90 of the Best Opening Hooks From Articles With Over 10,000 Claps Each

Win over your reader — right from the start!

“I made this up for added effect.” — J.J. Pryor

They say the only purpose of your first written sentence is to convince someone to read the next one.

The purpose of the next sentence is to convince someone to read the one after that.

And so it goes on in perpetuity until the very last word is read — you hope.

This article is an attempt to help you improve your own writing of openers, hooks, interest magnets, and tittilating wordlings. It’s a curation of hooks, ledes, and openers written by authors with huge amounts of views across the platform.

I’ve collected 10 of the best performing articles in 9 of the best performing topics — and extracted their opening lines.

After all, to become a better writer, one of the best shortcuts is to learn from the best. As such, most of these 90 stories have over 10,000 claps and very likely garnered at least thousands of views, if not hundreds of thousands.

So with only a bit of further adieu, here are 90 of the best hooks, ledes, and opening sentences to learn from for your own writing.

The Best Hooks for Writing Articles

Before we jump into the full list, I thought I’d share a TLDR version for those with precious little time on their hands.

Most, if not all, of the really good opening lines in super sucessful articles are at least partially the reason for their success.

And here’s a bunch of different hook styles you can use in your own writing (in no particular order):

• Use a quotation — People love quotes for a reason! “I came, I saw, I tasted it.”
• State your authority — If you’re about to teach something, consider stating your expertise in the area. Especially if it’s an, uh, nuanced subject like medicine/finance/peanut butter tuna sandwich crafting.
• Pose an interesting question — “Who in their right mind would put peanut butter on tuna?” Bam. I’m hooked.
• Use a bold statement on something important —“It’s a well known fact that the consumption of PB&T is the hidden key to perpetual happiness.” Is it true? Will you support your argument? I don’t know but I’ll be sure to read it.
• Start with a statistic or strong fact — “Studies show over 99.99% of Americans don’t eat PB&T — and an equal amount are not happy with the state of World affairs.”
• Refer to something related in the news — “International loser blogger has recently stated he has a dark secret: He only eats day-old PB&Ts.”
• Personal story or scene setting — “It was a dark stormy sunny bright day when Mr. Pryor first cracked open a can of tuna. That’s when the unthinkable happened.”
• Common thought juxtaposition — “It’s well known people love eating PB&T for its texture. But they’ll never know the real reason it’s so delicious — aliens.”
• Use humor to relax your readers— “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know which one pales in comparison to the ultimate glory of that sweet, sweet combination of peanut butter and tuna smushed between bread.” (This is a form of paraprosdokian. I love them.)

Outside of the above, many sucessful authors also advise keeping your hooks short, interesting, and leaving the reader with a bit of mystery.

See if you can identify any of the above examples in the below list.

Let’s have at it!

90 of the Best Hooks and Opening Lines

Note 1: These are in no particular order, I tried to find articles with a huge amount of claps (mostly over 10,000) as well as from different authors. I didn’t always succeed, but the words are still a great window into each topic & author’s writing soul.

Note 2: Also, not all of them are just the first sentence. I included more if I felt the ‘hook’ consisted of a longer version.

Note 3: I came here to share opening lines and kick ass. And I’m all out of ass. Because I’ve been eating so many healthy PB&T’s lately! It’s tremendously helpful in losing that pesky extra weight on the posterior.

Fiction

1. “Death is always a surprise. No one expects it. Not even terminal patients think they are going to die in a day or two.” — story link — Rafael Zoehler
2. “The only animal left standing was a one-eyed sea lion named Fred. “ — story link — Jessica Powell
3. “By the time he was 35, the only way Ted could get hard and remain so for the duration of sexual intercourse was to pretend that his dick was a knife, and the woman he was fucking was stabbing herself with it.” — story link — Kristen Roupenian
4. “Let’s get down to the bone of you, the meat. I must admit, all the electrocutions have made you downright unrecognizable.” — story link — Felicia C. Sullivan
5. “My friend Hiroki fell in love with a girl who painted.” — story link — Hengtee Lim (Snippets)
6. “She wasn’t your type, the redhead. She was the kind with fiery orange hair and flawless fair skin.” — story link — Olivia Semple
7. “When we first announced the results of our research, the world responded with a mix of curiosity, skepticism, and disbelief.” — story link — Hengtee Lim (Snippets)
8. ““One day, I am going to break your fucking heart,” she confessed on my balcony in between drags of her Marlboro 27. “You sure you want to do this?”” — story link — John Gorman
9. “Dear Mom, The light is different here. If you saw how this place shines, I think you’d stop worrying about me.” — story link — Jacqueline Dooley
10. “He told you he was crazy. He told you from the beginning. He said it in a funny singsong voice: “I don’t mean crazy in the way that men say their ex was ‘crazy,’ baby I mean car-razy!”” — story link — Priya

