One Electrifying Sentence:
A hook encapsulates a book in one electrifying sentence. It will grab the attention of agents, editors, publishers, bookstore managers and clerks, bloggers, journalists, reviewers and readers. So how do you write a hook? Michael Kimball and Stonecoast Alumna Bix Skahill have a simple formula they call The Art of the Hook:
- Start with a protagonist. Use an adjective to describe the protagonist that will elicit emotion.
- Add your protagonist’s goal.
- Next, name the conflict, such as an unwinnable war or impossible task.
For multiple characters or plotlines, pick what best conveys the most emotion in your story. Create empathy with an adjective for your protagonist (i.e. unwitting attorney, guilty clown, angst-ridden teen), and then put the protagonist in jeopardy. Give the protagonist strong motivation to win, stop, escape, retrieve or conquer whatever the conflict is. Use loaded words and be specific.
One example was: To save his best friend’s life, a boy scholar must win a war between magic and machine. The fact that the protagonist is a boy elicits empathy, especially a boy in a war. That he’s also a scholar creates interest. His goal is to save a best friend’s life, no less. How can one boy possibly win a war between magic and machine?
My attempts
The workshop split into groups and I shared what I had: In THE REAL STORY, a woman must look to her past before she can face the future after discovering she is at the core of a horrible family secret. My fellow writers were less than enthusiastic. It was vague and squishy. It lacks a clear protagonist (just a woman) and a clear goal (she has to face the future?) and there wasn’t any conflict… unless you consider looking to the past as conflict, but that’s pretty weak.
The second hook I came up with was: In THE REAL STORY, a young woman whose life is shattered after learning she was conceived in violence must shed her self destructive ways before she can rebuild herself. Mike said it was too general, and suggested I make it more specific and evoke a sense of impossibility regarding her desire.
Now I have: In THE REAL STORY, a self-destructive young woman must make peace with the fact that her birthfather is a rapist to find the strength to leave her felon husband and learn to love again. I don’t know if the conflict is strong enough, but I think I’m getting closer.
If you’ve read any dynamite hooks worth sharing, or have one of your own that you’d like to share, please comment!
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of In the Context of Love, about one women’s need to tell her story without shame. Publisher: Buddhapuss Ink, LLC 
2016 Sarton Women’s Fiction Finalist
2016 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2016 Readers Favorite Book Finalist
2016 USA Book News “Best Book” Finalist
Angelica Schirrick had always suspected there was something deeply disturbing about her family, but the truth was more than she bargained for.
“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller, Deep End of the Ocean
“At once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed Once Upon a River,and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters
Buy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
This is helpful Linda!!! Thanks for posting. I just finished my 4th edit of my novel. Will try to write a “hook” for it now!
You’re welcome, Penny! The value in developing your hook is that it helps support the entire work like a spine from which everything grows, from the lead sentence to the last. Having a hook will keep you focused as you edit!
(I lost count of the revisions I’ve made since I wrote the ending of my own novel!)
Feel free to share what you come up with. I’d love to read it.
Linda: Thanks…it helps focus the journey of the novel…
and as a Stonecoast Alum myself, if this a new seminar I could have attended? I’d love to come next time around.
Kate
Oh…and it might help make things more specific if you name the protagonist in your hook. In the early ones I did for my prior incarnations of the book, I started with “Griffin Kane finds a body on the beer vat at the Vatican Brewpub….” something like that. So naming the main character immediately connects the reader with the name, which makes it more personal. Just a thought.
Kate
That’s an excellent idea, Kate. I love that, too– the beer vat at the Vatican Brewpub.
Actually, I don’t think alumni are supposed to attend the presentations. I sat in without asking. Shhh.
I have been struggling to do this with Celebrities for Breakfast. So, thanks for this post– very informative!
It’s so much harder than it would seem, isn’t it?! Good luck, Shelley!
Another great post, Linda! I’m going to add this topic to our writers group discussion list. And . . . work on my own hook. The agent at graduation asked me about my novel and I had no idea how to concisely describe it.
I realized I have some thinking to do about identifying the core story or main narrative line. Hmmm. Then I realized that if I don’t know exactly what this story is about, how will the reader?
That’s it exactly Mihku! If you don’t know… who does?? Writing a hook is a terrific topic for a writers group. You can help each other.
It’s great to have a hook that you can feel confident about when anyone, from an inquisitive neighbor to an agent, asks what your novel is about.