If you are new to the writing journey, you might have heard about the importance of writing a great hook and captivating your audience’s interest right from the start. Now, you might wonder about what you need to do to write a great opening of your story.
Here is everything you need to know.
What Makes A Great Hook
Before you learn about how to hook your readers, let us talk about the aspects that make a great hook. Also, when it comes to grabbing the attention of your readers, you can integrate the following methods:
Ask Intriguing Questions
You can grab the attention of your audience or readers by raising questions. Ideally, the goal of raising questions is to make your readers wonder about what will happen down the line. In fact, asking an interesting question is one of the best ways to get the attention of your target audience.
You want to show your readers something interesting or unusual that ignites their curiosity and makes them wonder what will happen later on in the story.
Connect Emotionally
You can get your readers hooked on the story right from the start of your story by establishing an emotional connection. There are several ways you can do this, such as by showing a character’s suffering or making sacrifices. You can also show the character experiencing a private moment.
Showing a character in their vulnerable moment from the very start makes the readers sympathize with the character and wonder how the character will handle things later on in the story.
Surprise Them
Another method to grab the attention of your readers and have them hooked to your book till the very end is by showing something surprising or something shocking. Essentially, this method works the same way as raising questions and spurring curiosity in the reader’s mind.
However, this aspect has more of a punch to it. Integrating a surprising element lights up the story right from the very start by placing questions in the reader’s mind about how the story will develop.
Subsequently, you will be answering these questions over the course of your story or novel.
Exhibit Conflict
You can also grab the attention of your readers from the very start by exhibiting conflicting ideas and emotions. You want to exhibit a tension or conflict that the readers can latch onto from the very start. This is an excellent way to create tension in your story.
Make the opening scene of your book filled with tension so that you can signal to your readers that there is plenty of conflict to follow that they shouldn’t miss out on at any cost.
Start with Drama
Another great way to grab the attention of your readers is to start with drama. For instance, you don’t have to follow a chronological order when writing a story. To hook your readers from the very start, you can start your book in the middle of dramatic action.
This is where your story is already in motion, which is a great way to start a sci-fi novel; speaking of which, if you are interested in science fiction writing, we recommend having a dramatic start so your readers will be excited to know how the plot will unfold throughout your novel.
What you essentially do is drop your readers in the middle of a tense moment and make them experience the action alongside the characters that are involved in some high conflict.
Tips to Write: Use Narrative Hooks in Your Story
Follow the below-given tips to write a captivating hook for your story:
Start the Right Way
Ideally, with your hook, you should aim to grab your reader’s attention from the very start. So, find a way to integrate a strong hook in your opening chapter, the opening page, and even your opening line. If you are writing a TV show, you should find ways to write an impactful hook in your opening scene or the opening image.
Open with A Minor Hook
If you cannot open your chapter with a major hook, you should be content with opening your chapter with a minor hook. You can build towards the bigger and more impactful hook with smaller hooks along the way. For instance, you might want to open the first chapter of your book with an intense conversation between two people.
Subsequently, you can incorporate smaller hooks along the way and keep your readers interested enough to keep turning the pages one after the other. The smaller hooks will do the service of propelling the story forward and keeping the readers engaged.
Spread Out The Hooks
You wouldn’t want to limit your hooks to the beginning of the story alone. Often, you will hear someone give a tip that the beginning of your story needs to hook your readers. Now, this is perfectly true because you have literally five minutes to impress your ideal readers and convince them to buy your book and read it till the very end.
Nonetheless, you need to scatter your hooks throughout the story. You can even tactfully use hooks when you are introducing side characters or a subplot in your story.
Keep Raising Questions
As we mentioned earlier, raising a question at the beginning of your book is an excellent way to hook your readers and intrigue them to read further to get the answer to the question. On that note, make sure to raise new questions once you have answered their old questions.
Now, this aspect is linked with the idea of scattering hooks throughout your story. You want your readers to keep turning the pages and staying interested in the plot.
Final Thoughts
As a writer, you want to write a book that sells, which is why you must write an interesting story. To make your story or novel or whatever genre you have chosen interesting, your best bet is to combine multiple hooks strategies throughout your writing. Of course, you don’t have to throw every single type of hook in your story or the opening chapter – but – in some cases, you should see how you can combine different hooks to make a greater impact on your readers.
