciation, it is outside the scope of the rule--which, however, we now modify to exclude it, saying that he lacks the faculty of appreciating others. Or again, it turns out that the writer of the notice is another Jones; then our opinion of Jones the first is only the stronger for having been momentarily shaken. These kinds of exception are of great value in scientific inquiry, but they prove the rule not when they are seen to be exceptions, but when they have been shown to be either outside of or reconcilable with the principle they seem to contradict."

The scientific definition, using an apparent exception to a rule to test its strength or validity, is the one I will use in this essay. I’m putting these at the beginning because the rule I am about to test generates strong emotional reactions in most people and I want you all to remember that we are scholars, trained to think critically despite our personal feelings. Any law, principle, or belief that cannot bear close scrutiny and the occasional challenge isn’t worthy of respect. In this age of political correctness, I find it necessary to add this disclaimer: I am not trying to preach or convert, nor disrespect the belief systems of others; I simply wish to examine a highly debated rule and invite my fellow scholars to do the same.

The legal definition above is important to remember because it states that the exceptions to a law actually strengthens and adds weight to the law in ALL other instances. This is important because the rule I chose to examine is the law that would overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal once more. For the purposes of this examination, I will put aside the usual arguments about a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. I will leave the question of how far along in the pregnancy is too late for an abortion for others to debate. Fetal tissue and what to do with it is an entirely separate issue. For the remainder of this essay, I will only focus on the purpose, principle, and exceptions of the anti-abortion lobbyists.

The Pro-Life apologists believe that all life is sacred. They believe that life begins at conception, therefore abortion is murder. They believe that having a law that permits abortion cheapens the value of life, that those who make use of the law use abortion as a form of birth control. They do acknowledge exceptions that they would write into the law, when passed: abortion would be legal in cases of incest, rape, and medical necessity. Some of them have bumper stickers that read “It’s a child, not a choice,” a fairly clear and concise statement of belief.

All life is sacred. I believe that. I also believe that quality of life is important, a vital component to questions of life or death. I have a Living Will, a document that specifically states my wishes in the event of my becoming incapacitated. I agree with Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”. If I will never be able to think or to communicate my thoughts to others, I prefer to donate my organs to those who need them and allow my loved ones to accept my passing.

Others draw the line at constant pain, extreme infirmity, or no hope of cure. There are tests now that can be performed in utero to identify illnesses like Tay-Sachs, an incurable disease that causes the child to live in near-constant pain and die before reaching puberty. If my child had that marker, his life would still have been precious to me, but I may have terminated the pregnancy in order to spare him the pain and suffering. On the other hand, those tests could lead to abortions based on genetic imperfections. There are no easy answers, only more difficult questions.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the debate centered on the notion of abortion as a means of birth control. My circle of friends included other abused children, trying to survive; we all seemed to recognize each other, without having to say a word. Roe v. Wade happened before we were born, but some of our circumstances included the exceptions and restricted our freedoms. Abortion was legal, if you were an adult or accompanied by a parent or guardian. To a girl whose father broke two fingers for not passing the salt at the dinner table, asking for permission to have an abortion was too scary to contemplate.

My friend Priscilla (all names changed to protect the sources) was the youngest of four children and the only girl. Her father and brothers were alcoholics and her mother was a worn-out shadow who worked two jobs to keep the fridge full of beer. She lost her virginity at the age of eleven, in the backseat of a car at Bryan Park. Sex with older boys and men and bragging about it to friends later was the only attention she got, so she made the most of it. She got pregnant when she was fourteen.

Priscilla was too scared to tell her parents she was ‘in trouble’, and the twenty-five year old man she was ‘dating’ disappeared as soon as she told him the news. My friend Donna decided to go to her mother and ask her to take Priscilla to the free clinic. We were all worried about her; Priscilla was the type to go out and do something stupid. She did. Priscilla performed a home abortion on herself with a coat hanger. Her mother found her the next morning, bleeding out. She survived, but Priscilla will never be able to carry a child to term. When I hear people talk about using abortion as birth control, as though it was a casual choice, I remember Priscilla, who didn’t feel like she had a choice at all.

