Friday Writer's Forum, Narrative Hooks

Narrative Hook

Definition:       a literary device used at the very beginning of a story to engage the reader's curiosity

From Dictionary.com

A story is a promise. As writers, we make a promise to our readers at the beginning of a story. How well we keep our promise depends on how well we tell the story. This promise is also called a narrative hook. Numerous hooks can be found throughout a good story, but they are most common at the end of chapters and ideally they should be found in the first sentence or two of any story.

Not unlike the topic sentences of our school day essays, the first sentence shoulders a heavy burden. It needs to make a promise and reflect the over-all tone and theme of the story.

Here are several of my favorite first sentences (no surprise that they are all my own.)

New York City’s night noises seeped through the wall chinks and window: the jingle of horse harnesses, the stomping of hooves, the mournful howl of a dog, but one noise, a noise that didn't belong, jarred Mercy awake.

(Stealing Mercy, Kristy Tate) This sentence promises danger and suspense. We also know that this is a plot driven novel with a historical setting.

Penny loved Richard and she adored Rose, but her feelings toward pralines and cream were mediocre at best. She didn’t want to look like a giant pralines and cream ice cream cone on Rose’s wedding day.

(Losing Penny, Kristy Tate) This sentence tells us that unlike Stealing Mercy, this is a character driven story and this particular character has weight issues and a sense of humor.

“A lemon that’s been squeezed too many times ends up in the compost pile…” I started out strong, but my words faded away when I noticed Savannah Everett’s father staring at me. He stood beside a cart filled with vegetables, grinning, as if he had caught me in my lie.

(Hailey’s Comments, Kristy Tate) What do we learn? Our main character is living a lie and some grinning man has discovered it.

Think of your own favorite first sentences. Notice how all promise a different reading experience. Think of the first sentence as a movie trailer. If we see a trailer with Tom Cruise carrying a gun--things had better blow up and if they don't, as a movie goer, we're going to be mad. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, (A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens)

I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular patterns of living, (Gifts from the Sea, Lindberg)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Pride and Prejudice, Austin)

 It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. (1981, Orwell)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. (C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

I put my own sentences cheek with Austin and Lewis, not because I feel that my work is in anyway comparable, but because I can freely talk about my own writerly intentions. I wouldn’t dare to presume to know the thoughts or intents of the literary great…all I can say is they wrote darn good sentences—first and otherwise.

If you have a first sentence you’d like to share, please leave it in the comment box, along with your title and name (just in case we’re so intrigued with your story promise that we want to rush out and buy it.)