How to Write Effective Hook Sentences [Updated 2019]

Anyone who’s ever been a student will agree that writing an essay is not easy. In fact, it seems to be quite a challenging task: finding proper ideas, arranging the text according to the rules, keeping the style consistent throughout the entire work. Let us assume that you’ve composed a great essay but when you give it to others for editing, they literally force themselves to read till the end. Not because you lack writing skills, but because your essay is…simply boring. In short, readers don’t enjoy following the flow of your thoughts. Why does it happen? Here comes an explanation.

The 20 seconds rule

The reader subconsciously estimates the value of the text during the first 20 seconds of reading it. Obviously, it is impossible to get all the worthy ideas from the text in 20 seconds, but that’s how much time it takes to make your impression and decide whether you want to keep on reading or not. Sure, your college professor MUST read your essay until the end, but when it comes to the online audience, you have to fight for their attention.

What you need is a “hook” to grab the interest of those to whom your essay is addressed. Sounds like taking part in a competition, perhaps, but it is exactly what you should be best at in order for your works to get noticed and appreciated.

What’s a hook in writing?

A hook is not merely a metaphor. Actually, this widely used tool was first mentioned by Aristotle in the context of drama. Hooks were used to involve spectators in the action, make them captivated by whatever happens on stage. Such a technique can be applied to writing as well. So, here comes the hook definition in literature: a hook is a literary device in an opening sentence (-s) used in order to attract a reader’s attention. That is to say, you should offer a striking beginning to motivate your readers and encourage further reading.

Offer the intriguing or mysterious setting, create the right mood, allude to the theme or conflict, surprise the reader with casting him/her into the middle of an action. This is one of the features that literature and movies have in common: both of them have to capture and keep attention, both need a proper hook.

What is a hook in an essay?

As you know, each kind of essay starts with the introduction of presenting a topic and posing a statement. However, the statement should be presented in a logical manner; that is why it is usually preceded by a few generalized sentences. These sentences are your hook. A pitfall here is that you may ponder on the hook words for essays for hours while generating the essay body in your mind. Therefore, get down to business: write the essay body first and then work on the hook. Having the framework in front of you eases the construction of the lacking essay parts. That is an effective “recipe” for many writers.

Not only the first sentences but also the last ones may serve as a hook for your essay. Introduce the closing hooks for essays through posing a controversial or tricky question, intriguing with unusual outlook, presenting the generally known facts as brand new ones. In short, get your audience really interested. A conclusion usually echoes the intro part, so if your essay is framed by hooks, you hit the target.

How to write a hook?

Well, knowing how to use essay hooks is undoubtedly a must for every writer. Below there are some tips that will help you write effective hooks for all essay types. Consider different kinds of hooks and choose the optimal one for writing either an introduction or a conclusion. Since it’s the introduction that goes first, let us start off with hook introduction examples.

13 of them – the sacred number – with examples are offered below, as well as several more hook ideas are offered in our blog post about intros and conclusions for the essays.

1. Quote of a well-known person

Indicating the author is obligatory. Quoting the acknowledged personality not only grabs attention immediately but also brings a sense of credibility to your writing. Check out the following quotes, and you will see that they are all well-suited to be followed by a thesis:

• “Never say more than is necessary.” ― Richard Brinsley Sheridan;
• “Be a worthy worker and work will come.” ― Amit Kalantri;
• “Great losses are great lessons.” ― Amit Kalantri;
• “The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.” ― H. Jackson Brown;
• “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” ― Benjamin Franklin;
• “Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.” ― Buddha.

Click on the links below to find plenty of wise sayings worth being used as hook sentences for essays:

Brainyquote.com

Goodreads.com

Keepinsiring.me

2. A piece of advice:

• “Never reply when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy. Never make a decision when you are sad”;
• “When you say yes to others make sure you are not saying no to yourself.” ― Paulo Coehlo;
• “Don’t ever dumb yourself down just to make someone else feel comfortable”;
• “Best advice in two lines: Silence is the best answer for all questions. Smiling is the best reaction in all situations”;
• “Listen to advice from people who have been there and done that. It is so hard to believe that when you are young, but parents, mentors, teachers, they can all be so valuable when it comes to advice”;

3. Contradictory statement:

• “The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.” ― Oscar Wilde;
• “Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.” ― George A. Moore;
• “I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.” ― Tom Robbins;

4. Surprising and interesting fact:

• “Bill Gates’ first business was Traf-O-Data, a company involved in producing machines that recorded the number of cars passing a given point on a road”
• “Ketchup was being sold in the 1830s as medicine”;
• “Celery has negative calories: it takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with apples”;
• “If you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up every human on earth, the entire world population could fit into an apple.”