We may never know whether Priscilla’s parents would have been supportive and helpful in her time of need. Donna still wishes that she had told her mother sooner; perhaps things would be different. To me, it illustrates the flaws in any system that doesn’t take human variations into account. As Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If Priscilla had better support, better options, or even someone over the age of fifteen who cared what happened to her, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.

Priscilla didn’t want to raise a child. There are scared girls all over the country who feel the same fear she did. There is a law in Virginia and other states that allows a mother to abandon her child with no consequences if she does it within the first three days and leaves the infant at a hospital or clinic. This law was created because too many girls kept their pregnancies secret and killed their infants or left them in dumpsters after giving birth. Fear often drives people to extremes they later regret.

Priscilla wasn’t the only girl in my circle of friends to ‘get in trouble’, but she was the only one who was promiscuous; the rest of them had steady boyfriends or had special circumstances. Deena was also the youngest child of alcoholics. She started drinking at the age of twelve. One night, when she was sixteen, Deena and her boyfriend parked at Bryan Park with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a faulty condom. She and her boyfriend decided to raise the child together. They quit school, found jobs, and moved into a dingy apartment near Azalea Mall.

Deena’s mother had been too busy drinking and living her own life to structure Deena’s life (her mother is fifteen years older than Deena). When I visited Deena, I noticed that she was raising her daughter the only way she knew – the way her mother raised her. The boyfriend went to Florida to look for a better job and never came back. Deena’s daughter got pregnant at fifteen and left the kid with Deena. Deena doesn’t even know where she is or what she’s doing with her life. Deena’s granddaughter has more rules and more supervision than most of her age mates.

Teen pregnancy is an issue that cannot be ignored. When I hear people complain about how children today have no discipline, I laugh. Generally, people do not appreciate the structure parents provide until well into their twenties; before then, they often complain that parents are too strict and that they would never do that to their own children. I have five friends who had children before the age of nineteen, all of whom were permissive parents. That is one of many problems that occur when children raise children. We all wish we had known then what we know now; we would have been stricter with our children because we understand why it is needed.

Leigh was the quiet one, but she was always there because she didn’t want to go home. Her mother would have to track her down and drag her home. When she was thirteen, she found out she was pregnant. We were all surprised because we knew that Leigh stayed away from boys. We bought her the test kit and stayed with her when she read the results.

She went into Donna’s bathroom and helped herself to an entire bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol. She didn’t succeed in her suicide attempt, but it did cause a miscarriage. Her parents sent her to Westbrook Hospital for treatment, but she was never the same. Years later, she told us that she took the pills because she couldn’t stand the thought of carrying her father’s baby. None of us ever thought to tell her she could have gotten an abortion; it was never an option.

Has anyone considered the irony of the incest exception? Leigh’s father woke her in the middle of the night with a knife to her throat and told her in detail how he was going to kill her whole family and then himself if she ever told on him. She still has a scar on her hand from trying to push the knife away. How could anyone expect her to walk into a clinic and tell a total stranger the secret she’s been choking on for years? Most incest victims are under the age of sixteen when they are molested, so they need a parent or guardian present to get the abortion. Which parent should be present, the one who molested the girl or the one who let it happen?

Rosemary had bad-tempered parents. She referred to them as the Gestapo. They believed in using the belt when Rosemary talked back, cursed, forgot her chores, or rolled her eyes. She was not the type to stand still and take her lumps, so she would run when her mom or stepfather got the belt. Their response was to lock her out of the house.

