My husband enjoys fly fishing along the Colorado river. For fly fishing, the hook is the bait. During different times of the year, in different part of the stream, you want to use different flies to attract the fish. Ultimately, you want to use exactly what the fish wants at the time of the year.
Same for a book. A book hook helps capture the potential reader’s attention. People won’t usually invest time and money into your book unless you draw them in within a few seconds. Your book hook is usually on your book cover or brief teaser on an online bookstore.
And you want to customize the hook to appeal to the specific reader and the genre. It’s important to conduct research to know your readers and the market. A book hook for a memoir is different than for a novel and an instructional book. But they all have some common principles you can follow.
Let’s dive into establishing your hook.
- Make it memorable. You’re competing in a crowded ocean of other books, so you need something catchy to appeal to the reader. Using succinct, but action-laded, descriptive language is the key.
- Make it unique. Let readers know why your book is set apart from the others on the bookshelves. Uniqueness is why Harry Potter is so successful. Who else had read a series about youth wizards in training taking on powerful, adult wizards?
- Make it succinct. Less is more. You want to quickly capture a potential readers’ attention. Make each word carry weight. Eliminate fillers.
The hook can help serve as an anchor.
- Before writing: I’ve got a head full of book ideas, but by committing to a specific book with a precise hook, I have a clear idea of what to research, outline, and mind map.
- During writing: While I’m writing, it’s easy to get caught up in diverse ideas and pursue those. My hook keeps me on the narrow path so I know which trails to follow.
- After writing: Time to market the book, so your hook will provide a concise summary for an agent and publisher if seeking that route, booksellers, and readers.
It’s helpful to research book descriptions in your book’s genre to get inspiration. (Check descriptions of books in the bestseller lists for inspiration.) Although they provide a hook within a large book description, usually the first few sentences are the book’s hook and provide enough summary to appeal.
Now that we’ve covered the basic steps to creating an effective hook, let’s write one for your book.
Activation:
- Write the key character in your book. For instance, if a memoir, describe yourself as a character. For me, it would be a forty-something Korean American. If a novel, write the name of your main protagonist. If an instructional book, the main lesson is your character such as learning how to tango.
- Write what the character wants. For the instructional book: get novices hooked on the tango. For your memoir: how you overcame abuse. For your novel, how the character found long-lasting love.
- Write the conflict the character faces. For the instructional book, the novice’s lack of confidence that they can learn the tango. For the memoir, how trauma is obscuring healing. For the romance character, how your protagonist’s overbearing mother is not accepting her boyfriend.
- Write how they achieve their need. For the instructional book: through five simple steps, you can learn to tango. Memoir: how dialoguing in a community helped you heal. Romance: How she applied boundaries with her mother.
- Put these elements into a sentence or more. (Less than three sentences is best.)
- Edit the sentences to eliminate any unnecessary words.
- Add any substantial descriptions that provide depth and appeal. Sensory descriptions. Specific nouns. Action verbs.
Here are hooks for each of the examples :
- How a novice can learn how to tango like a professional in five steps.
- How a homeless Korean American young man walked through healing from abuse with the support of a multicultural house church.
- One woman’s journey to get freed from the clutches of a domineering, socialite mother to find love in the arms of a Costa Rican veterinarian of exotic rain forest animals.
Those are the key steps. Enjoy. Feel free to share your hook in Comments below. Thank you.
Next week, we’ll interview Dee Selby who has recently self-published a book!