What needs to happen at the start of your story (or scene, or chapter) that is of utmost priority for your characters?

Imply a situation requiring urgent investigation: A murder, a mystery – a vital piece of missing information for one or more characters.

Share actions with high stakes: A girl running for her life a tightrope walker between NY skyscrapers.

Describe an action with a time limit: For example, having ten minutes to get to a crucial interview.

To build urgency in your story’s hook, you could: We want to know what the crowds are staring up at in Let The Great World Spin (an urban tightrope walker). We need to find out who murdered Chase Andrews. The reader wants to know why a girl is running for her life. Let’s explore each of these ideas in brief with reference to the story hook examples given above.Ī girl running for her life a dead body lying in a swamp a crowd gathering to point into the sky.Įach of these actions or images create a kind of urgency that hooks a reader into the story. Great story hooks do one or more of the following. The examples of hooks from novels above illustrate what effective hooks do: How to write good hooks for stories: Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing (2018), p. A swamp knows about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin. On the morning of October 30, 1969, the body of Chase Andrews lay in the swamp, which would have absorbed it silently, routinely. Toni Morrison, God Help the Child (2015), p. It didn’t take more than an hour after they pulled her out from between my legs to realize something was wrong. I didn’t do it and have no idea how it happened.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), p.

I am writing to go back to the time, at the rest stop in Virginia, when you stared, horror-struck, at the taxidermy buck hung over the soda machine by the restrooms, its antlers shadowing your face. I am writing to reach you-even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020), p. The summer air burns at her back, but there are no torches, no angry mobs, only the distant lanterns of the wedding party, the reddish glow of the sun as it breaks against the horizon, cracks and spills across the hills, and the girl runs, skirts tangling in the grass as she surges toward the woods, trying to beat the dying light. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go but it’s not easy being quiet and good… Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (1996), p. That’s what the Governor’s wife says, I have overheard her saying it. I am a model prisoner, and give no trouble. I’ve been shut up in here since the age of sixteen. I’ll be twenty-four years old next birthday. Others figured it might be the perfect city joke – stand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads… Colum McCann, Let The Great World Spin (2009), p. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (2000), p. And they would be present all day while Anil and the others worked, never leaving they spelled each other so someone always stayed, as if to ensure that the evidence would not be lost again. When the team reached the site at five-thirty in the morning, one or two family members would be waiting for them. Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (2014), p. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony DoerrĪt dusk they pour from the sky. These hooks that do what a hook should: Raise curiosity, create questions and promise eventful action: 1. Explore great story hook examples and what they teach us about starting strong: Story hook examples Far from the trickery of a bait and switch, a hook gives a true sense of what your reader can expect of your story’s pleasures.

A ‘hook’ in a story promises intrigue, entertainment and answers to the questions it raises.

Narrative hook examples