When she got pregnant, she found the college student who used to baby-sit her and paid her fifty dollars to pretend to be her sister. They went to the Fan Free Clinic, wherein Rosemary looked the counselor straight in the eye and told her that her stepfather raped her. She lied because the counselors told her they had to inform her parents – it was the law. Rosemary had taken three years of Drama and used it to pretend to be Leigh for a few hours. What she didn’t know was that the counselor would have her stepfather arrested. The court ordered a DNA test on the aborted fetus and caught her in her lie. Rosemary was released from Bon Air Learning Center when she turned nineteen.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a 1997 summary, Sex Offenses and Offenders, reinforces a striking observation found in several studies: teenagers report the highest per capita rates of exposure to rape and sexual assault. Illustrative of official records, police reports in three states reveal that 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18. To further support the view of youth being at high risk, two-thirds of convicted rapists serving time in state prisons, in one study, indicated that their victims included girls and young women under the age of 18—and nearly four in 10 imprisoned violent sex offenders said their victims included those who were age 12 or younger. Overall, the U.S. Justice department reports that per capita rates of rape and other sexual assault are highest among residents age 16 to 19, low-income residents, and urban residents. For the youngest victims of rape—those younger than age 12—the offender was known to them. Forty-three percent of these young victims were sexually assaulted by family members—about four times the proportion found among rape victims age 30 or older. Victims under the age of 19 were most likely to have been assaulted by a family member or someone known to them (36 percent versus 3 percent).

My friend Sabrina enjoyed sex. She had a boyfriend and spent a lot of nights at his apartment. One night she didn’t want to have sex and told her boyfriend so, in no uncertain terms. He hit her, tied her to his bed, and spent the next fifteen hours raping her. She called her parents the next morning, after he left, and her mother took her to the hospital. The hospital staff examined her, documented her injuries, and offered her the morning-after pill. Her mother, a devout fundamentalist Christian, refused to allow her to take it. Sabrina could have insisted, but her parents would have kicked her out of her home. Fortunately, she was not pregnant, but she has no idea what she would have done if she had been.

I became pregnant at the age of twenty-two. My husband and I were delighted when the doctor’s initial exam confirmed my pregnancy. The follow-up exam revealed that I had three serious medical issues that complicated the pregnancy: toxemia, high blood pressure, and gestational diabetes. The doctors told me that it was not likely that my child and I would live long enough to give birth.

My fundamentalist Southern Baptist mother asked me to terminate the pregnancy, as did my father, my sisters, cousins who hadn’t called me in years, and just about everyone else who heard the news. The only holdouts were me and my husband. We had grown to love the child between visits and the doctors were clear about my only having one chance at childbirth. I spent most of the next six months flat on my back, too sick to think. Erik was born six weeks premature, jaundiced and anemic. We both survived.

“It’s a child, not a choice.” I disagree. I think it’s both a child and a choice. We must choose, whether the law allows or prevents the termination of a pregnancy. Personally, I resent the implication that, given the choice, most people would choose to terminate a pregnancy unless someone intervened.

Let’s examine the exceptions that everyone agrees should be allowed.

Medical necessity seems simple on the surface. If a pregnancy puts the life of the child and/or the mother at risk, termination should be an option. Many medications for the treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illnesses cannot be taken if you are pregnant or nursing. To make exceptions for medical necessity, many factors must be taken into consideration. Do we really want to take a paranoid schizophrenic off of medication, for any reason? She would have to be under constant supervision until at least a month after childbirth. Who will pay the medical bills for that?

In cases of medical necessity, I can foresee a different problem. What happens when a birth defect or medical disorder in either parent or child justifies abortion? Would parents who chose to carry the child to term be condemned for it? Would health care for the child be more difficult to obtain because abortion was an option? Would HMOs pay for the abortion but not ongoing treatment? Where would one draw the line between euthanasia and eugenics?

In cases of rape and incest, the problems are more complex and contain emotional minefields. Two thirds of all rapes go unreported. This includes incestuous rape. The secrecy alone complicates matters. How can they make use of the exception we all agree they should have if they cannot even speak of it? Then, many of these exceptions are caused by the very parents or guardians who are supposed to be protecting the children. How can they make use of the exception when the person who must give permission for the procedure may be the perpetrator?

There are a multitude of considerations I have omitted here. I have left out the Pro-Life contingent who would prefer no abortions with entopic pregnancies (which would kill the mother and child) as the sole exception. I have omitted the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions for Medicaid recipients, people who can’t afford health care, let alone children. I have remained silent about the overwhelming numbers of children severely abused by parents who never wanted to be parents. I do not want to spark debate about people who have the power to walk into a clinic and make the hard choices and accept the consequences.

