A great hook sets the mood:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
Like most great hooks, it hints at trouble and raises a question. This opening line is symbolic of everything that is to come; forbidding, lonely, cold, and alone. Although the trouble isn't directly stated, the bad vibes and sense of foreboding are loud and clear.
Why is the bed cold and empty? Who was supposed to be there?
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
We've been warned. The mood is set. The tone is clear. This is going to be one dark, satirical book.
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
Ew gross!
Westerfeld pays homage to the opening line of William Gibson's Neuromancer:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
And in both books, the mood is vividly established in the very first line. These are not flowery, romantic novels.
What I love about the Uglies hook is that as your reading 'The early summer sky,' you instinctively imagine a bright blue sky and the odd fluffy white cloud. What you do not envision is cat vomit!
We are jolted out of our tranquil vision and thrust into this jarring reality where summer sky's aren't blue and who knows what else awaits us?
Dodger by Terry Pratchett
The rain poured down on London so hard that it seemed that it was dancing spray, every raindrop contending with its fellows for supremacy in the air and waiting to splash down.
This line perfectly sets the mood for a volatile story about a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Victorian London. The rain imagery is so vivid and vibrant, you can see it, you can hear it. If the first line is pouring dancing rain, you just know you're in for one splash of a novel. (You know I had to do it! :P)
Crewel by Gennifer Albin
They came in the night.
A short, forbidding sentence that instantly grabs you and pulls you in. Who came in the night? Why did they come? And what terrible thing did they do?
YOU ARE READING
Hook Your Reader
Non-Fiction[ON HOLD] Nobody will ever know how incredible your book is if they don't read it. And for that you need a hook. A unique opening line that touches the core of the story, that temptingly hints to what they'll find inside, that compels your reader...