Writing

Notes: Searching through the ‘writing’ tag on Medium is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s often the go-to for people that can’t think of another one to use for their 5th tag slot. (I’m guilty of this too, of course.) Nevertheless, I tried to keep the below to articles that are actually about writing as a craft, and not a tag marking the act of words being involved in a written article (AKA Every. single. article. on the internet. Ever.)

1. “Four years ago my sister got me something that would dramatically alter the direction of my life. “— story link — Tom Kuegler
2. “Not so long ago, putting pen to paper was a fundamental feature of daily life.” — story link — Markham Heid
3. “You’re busy, so I’ll keep this quick.” — story link— Josh Spector
4. “If you asked me whether I would ever make money from writing, I would have said no.” — story link— Tim Denning
5. “Of all the things that have been helpful to me in personal growth and goal achievement, using my journal daily is at the foundation.” — story links — Benjamin Hardy, PhD
6. “They called Feynman the “Great Explainer.”” — story link — Evernote
7. “Writing a good article requires two things: good content and good technique.”— story link — Hannah Frankman
8. “On an unnamed part of the internet, young adult author Gwen C. Katz found a delightfully deluded male author claiming that his facility with writing natural women characters constituted an unassailable rebuke to the idea that we need diverse authors to write diverse viewpoints.” — story link — Electric Literature
9. “It’s so easy to identify what you need to do to change your life. It’s so hard to accept what you need to let go of, what weeds you need to uproot so the soil of your life is free and fertile again.” — story link — Brianna Wiest
10. “Do you want to be a great writer? To create stunning works of art that people can’t stop reading? To craft brilliant articles that touch hearts and change lives?” — story link — Sarah Cy

Sex

Note: Boobies!

1. “How many times have we heard the phrase, “All men want is sex?” — story link — The Good Men Project
2. “I hate porn. I don’t hate it because it’s immoral, or because it often explores “unusual” tastes, or because it has uncovered a bestial side of humans we pretended didn’t exist. I hate porn because fucking men who have watched a lot of porn is the worst. The absolute worst.” — story link — Emma Lindsay
3. “The Great Chill Massacre of 2014 was not premeditated. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea that I’d end the day going from casually dating six men to formally and intentionally dating zero.” — story link — Alana Massey
4. “Life is a little crazy sometimes. Time is short. Work is hectic. Bills are due. Commutes are long. Social media is distracting.” — story link — The Good Men Project
5. “As a mother of six and a Mormon, I have a good understanding of arguments surrounding abortion, religious and otherwise.” — story link — Gabrielle Blair
6. “Something is definitely wrong with me, I thought to myself all through what seemed like the longest night ever.” — story link — Wardah Abbas
7. “Penis size varies — oh, yes, it does. And yet I had no idea that penises ranged so drastically in size before I started working in the sex industry.” — story link — Mysterious Witt
8. “Porn can be blamed for a lot of pathologies and false ideas about sex: That women love anal; that we like to have our pussies spat upon or smacked; that men need to bone as if they’re literally filming a porn.” — story link — Bridget Phetasy
9. “I woke up this morning with this terrible fucking feeling, and I was like I know this feeling.”— story link — Emma Lindsay
10. “I was on Google Trends the other day seeing what was going on in the world and stumbled upon something weird happening in Japan. “The age of consent” was trending.” — story link — Isaiah McCall

Life Lessons

Note: I initially had planned on including a section for self-improvement as well, but many of these overlap. And I’m feeling hangzy. (hungry+angry+lazy)

