In fiction, having an opening “hook” helps the writer start where the action begins. It especially helps beginning writers avoid three to five pages of history and set up. A hook draws the reader in and then it is up to the writer to hold them with a solid plot, three-dimensional, believable characters, and crisp, clear writing that is well-paced, and progresses in a balanced manner.
It is also important in nonfiction. You want to grab the reader’s attention and then it is up to you to retain it with information they enjoy reading.
So how do you establish a “hook”?
Begin with the essence of your story. If you were forced to explain your book in one sentence, what would you say? Would you ask a question? “What happened to President Nixon after he was impeached?” Would you drop a bomb? “Octo-mom is pregnant again!” Would you entice the reader where they live? “Is the city water in your town contaminated?” Would you attempt to incite laughter? “All news is controlled by the government. Film at eleven.”
Your first question to yourself should be, ‘why does the reader WANT to read my book?’ Don’t be shy. You’ve got something to say. Now’s your chance. You create a ‘fiction’ story around the Watergate conspiracy. It’s old news, beaten to death, mostly boring. How do you get a reader hooked? Begin by offering them a new, different look at the ‘old’ news. What did Nixon do after he was impeached?
William Sanders briefly tells us his opinion.
“It was a dark and stormy night – and I know, God damn it, but I can’t help it, it was.” A Death on 66
“I always considered that my best opening line. A lot of people seemed to agree. However, SF and fantasy fans would probably hold out for my openers (two sentences, technically, so sue me) in Journey to Fusang”:
And how was I to know she was the High King’s own daughter. Besides, she swore she was fifteen.
“The best opening lines are not the cute ones or the flamboyant ones, but the ones that seem inevitable. The kind that make you say: ‘Of course the story would start that way’.” Lawrence Shames
Sasha Miller wrote: “We all know the truism about starting your story at the point that everything changes. A hook is about the opening, which is different. The opening for your novel is, literally, the door.
“So, to go with this analogy, take a look at the door to the work you’re currently laboring over, wondering how on Earth to get it started properly. First thing to ask yourself is, is the door open? Or is it locked with off-putting things like indefinite pronouns, unattributed speech, pseudo action that has no apparent cause.
“Oh, drat,” he said as he peevishly kicked the dog and set fire to the wastebasket.
That kind of opening has its own invitation, all right, but it’s to depart at all reasonable speed, never to return. Instead, if this is the story you are trying to tell, try something like this:
Stanley regarded Fauntleroy, the poodle, with a jaundiced eye. This was the third time in one week the wretched beast had used the wastebasket as a relief station, rather than the neighbor’s yard as any proper dog should do. “Nothing for t,” Stanley said resignedly. He struck a match. After three such episodes, that wastebasket had to burn.
From Terry Brooks.
The following sentence opens Running with the Demon, published as a first edition hardcover by Ballantine Books in 1997.
He stands alone in the center of another of America’s burned-out towns, but he has been to this one before.
“I like this sentence because it tells you something important about the story right away—it isn’t happening in the present. The suggestion of a scorched earth landscape is decidedly futuristic. It might be the Armageddon we all fear, but assuredly some sort of war has occurred. The unknown protagonist is traveling this ravaged landscape, one town to the next, for reasons as yet unrevealed. Something about this particular town is special, though, because he apparently hasn’t visited the others more than once.
“Finally, this sentence and the ones that follow are italicized, which suggests that what we are reading is set outside the normal flow of the story. This is a written account, a memory or a dream. The trick to writing a good first sentence is to raise enough question about what’s happening that the reader will have to turn the pages to find out.”
“Back off,” I yelled.
“Louder,” the instructor said.
I filled my lungs with air, exploded it out through my mouth. “BACK OFF!”
Margaret Chittenden, Dead Beat and Deadly.
Also from Ms. Chittendern:
It was August 23rd. It had been the kind of unusually warm hazy day Bay area old-timers call earthquake weather.
A shrewd bunch, those old-timers. Dying to Sing
And:
It wasn’t a bad feeling, rather like drifting. She was shrinking away from the borders that defined her body, dwindling into a shining molecule. She could see her Andrea-shape looming around her—convex here, concave there—a dim, elongated shadow with appendages she finally recognized as arms and legs. Forever Love
***
On the other side of that coin, a growing number of authors consider the idea foolish and obvious. Consider the words of Walter Satterthwait.
