ELEMENTS OF FICTION
Our Favourite Hookers
OR — HOW TO WRITE A HOOK SENTENCE
So, we’ve already looked at story openings and asked whether writers need to be good hookers. Yes, really.
A hook sentence is literally our opening statement to the jury. The hook sentence establishes a cause for our readers to keep reading beyond our first paragraph and even our first page. We kind of have to be good hookers!
A HOOK DEFINED
A hook sentence (with a compelling narrative voice) introduces an unexpected or disruptive turn of events.
A hook sentence can make us do a double take — did the narrator really just say that?!
To get a feel for how it’s done, let’s look at a few hookers …
🖋️‘Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web)
🖋️I lost my arm on my last trip home.
Octavia Butler (Kindred)
🖋️ It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
🖋️Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
🖋️Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.
Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You)
🖋️ When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games)
🖋️ The moment one learns English, complications set in.
Felipe Alfau (Chromos)
☆ Most hook sentences are, for the purposes of impact, fairly short with simple, direct language.
☆ All hook sentences use language that imparts a jolt, a shock, a mystery, or, at the very least, intrigue. They can also come with a wry or witty turn of phrase.
AND SO …
Yes, there are the old school amongst us who grew up reading worthy tomes and verbose classics — there was not much TV around — and no social media! The perseverance required to read some of these revered classics was our badge of honour. And, there was a lot of good reading to be had! Did you read all of War and Peace? Yikes!
Nowadays, our readers have other distractions, time-consuming careers, prolonged, unconventional working hours, school runs, after-school runs, dogs to walk, fences to fix, and grass to mow.
And then there’s the little issue of possibly way too many competing social media platforms … How much time do we spend just scrolling? Me? Guilty as charged!
However, in an age of competing ‘fast fixes’, if our opening words aren’t working, we genuinely risk losing our potential readers.
WRITING AN OPENING HOOK
When writing our own hook sentence, bear in mind the following:
- How is the scene set?
- Have we introduced the main character and their problem?
- Has our hook sentence encapsulated the crisis (whether personal or the world at large) that our character faces?
- Once our opening paragraph is written, can we identify our own hook sentence?
FINAL THOUGHTS
Great openings also depend upon great revision. When we finish our first draft, it’s absolutely fine to rest it, come back later, and ask ourselves whether it still works. Read it out loud. Are the dynamics the same?
If not, it’s fine to experiment, re-order our sentences, rest it, and test it by reading out loud again.
Once we’re satisfied every word we’ve written pulls the reader right into our story — break out a favourite (and massively fun) chocolate-themed treat — we’ve just completed our opening hook!
Happy hooking!
© 2023 Susi Moore. All Rights Reserved.
★ For more on story openings …
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