Your first few lines are your only chance to make a good first impression. In journalism it’s often called the hook, so called because it’s your chance to get the fish — i.e., the reader — on your line. To make the reader take your bait and then keep taking your bait. It’s of utmost importance in fiction, too.
This hook also personalizes the essay by asking a series of questions of the reader. This is an add-on technique that will be covered a little later on. This hook transitions smoothly into the thesis by mentioning one of the literary works to be analyzed, Whitman’s “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer”.
So if you want to hook your reader and get your story read pay attention to the first 10 pages which translates to the first 10 minutes. Readers want to be hooked but you will need a powerful beginning to knock them out of apathy and into empathy. It makes all the difference in your story getting read and engaging the audience in the story.
To hook the readers, the speaker or the author should establish an amusing narrative voice that will perhaps address readers or listeners directly to capture their attention to the story. For example, in the book of Kate Milford, Greenglass House, it starts; “There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you’re going to run a hotel ...
A hook that conceals specific pieces of information from the reader can work hand-in-hand with unusual imagery to create suspense and arouse curiosity. Writers Dennis Jerz and Kathy Kennedy give a great example to highlight this point.
The most universal and effective way to hook the reader is to raise a question. When you raise the question, the reader will want to stick around to figure out what the answer is. you are providing a circumstance or creating a scene that causes a reader’s mind to bubble up with questions.
Nov 05, 2015 · As writers, we need to grab our reader’s attention in the first sentence. We need to “hook” our readers in so that their answer to the aforementioned questions will be a resounding “Yes!” Since a college admissions officer will spend just five minutes reading, college essay hooks, your first sentence, takes on even greater importance ...
How to hook the reader in the first few lines of your letter. Before you create a subject line, which I strongly recommend composing after you finish the whole letter, think of the first two lines that will explain a recipient who you are and why you write. This is the best way to start a letter and demonstrate that you care about the reader ...
If you have been wondering how to hold the attention of your reader or audience, we've got you covered. Read the post to get useful tips.
Sep 09, 2019 · To really put a spin on how a reader experiences a situation, Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, advises the writer to “block off some of the senses. And then see what the remaining ones pick up.” Visual description, for instance, is the writer’s “bread and butter” for allowing the reader to connect to the story.