“Recently I’ve been finding those intentionally ‘hooking’ sentences a pain in the neck. There are a number of writers who really go out of their way to set up some elaborate, deliberately jarring opening:
Foxwell had nearly finished field stripping his Uzi when he got hit by the plummeting dwarf.
“I find it mannered and annoying. Zippy opening sentences are often a swell thing, but the idea has lately taken root that they’re absolutely necessary; and I think that this notion comes from television, where the opening to a series episode has to be a real grabber, or the poor boob watching it will hit the remote before the commercial demands his limited attention. And recently, when I read one of those things, I tend to toss the book.
“It seems to me that a book doesn’t have to open with a bang. It can even open with a whimper, so long as the whimper is moderately interesting. The zippy grabber of an opener always suggests to me a book in which the author is a) manipulating me, and in an obvious way; and b) setting up one of those sprightly, bouncy sort of books in which the plot leaps merrily about from place to place as its theoretically lovable eccentric characters are put through their zany paces. Those sort of books are, for me, initially tiresome, quickly annoying, and soon disposed of.”
And E. C. Ayres wrote:
“Having learned my craft in the film and television industries I would be foolish to disregard the modern convention of the “hook”. However, I do at times yearn for the days of subtle hors d’ouvres, followed by more and spicier fare as the reader becomes accustomed to the time, place, and characters. One of the rules I learned in the film business was that there should be no meaningful dialogue at all at the beginning of a film (called exposition dialogue) because the audience was simply too busy getting acclimated to absorb it. Also, I have trouble with the idea, especially with mystery writers, that some obscenely violent and bloody incident is necessary at the outset, to captivate a reader’s interest.
All that being said, here are two openings of mine. The first is from my third book, Night of the Panther.
It’s a funny thing, loneliness. It eats away at your spirits like unseen cancer of the soul, until there is nothing left but tattered, fading hopes. And then those, too, are gone. That’s how Marge sometimes felt, when darkness closed in on the swamp on nights like this…
And this from my first book, Hour of the Manatee.
The blue heron’s cry pierced the morning air along the bay front, sending a flock of great white egrets scurrying to wing from the shoreline, where they had been scouting the tidal flats for crabs.
Another sound echoed across the waters as the air suddenly began to vibrate with a swelling, thumping, grinding rhythm. It grew, alien to the landscape, more intense. More birds took flight. Even the ever-restless mullet seemed to hesitate and seek cover, leaving the surface waters still as glass…
Neither is what you would call an action opener, tending towards establishing setting and atmosphere first, but with a sense of something coming.”
Here are some famous one-liners.
Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf’s cloak. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 1956
From the broom closet, Consuela could hear the two American ladies arguing in Room 404. Margaret Millar, The Listening Walls, 1959
Jinn and Phyllis were spending a wonderful holiday in space, as far away as possible from the inhabited stars. Pierre Boulle, Planet of the Apes, 1963
There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I’d been treated by at least six of them. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying, 1973
He wasn’t a small man, but he walked small. Paula Gosling, Solo Blues, 1981
In the hospital of the orphanage—the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s—two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision. John Irving, Cider House Rules, 1985
“I’m pregnant.” Sandra Brown, Tidings of Great Joy, 1987
After the first hundred years, some people stop taking chances. Joe Haldeman, Buying Time, 1989
Cassie Raintree was dying of brain cancer every afternoon at 2:30. James W. Hall, Bones of Coral, 1991
I feel compelled to report that at the moment of death, my entire life did not pass before my eyes in a flash. Sue Grafton, “I” is for Innocent, 1992
By April most people had already forgotten about him, except for some of the nurses on the floor who crossed themselves when they walked past his room. Alice Hoffman, Second Nature, 1994
I was never a virgin. Susan Isaacs, Lily White, 1996
If the Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam had come together for a one-night stand, guess who would have popped out nine months later? Charlie Blair, Special Agent, FBI. What an American. Susan Isaacs, Red, White and Blue, 1998
When I was a little girl I used to dress Barbie up without underpants. Janet Evanovich, High Five, 1999
Exercises:
Write an opening line or two for the following themes. Bring the story to life for the reader. Make him ask questions. Create a feeling that he must read further.
1) Charlie fearlessly admits his homosexuality to his friends. But now he must tell his parents.
2) Susan wants to have a baby, but her husband can sometimes be so brutal.
3) How did I come to live in a house with such ridiculous humans? thought the cat.