I realize that I am mostly concentrating on people who are under the age of eighteen and need written parental consent, but they are the people I knew growing up. They are the ones who did not benefit from Roe v. Wade. They are the ones who would lose the few options they have if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned. They are young and desperate and not thinking straight. They are children who are in as much need of our protection as any child who has not taken a breath.

These are the exceptions that (prove) test the rule. Do the exceptions support the rule, change the rule, or validate it? The rule, according to Pro-Life apologists, is that all life is sacred and abortion is wrong, except in cases of incest, rape, or medical necessity. The medical necessity exception alters the rule to allow for quality of life and health considerations; it seems to strengthen the rule. The rape and incest exceptions are more problematic. In cases of rape and incest, these exceptions are allowed because carrying the child to term would further traumatize a victim of rape or incest. Yet, less than one percent of abortions are provided for victims of rape or incest. Most of these victims continue to suffer in silence. What does it say about the rule if the exceptions can’t be used?

I believe that life is sacred. I believe that life begins at conception. I believe that quality of life is an important element in making life-or-death decisions. I believe that when people have the right to choose, they will most likely make the most ethical choice they can. I believe that fear robs people of their ability to reason and make ethical choices. I believe that the energy involved in both sides of the abortion debate would be better spent in protecting the children from harm and supporting those we have failed to protect.

What do you believe?

Fishing for Readers: Advice on Writing Genre Fiction

You want to write fiction. Not just any fiction – you want to write stories that people will talk about and remember. You want to hook readers with your brilliant prose and reel them in, one after another. You want to feel that thrill of success, followed by another one, a bigger one. You want bragging rights, not just another fish tale. (“You should have seen the reader that got away; I swear he was THIS big…”) When you talk about your ambition, you get a lot of advice. Most of what you hear is a variant of “Don’t quit your day job” or that old chestnut “Write what you know”. So, you make sure you have a steady income and you review your personal knowledge base, but you still end up staring at a blinking cursor. After an hour or two, some twisted part of your mind is convinced that this bit of technology is mocking you. You wonder where you left the hammer (that’ll take care of the crafty mouse). This would be a good time to take a break (away from blunt objects) and think about how you write.

Relax. This won’t hurt a bit. Writing fiction is a craft, not unlike making wooden toys. You start with a shape in mind and some sort of plan or blueprint. You might be a person who isn’t comfortable unless you know everything you’re going to do, and in what order. Writing fiction without a detailed outline is probably painful for you. Conversely, you might draft a bare outline and then not want to write the story; why bother, if you already know what’s going to happen? Then, you are better off writing a very rough first draft and fixing your errors in the next versions.

Whatever method you use, all stories start with a thought. Do you close your eyes and see a grassy meadow filled with bright red poppies, as far as the eye can see? (MGM has copyrighted that image; their attorneys will be in touch.) Did you ever believe (in a tiny corner of your heart) that the monster [under your bed/ in your closet] was real and adults told you it wasn’t because they were too scared to look? Do you wonder why that beautiful skinny blonde is hugging the large slob wearing the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? Do you wish you could kill your [teacher, fellow student, roommate, ex-lover, ex-friend, total stranger who cut you off in traffic] and get away with it, but then you feel guilty for even thinking about it because he/she is really not that bad, and what kind of twisted thought is that to have, even for a minute? Breathe. Then realize that it is not your fault – you have an overly developed sense of curiosity and imagination; it is part of what makes you a writer. If you don’t ask ‘what if’, then you don’t write the answer (fiction).

You have a thought. Maybe it is an idea for a plot point, or a vivid setting, or a fragment of a dream. What starts the story is the thought. Characters make the story memorable. The first thing you want to do is design a character to suit your initial thought. Who will walk through that field of poppies (er, I mean that field of unspecified brightly colored flowers of some sort)? Who is that beautiful skinny blonde, anyway? What is it about that person you are mad at that enrages you? You may want to write timeless literary texts that showcase a person or place or era. I wish you luck and redirect you to the question of character building because I am a craftsperson, not an artist, and I write what I know. So, I will demonstrate the technique of crafting characters for various genres in popular fiction.

