The most important sentence of you story is the first sentence. It has to encourage the reader to read the next sentence. A good lead (hook) sentence should capture the reader’s attention, so you can introduce the problem or topic and flow in a smooth transition into the rest of the story.    

Remember!

Most people attention span is short when it comes to reading

  The writer’s job is to entertain the reader and get them excited as quick as possible; most readers don’t want to spend the first twenty pages to getting into the book. In most cases if you haven’t hooked the reader by the end of the first or second page you have lost them and that is death to a story. The rules are a little different when writing a short story, having a good lead sentence to hook the reader is critical. The writer doesn’t have time to build up the plot. A short story should start with a bang, and it is rare if the reader isn’t hooked by the end of the second paragraph will they continue to read.

  Below are five tips with examples.   

5 Tips  

1. State a Problem
2. Offer Facts of Details
3. Show Action
4. Engaging Narration
5. Interesting Dialogue

1. State a Problem   

Examples:  

1. Six minutes from now, one of us would be dead. ~ The Book Of Fate by Brad Meltzer

2. No one-least of all Dr. Litchfield-came right out and told Ralph Roberts that his wife was going to die. ~ Insomnia by Stephen King

3. Echo Halloran first became aware of the Woman in Black during a visit to the Highbridge Museum of Art in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ~ The Ransom Women by John Farris

2. Offer Facts of Details   

Examples:  

1. August Fifteenth. ~ Sacred Sins by Nora Roberts.

2. The jury was ready. ~ The Appeal by John Grisham

3. Sarah Bayou, LouisianaOctober 4 ~ Body of Lies by Iris Johansen

3. Show Action   

Examples:  

1. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. ~ The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

2. Mika knelt beside the great wolf TamTur and watched the blood flow from the wound in his chest. ~ Greyhawk Adventures by Rose Estes

3. Dame Honor Harrington dropped her long, rolled bundle and removed a hat someone on Old Earth of two millennia past would have called a fedora ~ Honor Harrington: The Short Victorious War by David Webber

4. Engaging Narration 

Examples:  

1. Be still. Do not move a muscle. And whatever you do, don’t scream. ~ Alaskan Homecoming by Teri Wilson

2. Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a King with Two sons ~ The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

3. I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. ~ In The Days Of The Comet by H.G. Wells   

5. Interesting Dialogue   

Examples:  

1. “Nana,” Twig whispered, scared. “They’re coming. The Roon.” ~ The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald

2. “The gun exploded, blood erupted, and Jacob lay dying on the brothel floor.” ~ The Drifter’s Wheel. By Phillip DePoy

3. “Engine core meltdown in thirty-two minutes,” the ship’s computer said in a synthesized female voice. ~ Unmasked by C.J. Barry

Summary 

  Hooking the reader with a lead sentence is critical. You must entice the reader and let them know there is more to come. The point of a lead sentence is to capture the reader’s imagination and divert their attention to your story. Think as if you are a fisherman, you bait the hook and cast it out into the water, a fish comes along and likes what it sees and takes the bait and you have hooked a fish. It is the same concept with writing a lead sentence, know your audience (type of fish you are fishing for), write a hook sentence that is best suited for that audience (bait the hook you know a certain fish will bite. Catfish like chicken liver), and submit or publish your story (cast out into the water). Keep in mind the more you go fishing the more fish you will catch and it is the same with writing.   

  If you want to be a writer then write as much as possible. Writing is a life time process and you will experience some of the greatest adventures in your imagination. By creating good lead sentences you will invite readers to experience the world you created inside your head. 

 “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” ~ George Orwell 

Follow. Up-Vote. Resteem. 

@smackit