Back to Basics: The Hook, I gotta a live one!!

[KillerMuffin]

How important is the hook? Er, what is it anyway?

The hook is your chance to make the reader interested enough in your story to read it, not just skim to the sex or backclick out of it in search of something more interesting.

There are 13,000ish stories on this site and one 'lil ol' story has to work hard to stand out in the crowd. You don't just want to have a reader read your stuff all the way through, you also want that reader to be interested enough to maybe read some of your other stuff as well.

The hook is everything in that kind of environment. You have about three sentences to hook your reader.

Well, okay, so how do I make the hook good?

Well, authors? How do you make a good hook?
What are your theories on the hook?
What do you find effective or not effective?
Do you have any hard and fast rules on the first paragraph you write for a story?
ow do you make the first paragraph outstanding, not just mediocre?
What's your philosophy of the hook?

 

[Never]

The 'hook' is an infectious, obnoxious invention. I've never met anyone that would read three sentences of a story and then put it down. Despite what you've heard the average reader does have an attention span somewhat greater than a gnat or one of those insane, tiny dogs that shiver nervously all the time.

Killer:
"You don't just want to have a reader read your stuff all the way through, you also want that reader to be interested enough to maybe read some of your other stuff as well."

Um, no. That's what you want. Besides, if a reader reads your story all the way through then the first three sentences of that story are going to have jack to do with whether they read another one of your stories.

It's true that in a short story, where you have an economy or words and space the with paragraph has to 'do something'. Then again, in a short story every paragraph should 'do something'.

 

[alltherage]

I try to use contrast and a sudden turn as the hook. An extreme example of a hook that might attract me is something like this.

A woman is sleeping in a huge bed under silk sheets on a gorgeous moonlite night. Set the scene as peacefully as you can. Maybe she is dreaming some lovely dream or perhaps the twist is the nightmare she is in. Some action from out of the blue destroys the peaceful scene.

Seemingly innocent and everyday things which turn omminous also intrigue me. Hitchcockian randomness works well i think. He is looking at picture. Seems innocent. But the picture are of his wife with another man. Children are playing in a playground. One picks something up(god forbid a gun) then tell the story of the gun. Beginning at the end working back. I think anything the upsets the readers notion of what the story is, surprising the reader, are the best hooks.

 

[poohlive]

Hook? Do people actually use them in stories? I thought they were gone with the dinosaurs.
Well, if you feel that your story sucks so bad that you must insist to put some sort of anticlimatic paragraph at the beginning, go for it.
That's just my opinion though, don't read anything into it. I'm sure there are great stories with "hooks" in them. Lol, Peter Pan for one.
Ok, I'm sorry, but I had to do it. You know you were all thinking it.

There's a little something I learned in writing though, a very famous person wrote it. I always kept it with me, but never quite knew what it meant, not until I started writing seriously...
A story starts at the beginning.
It ends at the end.
If you start a story at somewhere other than the beginning, either two things happen
1. The reader misses out on something.
2. The reader gets information that is stupid, pointless, and doesn't directly affect the story.

If that doesn't help you, maybe this will. It's from a famous movie I rented last week.
You write with your heart.
You re-write with your head.

Hook? I thought that was the beginning sentence that Laurel, or the other Story posters who put it on this website, put right next to the story. You know, like...
Shattered Dreams
Suzie finds out what her neighbors are really up to...

Lol, always loved those things. They help me out greatly with my story picking, that and the author themselves.

 

[Weird Harold]

Hook? Do people actually use them in stories? I thought they were gone with the dinosaurs.
Well, if you feel that your story sucks so bad that you must insist to put some sort of anticlimatic paragraph at the beginning, go for it.
...
There's a little something I learned in writing though, a very famous person wrote it. I always kept it with me, but never quite knew what it meant, not until I started writing seriously...
A story starts at the beginning.
It ends at the end.
If you start a story at somewhere other than the beginning, either two things happen
1. The reader misses out on something.
2. The reader gets information that is stupid, pointless, and doesn't directly affect the story

A good "hook" doesn't have to be something other than the beginning of the story.

All you really need for a "hook" is a turn of phrase in the beginning that makes the reader want to read more. If you don't start off your story in a way the reader can connect to, or worse, start your story in passive voice and immediately turn the reader off, you subconsciously prejudice the reader against enjoying your story and have to work harder later to gain their interest and emotional involvement in your story.

You can hint at what is to come in the story, pose a question you'll answer later, or try to immediately raise some emotion in the reader with a provocative statement. All are "hooks" and every story has one.

Some hooks are dull or bent so they don't do the job, but every story has one. The real question here, is how to sharpen the hook so it does the job intended for it -- getting people to read more.

 

[garyblue]

Hook, line and sinker?

Maybe the comfort level would rise if we didn't call it a hook. How does 'bait' sound? The first few sentences determine whether the reader keeps on sniffin' around. From the old song, "Any fish bite if you got good bait..."*

Isn't that what we want, keep the reader sniffin' around 'til they bite on the story?

g

*Memphis Jug Band, Fishin' Blues, ca. 1932?

 

[Mickie]

The hook is usually the point of the story, the thing that's most important about the beginning. It isn't like you put something in there totally off the wall, then begin the story with something totally unconnected.

If a story isn't interesting from the first sentence, most people will click out of it or skim down to the sex. Not all, but most. We're not normally dealing with a reader who wants excellent literature. We're dealing with readers who are reading as a quick break from reality. Mostly. There are those who will grind through a boring opening paragraph because they've clicked on this story and they're damned well going to read it all.

If the story has a boring point, then the hook is boring. If the story itself is good, the hook will be good. It isn't a case of not believing in your story, it's a case of presenting your beginning in the most interesting way possible.

The beginning of a story is a promise the author makes to the reader. The best hooks present the question that the author is promising to answer. The worst hooks are about small details that don't matter much to the actual story.

Yes, the blurb by the name of the story is a more forced hook. I hadn't thought of it that way before, merely as advertisment, but it's true. And again, if you promise the reader something they aren't going to get in the actual story, that hook is a lie. Readers don't like to be lied to. False advertisment.

Mickie

 

[MaxSebastian]

A hook is yet another great chance to play around with your readership - with each story you write, you can experiment with a new type of hook and see how people react to it.

One thing I think is far too overdone on Literotica, and which there should be some kind of law against are 'hooks' that are similar to:

Randi was 5'2" with long blonde eyes, gorgeous blue hair, 32C thighs, no kids, a healthy bank balance and a half-eaten packet of chips.

You know the sort of thing, a long list of 'characteristics'. That's going to make me stop reading more than anything.

 

[JUDO]

A mystery

A great hook sets up a mystery.

At the sink, she closed her lip gloss, then grabbed her purse. Stepping back into the bedroom, she did a final scan of the premises and froze. Four silk scarves lay on the floor side-by-side.

She circled the scarves as though they were four rattlers. Not knotted, not wrinkled and yet there they were.

Mystery of a thing.
Mystery of an action.
Mystery by association.
Mystery by disassociation.