Let’s start at the beginning, with a basic sketch. Remember the beautiful skinny blonde with the fat guy in the Star Trek tee shirt and the ‘Where the f-ck is Kansas’ baseball cap? They’re gone, to class, to lunch, to Cleveland, but you still have an image of these early twenty-something students in your mind’s eye. You can sit down and write the details you want to use.

The woman was between five foot two and five foot four, had shoulder-length ash blonde hair with wide platinum blonde highlights (Miss Clairol 27), cornflower blue eyes, and a full figure. She was wearing low-riding hip hugger jeans, the kind that are supposed to show off your incredible muscle tone and part of your pelvic bones (assuming that you have incredible muscle tone and have actually seen your pelvic bones recently) and a belly-baring, low cut powder-blue cotton shirt. She did not have a flat stomach, although she was not fat, either. She was, however, top heavy enough to rouse a prurient curiosity for a moment; if she breathed really deep, would she fall out of the shirt, and was the bra you hope she was wearing enough to prevent an indecent exposure charge if she did fall out if the shirt? She wore platform flip-flops and her toenails were painted the same shade of blue as her shirt (which was still doing a great job caging the cleavage). [On a side note, my second grade teacher, who was full-figured in every sense, wore a halter top to school one day and she fell out of it. After that, the school dress code was amended to exclude halter tops of any kind. I resented it at the time, as I would not even have cleavage for several years and the school lacked air conditioning.]

The man was four to six inches taller than the woman. He wore jeans (standard button fly) with the tee shirt and black athletic shoes. He was out of shape, had a peach fuzz beard, wore sunglasses under the cap, and had brown hair (messy, from what you could see). His clothes fit and they were clean and not wrinkled. He had been doing most of the talking, his large hands gesturing wildly, almost hitting a passerby once.
So, you know where they are (on the sidewalk where you first saw them, talking in low tones) and what they look like. Now what? It is time to ask why and what if: why are they on the sidewalk, why are they dressed the way they are, and what if… Here’s where the genres come into play. A rule of thumb is if you like to read it, you will probably like to write it.

ROMANCE: This genre is about romantic relationships, usually in a positive light. So the blonde and the guy in the cap are supposed to fall in love. But first, they need names; for this category, let’s call them Robert and Elizabeth, after the Brownings. They have physical descriptions and names – now, we need conflict. The best conflict is caused by character traits, whether they are flaws or strengths. At a casual first glance, this couple seems lopsided because she is beautiful and he is only average; an observer’s first thought may be that she could do better. You could play into that or against it. Let’s say that they have known each other throughout high school and the first year of college. Scenario One: She has had a crush on him since the day he killed a garter snake in her back yard, but he has never given her any hint that he wanted to date her; she wonders if there is something about her that he doesn’t like. He, on the other hand, thinks she is out of his league and doesn’t want to hurt the friendship, since that’s all he’ll ever have. Scenario Two: He’s had a crush on her for years; she barely noticed him until they started college, where she was the fish out of water. Now, she wants him to notice her. Scenario Three: She has had a crush on him since he won the science fair, but he only dates people he considers smart or interesting and she does not qualify. Can she change his mind?

Maybe Robert looks the way he does because he has given up trying to be one of the beautiful people. Maybe Elizabeth wears the revealing clothes to catch his attention. If you want to add comedy, you could weave in dueling wardrobes; every time she wears something more eye-catching, he wears something that clashes with it. Maybe Robert writes plays and Elizabeth is an actress, so they see each other nearly every day and she is always trying out a new look. One day she wears a poodle skirt, knit shirt, bobby socks, saddle shoes, and a pony tail (not a hair out of place) and he shows up styling ‘early Seattle grunge’; she wears prim business suits and he copies Billy Idol, complete with safety pin through the nose and trademark sneer. This not only engages the reader, but it reveals that Robert and Elizabeth are alike, even compatible.

