Hook Your Reader

Chapter 3

A great hook intrigues:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

124 was spiteful.

Huh? How can a number be spiteful? In one sharp sentence we feel all the rage and discord of the story that promises to be nothing of the ordinary, and we are curious.

Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King

All I did was ask a stupid question.

What was it?? And what were the consequences of it?

Speedboat by Renata Adler

Nobody died that year.

What about all the other years? Who died? And why? And what was so special about that year that nobody died? What's amazing is that in both these examples it takes 3 or 4 words alone to invite so many questions.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

He'd stopped trying to bring her back.

Bring who back? From where? Why did he stop? The only way to get these answers is to read on.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

All this happened, more or less.

Here, the tone is immediately set for a novel of well-written confusion, whose narrator may not be so reliable. We are told one thing and then immediately told another thing which contradicts what we just read. All in the same sentence! And we want to read on to find out exactly what it was that more or less happened.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.

Riggs use of the word 'extraordinary' pulls in the reader and makes us ask, "What happened??"

Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins

Looking back, none of this would have happened if I'd brought lip gloss the night of the Homecoming Dance.

Straight away we are hit with questions. What happened? How would lip gloss have stopped it? Couldn't she have just borrowed some gloss at the dance? What's so significant about the lip gloss??