5. Rhetorical question:

• Why bother about…?
• What if…?
• How come…?
• What does it mean to…?
• What should be done if…?

6. Humorous statement:

• “Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” ― Elbert Hubbard;
• “There are only three things women need in life: food, water, and compliments.” ― Chris Rock;
• “They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.” ― Clint Eastwood;
• “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” ― Charles Dudley Warner;
• “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse.” ― Thomas Szasz.

7. Describing the setting:

Choose the book or story your essay will be based on and use its first lines in your introduction. It should set the mood, introduce characters, hint towards the historical or cultural background. Such hooks to start an essay take the reader straightforwardly into the action, without long preambles.

8. Statistics:

• “The number of worldwide social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2018”;
• “70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile”;
• “100 million Internet users watch online video each day”;
• “Only 12% of businesses feel that they are using social media effectively, and yet approximately 60% of businesses have their profiles on various social media channels”.

9. Unusual comparison:

• “Life is like a bar of soap, once you think you’ve got a hold of it, it slips away”;
• “Life is like a 1,000-page book. You want to quit halfway through, but then you realize you have a lot left to look forward to”;
• “Life is like a party. You invite a lot of people; some go, some join you, some laugh with you, some didn’t come. But in the end, after the fun, there would be a few who would clean up the mess with you. And most of the time, those were the uninvited ones”.

10. Personal experience:

• “In childhood, I was so scared of water that to fight my phobia, I had no other choice but to join a high school swim team”;
• “I was born into a low-income family and I am not ashamed of it. In fact, it makes me proud because I definitely realize how much money is worth now, seeing how my peers waste away fortunes in casinos”;
• “As a public speaking expert with 10+ years of experience, I can reassure you that the fear of public speaking never vanishes, you can only get it under control”.

11. A metaphor or a simile:

• “His story was as funny as a barrel of monkeys”;
• “The land was as strong as Captain Hook’s invincible metal arm”;
• “Most stories posted on the internet are as clear as mud and you have to work really hard to make some sense out of them”;
• “SEO is the light of our lives – it makes texts more structured, clear, and to the point. There is no excuse for straying away from the point into the dark deep woods of gibberish”.

13. A definition:

• “When someone has a strong urge to do something that is very unadvisable or undesirable, it is very rarely referred to with a beautiful word cacoethes”;
• “Effable is not a commonly used word but it is, in essence, an antonym to ineffable – something that is hard to put in words”;
• “Autophobia is the fear of having to be alone”.

Closing hooks for essays: really needed?

The hook examples listed above may serve as hooks for a conclusion as well. Don’t underestimate the importance of the concluding part of your essay: it should not be just a summary of each body paragraph. It’s like putting a cherry on top of the cake: conclusion has to leave your audience satisfied, but at the same time intrigue them to investigate the topic more.

Rewriting the thesis doesn’t fit: better do it in an interesting, innovative way. Try to step into your potential readers’ shoes and read your essay again. Now, what questions are left unanswered? Write them down as rhetorical ones. What saying comes to your mind after reading an essay? Include it in your conclusion in the shape of a quote. Or just offer a humorous, sarcastic idea. Get your audience hooked for the second time while reading your essay.

For the first part, it’s important to stay focused and reiterate old ideas in new ways, and metaphors, similes, as well as other hook techniques will definitely help do that. However, do not introduce the reader to new facts or statistics. A conclusion is a place to help digest what’s already been said.

For the second part, it’s very easy – just make sure to use guiding phrases such as “to sum up”, “all in all”, “in conclusion”, etc. In this article, we also talk more about the techniques of using hook methods in conclusion effectively.

Well, confess: having read all the tips, do you feel inspired, especially now that you know exactly how to begin an essay and finish it? Do not waste time then, get down to writing!

But have you ever fallen in thoughts about starting every paragraph of your essay uniquely? Have you ever found yourself at a loss of metaphors, similes, oxymorons, and paradoxes? We have great news for you! WritOlogy is a team of literary Jedi with experience in all types of hooks and literary devices.

Our writers breathe metaphors and similes – they can craft a mouth-watering piece of text that is easy to read and follow, in under a day. They will be happy as clams to share their experiences and help you attract the target audience in mysterious ways.