MYSTERY: New genre, new names. How about Nick and Nora? Too bad, you’re not here to argue. Change it in the rewrite. Nick and Nora may have a romantic relationship, but it is not the focus of the story, nor is it necessary. They could be siblings. But, since we paired people who looked just like them a minute ago, let’s assume that they have couple potential and no common DNA. In the mystery genre, the point of the story is usually to solve a murder, so we start with a corpse. Scenario One: A friend of Nora’s older sister has been murdered. This friend was [someone who shared some characteristic with that person you wished you could kill in paragraph three – shh] a student on campus, involved in all sorts of groups and organizations, making enemies everywhere. Nora, a third year criminal science major, decides to investigate – after all, her sister is a suspect. Unfortunately, Nick knows that she’s not a student. He is. He agrees to pretend to be her significant other to give her a reason to be on campus. Scenario Two: Nick is accused of murder. Nora, who knew him in high school, leaves her criminal science studies long enough to prove his innocence. Nick resents what he thinks of as Nora using his problems as field research. Scenario Three: Nora is accused of murder. Nick leaves his musical studies long enough to help her solve the puzzle; after all, music is math-based, as are most logic problems. In any of these scenarios, his outfit is his idea of a disguise and he finds her revealing outfit hilarious.

SUSPENSE/THRILLER: Steven, an English major, has just won a prize for best first novel. His wife is thrilled; she would have come to the reading, but the baby was running a slight fever. He is on top of the world. He knew his looks and intelligence were average, but finally he found a strong talent in writing. Saundra, a beautiful blonde, asks him to sign her copy of his book. She is the first to ask. Euphoric (and a little silly), he signs the inside page the way he absently signed birthday cards for relatives: “With love, from Steven”. She takes him at his word and plans their future together. He slowly realizes she’s stalking him and feels afraid, but no one believes that she would go after him with no encouragement. What will he do? In a suspense/thriller, you have to pick a character to be your protagonist; the other becomes the antagonist by default. The reader wants to know more about Steven than Saundra and most of the time, the narrative is from his point of view. Maybe Steven is shy; maybe he is flattered by the attention at first, and then feels guilty when he realizes that she is obsessed. There are a lot of ways to spin this character to make compelling drama.

HORROR: Saundra, a beautiful blonde History major, reads the first novel by Steven, another student on campus and realizes that the main character is just like her, the first half of the novel describes events that have actually taken place in her life, and her character dies in the last chapter. What is she going to do? Will she confront him directly? Will she break into his apartment, looking for clues? Will she hop a plane to Reno? That depends on her character traits.

FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION: Saundra and Steven buy their dream home with the money from first novel grant. The problem is they have a nosy neighbor. The bigger problem is their neighbor lives in a cave below the basement of their house. The biggest problem is that their neighbor is an exiled goblin prince who has become the rallying point in an Otherworld civil war. Where is the Neighborhood Watch when you need them? Will Saundra demand a refund? Will Steven find this fascinating? Will Saundra use their neighbor’s problem as a topic for her dissertation? How will they react? What characteristics do they have that will eventually win out over incredible odds (because they are so alien to the goblins that the goblins have no defense)?

The main things to remember when crafting character are:
Tags
Traits
Loves & Fears

Tags are small things about the character’s appearance or personality that can be described in five words or less; they serve as reminders to the readers of who the character is (ex. a specific shade of eye color – cornflower blue).

Traits, in this instance, are dominant aspects of a character’s personality that fuel their behaviors (ex. an edgy character may always want to sit with his/her back to the wall, frequently scan the area, and jump to conclusions with minimal evidence).

Loves and fears are pairs that are vitally important to create compelling fiction. You must show the reader what your character values above all else, show how happy this person, place or thing makes your character, how devastated he/she would be without it. Then, you must threaten to blow that most valued thing to Kingdom Come, metaphorically speaking.

You bait the hook by crafting characters with interesting and offbeat tags and traits. You set the hook by inviting the reader to share your character’s joy in [being near the person of his/her dreams, having his/her talent rewarded, receiving large amounts of cash, owning his/her first home] the valued thing. Once the reader has experienced the joy vicariously through your character, the reader must also have an emotional investment in protecting the valued thing. You can reel him in. The reader wants to know what will happen. If you tell a story that is true to character, then the character (and your story) will live on in the reader’s memory. That’s not just a fish tale.