1. “Have you ever said words to the effect of If only I knew then what I know now?”— story link — George J. Ziogas
2. “Life is a journey of twists and turns, peaks and valleys, mountains to climb and oceans to explore.” — story link — Nicolas Cole
3. “There are significant reasons to size up a person’s mental acuity.”— story link — Sean Kernan
4. “I’m sick of lists of habits that are unrealistic for the majority of people.” — story link — Amardeep Parmar
5. “I can tell you two things with confidence. One, I’m living the life I want to live. And two, I’m able to do so in part by ruthlessly stealing secrets from people who are smarter than me.” — story link — Ryan Holiday
6. “Imagine you pass by a question that asks “the Titanic got invaded by aliens, right?””— story link — Minarella
7. “If you’re reading this, there are a million-and-a-half things you want to do: Build your business, exercise more, spend more time with friends and family, read more books, etc.” — story link — Anthony J. Yeung
8. “Books shape who we become. A book is like a friend. The right book can re-educate us and inform our lives for the better. A book can be a mentor when we have none or entertain us when we have no one.” — story link — Jessica Lynn
9. “Charming people. They always have an exciting story to tell, and they have that seemingly innate ability to make you feel at ease in their company.” — story link — Sira M.
10. “My 40s are a lot different than I thought they’d be when I was still in my 20s.”— story link — Shannon Hilson

Business

1. “Learning is one of the overcommunicated but underleveraged tools of the common entrepreneur.” — story link — Jake Daghe
2. “GameStop is a struggling, kind of boring, mid-size retailer stuck in a legacy business — selling physical video games.”— story link — James Surowiecki
3. ““I did 9 years at Yahoo.” Yes, Jan Koum referred to his time at Yahoo as a prison sentence.”— story link — Alan Trapulionis
4. “Seven years ago, if you were an ambitious young white woman seeking to break through the glass ceiling at work, Sheryl Sandberg was your mentor.”— story link — Leigh Stein
5. “When Apple’s WWDC 2020 digital-only Keynote event kickstarted, all eyes were on the new mac OS Big Sur and the ambitious Apple Silicon chips.” — story link — Anupam Chugh
6. “When Steve Jobs was 12-years-old he wanted to build a frequency counter, but he was lacking some of the necessary parts to complete the project.” — story link — Michael Thompson
7. “At the start of 2020, if anyone told you that Hertz, a 102-year-old car rental firm, was going to declare bankruptcy a few months later, you’d probably laugh them out of the room.” — story link — Concoda
8. “Getting a top-tier MBA has always been an expensive proposition, setting you back something like $200,000 between tuition and living expenses (not to mention lost income).” — story link — Jessica Stillman
9. “I broke one of my writing rules last month when I wrote about Elon Musk, and I’m breaking it again today.”— story link — Nick Wolny
10. “This week, Google announced new professional career certificates that can be completed in six months to help Americans obtain high growth job opportunities.”— story link — David Leibowitz

Politics

1. “Right about now, something terrible is happening in America.”— story link — umair haque
2. “Two years ago, I lived through a coup in Sri Lanka. It was stupid.”— story link — indi.ca
3. “To the QAnon community, and others involved in storming the Capitol: The Deep State is real, but it’s not what you think.”— story link — Nicholas Grossman
4. “I’m as old as you. I’m as educated as you. I’m as upset as you. Put yourself in my shoes.” — story link — John Biggs
5. “One of the first things I discovered as President of the United States was that no decision that landed on my desk had an easy, tidy answer. “— story link — Barack Obama
6. “Sweden has famously followed a different coronavirus strategy than most of the rest of the Developed world: Let the virus run loose, curb it enough to make sure it doesn’t overwhelm the healthcare system like in Hubei, Italy or Spain, but don’t try to eliminate it.”— story link — Tomas Pueyo
7. “My brother-in-law leaves his keys in the ignition at night.” — story link — Jessica Wildfire
8. “It took me a long time to accept this as well, but I believe it’s what needs to happen so we can truly move forward as a country and act as an actual United States of America.” — story link — Russ Josephs
9. “Even among people who really want Joe Biden to be the next President of the United States, there is very little enthusiasm.” — story link — Dr. Munr Kazmir
10. “In his first comments to the press since inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, President Donald Trump did not offer any words of contrition. Instead, he reminded us for the billionth time that he is a spiteful bitch incapable of feeling shame about anything.” — story link — Michael Arceneaux

Health

1. “It was the end of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine.” — story link — Tara Haelle
2. “As a fitness columnist, I get lots of questions about the best way to work out.” — story link — Christie Aschwanden
3. “In the United States, I’m often bombarded with images and ads of fitness culture.” — story link — Kaki Okumura
4. “My father died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis four years ago.” — story link — Gillian May
5. “I’m a fairly healthy person — I do what I can to feel good, while still enjoying my life.” — story link — Maria Del Russo / Refinery29 UK
6. “Do you ever sit down at 6 p.m. and think that you’ve had an incredibly busy day but didn’t really accomplish much?” — story link — Sinem Günel
7. “Almost one year ago, my life changed. It wasn’t a big, dramatic event that was the catalyst, nor a realization that my life was on the wrong path.”— story link — Ashley Richmond
8. “I would consider myself a generally healthy individual. I exercise regularly, eat well balanced meals with plenty of fruits and vegetables, drink a lot of water, and sleep 7–8 hours each night.” — story link — Alyssa Atkinson
9. ““Just make him do it!” A voice rang out, followed by the sound of metal grating on metal. ” — story link — Michele Harper
10. “I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I enjoy more than feeling superior to other people.”— story link — Drew Magary

