By: Tracy Jackson
Photo by: Jonathan Moreau
When was the last time you were hooked? Not on phonics, but on a t.v. show, a
blogger, a band, or a hobby—maybe even a
food? What enthralls you? I’m currently captivated with Person of Interest. (I miss House.) Lately, I’ve reunited with
Natalie Merchant and the 10,000 Maniacs and it feels so good. And I’ve eaten a
honeycrisp apple a day for 3 weeks now. I like to get hooked. It makes life more exciting. Anticipation gets to go to work too. You’ll
garner these same lovin’ feelings from readers if you learn to use narrative
hooks in your writing. Yes, even in
writing your blog posts.
Narrative hooks are essential to great content. When you open your narratives/posts, you need
to hook your audience’s attention so they’ll keep reading. Remember there is a limitless amount of
literature and such to read out there, you have to captivate or you’ll be a
lonely writer with few readers. So, unless you are Harold, and you have a magic
purple crayon where you can literally draw your reader in, you’ll need to use a
powerful lure to bait your reader. The
sobering truth is you have just four or five sentences to prove that you are
worth listening to (unless you’ve proven yourself in the past). Narrative hooks
often consist of the first line you pen.
They are sentences with staying power, with resonant effect. I read Dickens in high school and honestly, I
don’t remember much about A Tale of Two
Cities. But some two decades later, in my mind is the indelible narrative
hook, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
Let’s look to dear Jane for another memorable and
captivating example. From Pride and
Prejudice, the opening line reads, “It is a truth universally acknowledged,
that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Not only does Austen encapsulate the energy of every plot point in her prolific
novel in that one sentence, she also manages to pique interest because her hook
is a rather controversial statement, isn’t it?
You may continue to read because you earnestly disagree or you forge
ahead because you are in absolute agreement.
Either way, Austen snagged your attention and you likely felt compelled
to continue reading. Her hook helps set
the stage for the story and it makes you ask yourself questions. See Jane write. The best hooks leave you with
questions; they compel you to continue reading to sate your growing curiosity.
Here are a few other classic narrative hooks that do their
job:
- You
better not never tell nobody but God. (Alice Walker, The Color Purple) - It was
a pleasure to burn. (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit
451) - 124
was spiteful. (Toni Morrison, Beloved) - I am
an invisible man. (Ralph Ellison, Invisible
Man) - Lolita,
light of my life, fire of my loins. (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita) - Mother
died today. (Albert Camus, The
Stranger) - Ships
at a distance have every man’s wish on board. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God)
This is my point: your opening lines are of paramount
importance, especially the first one.
Find ways to attract readers to your prose. You’ll feel better. (They will too.) You may be saying to
yourself I’m a blogger; I’m no Hemingway, nor do I aspire to be. This may be true. But, your craft lives or dies via creativity
and hopefully, writing that sings a bit.
(We’ll settle for hums a bit if we have to.) I’ll let writing guru John
Trimble back me up here: “To write creatively—to come up with ‘a constant succession
of tiny surprises’—we must want to. We
all have imaginations; the trick is to use them. And it’s in the using of them that writing
suddenly becomes a labor of love—and intensely creative, pleasurable activity. Each time we set down a sentence we must ask
ourselves: ‘Now how can I express this
more memorably?’” So next time you sit down to blog, get your creativity
on. Be sure to hook your reader, line
and sinker.
