Instead, learning how to make a hook for an essay depends on your exact writing prompt as well as your exact purpose.īelow, we have important info on how to start a hook for an essay for a wide variety of different prompts and purposes.

That’s because there is no “one size fits all” for how to create a hook for an essay. Use these sections, along with resources in our College Writing Center, to develop your own hooks for the writing tasks in front of you! Adjusting hooks based on prompt and purposeĬreating the hook in an essay is often a difficult skill for writers to master. So below, we have examples of a hook in an essay for different styles of papers. For example, a good hook for a personal narrative probably doesn’t fit with a research paper. There are several standard approaches to writing a hook that can work well for many different types of writing:īut some of these approaches work better (sometimes much better) than others depending on what you’re writing. From personal statements to speeches and presentations, it’s virtually always important to strike a good impression by getting someone’s attention in an interesting way. However, the general principles here extend to almost any form of audience communication. In this guide, we are mostly focusing on writing good hooks for essays. However, an essay hook does the same thing for your essay that an exciting opening does for any article: it makes the reader excited to keep reading! The title of your written work may be enough to get people to check it out, the same way you might click on an online article with an interesting title. This is one reason why both high school teachers and college professors often emphasize the importance of essay hooks when writing college essays (for example, with a Literary Analysis).

It may be composed of one sentence (generally for shorter pieces) or multiple sentences (for longer ones), but the goal of any good hook is to firmly get the reader’s attention. The hook is the first statement in a piece of writing. But what is a hook, and how can you craft an awesome one? That’s what we’ll explore below, by talking through different kinds of writing you may want to write a hook for, and then offering specific examples that you can use for inspiration. To make a great impression, and to keep readers excited and engaged, you need a good hook. And, of course, whether they want to keep reading at all! The first things they read help shape how they feel about you. That’s because, to a reader, diving into something you have written is often the very first chance they have to discover anything about you. Ever hear that you never get a second chance to make a first impression? Well, that’s just as true for your writing as it is for meeting new people!

5 types of hooks for writing examples