Productivity

1. “Sometimes, to become successful and get closer to the person we can become, we don’t need to add more things — we need to give up on some of them.” — story link — Zdravko Cvijetic
2. “I’ve been a psychology professor since 2012. In the past six years, I’ve witnessed students of all ages procrastinate on papers, skip presentation days, miss assignments, and let due dates fly by.”— story link — Devon Price
3. “To reach your goals, you need a system. You need to build habits and you have to stick around long enough to let them do their magic.” — story link — Larisa Andras
4. “I’m no stranger to reading about the benefits of waking up early or having the same sleeping routine — all of us have probably read this at some point in our lives.”— story link — Bryan Ye
5. “The traditional 9–5 workday is poorly structured for high productivity.” — story link — Benjamin Hardy, PhD
6. “When our son was a year old, my pregnant wife and I endured a grueling day of travel from northern Michigan to Los Angeles, where we lived at the time.”— story link — Paul Ollinger
7. “The old crocodile was floating at the river’s edge when a younger crocodile swam up next to him, “I’ve heard from many that you’re the fiercest hunter in all of the river bottoms. Please, teach me your ways.”” — story link — Aytekin Tank
8. “The first successful person I ever met — truly successful, with accomplishments I admired and ambition I strove to emulate — was an entrepreneur in his forties, a client of mine in the first real business I’d ever started.”— story link — Darius Foroux
9. “Why do we love life quotes so much? I think I have the answer.” — story link — Ayodeji Awosika
10. “Imagine always having the strongest mind in the room. That would mean being smart, sure. But more importantly, you’d be grounded and unflappable.” — story link — Coach Tony

Humor

Note: These are probably my favorite.

1. “Mark was the stuff of dreams. Kind, caring, attentive, enough to make all of my friends jealous. But today something happened, something horrible.” — story link — andrew costa
2. “Dear guy who just made my burrito: Have you ever been to Earth?” — story link — Jack Dire
3. “Are you a man confused on how to treat the women you work with? Do you feel like if you can’t say or do *anything* you don’t know what to say or do at all? Well stress no more!” — story link — Anne Victoria Clark
4. “Dear People Who Live in Fancy Tiny Houses…Do you actually love living in a fancy tiny house*?” — story link — Lauren Modery
5. “Wait. Wait a goddamn minute. Look, this is gonna sound insane. But I recently realized something. Have we ever seen Donald Glover and Childish Gambino in the same room together? Think about it.” — story link — Drew Landry
6. “Like everyone, appearing smart during meetings is my top priority. Sometimes this can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap, or bacon.” — story link — Sarah Cooper
7. “In the latest of a series of recent allegations about the Academy Award-winning actor, actress Veronica Warren revealed Thursday that Tom Hanks was extremely kind to her on the set of the 2006 film The Da Vinci Code.” — story link — Blue Rock Public Radio
8. “Most people don’t notice I’m polite, which is sort of the point. I don’t look polite. I am big and droopy and need a haircut. No soul would associate me with watercress sandwiches.” — story link — Paul Ford
9. “A second anonymously authored op-ed has been released on the website of Fox & Friends online, denying claims made in an op-ed released last week.” — story link— Steve Bouchard
10. “If you’re reading this, congratulations! Your hard work and dedication have paid off, and you’ve finally made it to the top of your respective field.” — story link — Chris Rosenthall

Takeaway

Did you notice how certain genres are more likely to start with the same type of hook? Did any particular style make you click on one of the articles? Did your stomach repeatedly pang at the thought of a delicious PB&T?

If the answer was “Oui” to any of those, then you’re probably French. Otherwise, jot those styles down and maybe read more work from those same authors.

Gather a sense of what appeals to you as a writer, and you’ll be able to help further your craft.

As they say, “To thine own self PB&T.”

Or something along those lines.

Anyway, if you want more breakdowns like this, I don’t have a life:

J.J. Pryor

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