How to Repeatedly Hook Your Reader: Chapter Openings

By Gen Gavel

The Big Hook

We all know the importance of a good hook. Often, it’s the reason we bought the book in the first place. The back cover hints at it, and chapter one hits us over the head with it: Jenny has stumbled upon a shallow grave. Noah has learned he has leukemia. Or poor Iris has fallen into a pit that has taken her straight into the world of her most recent nightmare. The reader simply must know what happens next. Pages turn, hours fly... and the story just keeps getting more complex.

One Hook Isn’t Enough

Eventually, even if your story has the world’s most gripping premise, a delightful cast of relatable characters, perfectly captivating settings, and a constant stream of delectable words throughout, your reader’s mind will wander. Especially adult readers. They have a thousand and one thoughts competing for their attention at any given moment, and your novel is only one of them.

If Iris’s fall into dream world has led her on a quest to uncover her biological father, (who, it would appear, may be half Fae) and a whole cast of bizarre characters has come along to confuse and confound her journey, your one big hook is no longer hooking. It is lost under a heap of new questions.

And that is good! The opening hook is not meant to pull the reader through to the end. It is your story’s continual, fascinating development that will keep drawing your reader further in and further along. But how do you keep a rich, elaborate plotline, that (let’s be honest) is tending to feel like a slog through Sludge Land right around the middle, crisp and gripping?

How do you keep luring your reader back for one more chapter, without just slapping on an otherwise meaningless cliffhanger to the end of each scene?

Many Little Hooks

With a little careful attention to your chapter openings, you can give your reader the same sense of anticipation that was offered by the big hook. As referenced here and here, setting (or resetting) a captivating scene at the beginning of each chapter is your opportunity to whisper to your reader, “Yes, but wait. There’s more.”

Ineffective Chapter Hooks

Like a cliffhanger slapped onto the end of a scene that is resolved too easily and has no bearing on the story’s arc, an ineffective chapter hook is one where something is promised but never granted.

Don’t promise an eerie attack from a midnight visitor by having the bushes rustle in the first line, only to have it be a squirrel in line five. You can absolutely write this kind of nerve wracking scenario, but it is not an effective chapter hook.

Conversely, don’t give away too much and steal from your next plot point either. If you need to write a chapter in which Iris confides for the third time to yet another untrustworthy stranger, and you are building toward her mental breakdown, don’t say Iris was about to break. Say, Iris was sure this time that so-and-so would listen. She’d made mistakes in the past, but surely the third guru would be able to help. Not everybody in this world was bad. Right?

Effective Chapter Hooks

Consider your entire novel to be a swim across the English Channel. Your chapter beginnings are the gasps for air, the glimpses at the goal, and the reasons for the reader to dive back under.

📚 Breathe

📚 Observe

📚 Dive

Breathe

You’ve left Iris in a puddle of tears. She sobbed herself to sleep with all the anguish you could muster piled on her weary heart. You left the last chapter in chaos. Now, you come up for air. Before you dump more agony onto the scene, give your reader the chance to absorb what has happened. We talk about this more in action and reaction sequences.

Observe

While you’re up and your reader is catching his breath, take the time to observe and describe the scene. Use words that paint the picture effortlessly. Daylight burns the rims of Iris’s crusty eyes. She rubs out the grit. Although she is dizzy and her head throbs, she makes out her surroundings. Black drapes. A wax-covered candlestick. The wide-open window that has tricked her before into believing she is free.

Dive

And drop back into the fray. In some chapters, this will be a startling knock at the door, but in others “the fray” is nothing more dramatic than the character renewing her determination to follow through with the quest, as planned. A series of fairly mundane events can be extremely engaging to read so long as the reader has learned (and relearned) to trust that the writer is drawing these events together and leading him to an ultimately satisfying conclusion.

Recap

Breathing, observing, and diving back under in the rhythmic pattern provided by chapters gives the reader the sense that they are part of the journey, headed for a satisfactory goal.

A Word Of Caution

Like any writing “rule,” there is a time and a place to break this pattern. Stay on the lookout for chapters that demand slightly different treatment. If a pause and look around at the start of your next chapter is going to break the awesome tension you have just developed, (so long as the scene is still freshly visualized in the reader’s mind) feel free to jump straight to the dive. At some point, however, probably further along in that chapter, you’ll want to give your reader the chance to breathe and to observe how the recent events have altered the setting.

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Gen Gavel — Editor, Havok Publishing

Lover of meaningful stories and powerful connections, Gen writes and edits with one goal: to draw people together by the power of fiction. She has had several short stories published online and in print, has co-edited a teen authors anthology, and enjoys editing flash fiction for Havok Publishing as well as full novels for her private clients.

www.facebook.com/Gen-Gavel-Editing

“Structure of a Novel: How to Write a Chapter.” Now Novel. Accessed June 8, 2019 https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-write-a-chapter-structure/

“Writing Tips: Writing Chapter Hooks.” Writers in the Grove. Accessed June 8, 2019

https://writersinthegrove.com/2015/09/03/writing-tips-writing-chapter-hooks/

“3 Ways to Know When to End Your Chapters.” Writer’s Digest. Accessed June 8, 2019 https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/complete-first-draft/3-ways-to-know-when-to-end-your-chapters