Before I dive into the 2 secrets for creating a compelling hook for your novel, I wanted to remind you that the theme for JPC Allen Writes during 2026 is how to write a novel. With four months behind us, we’ve covered:
This month will be about how to write the beginning of your novel. The hook is the opening line or lines that snag the attention of readers so thoroughly that they can’t put your book down. That sounds like a tall order and it is, but keep reading.
No hook? No problem.
If you can’t get past page 1 of your novel because you can’t come up with a creative hook, write a lousy one. It’s not permanent. Consider it an interim hook until the permanent hook arrives. Write your opening lines and then keep going.
Now write the whole novel.
What? What about the hook? Often, especially for first-time novelists, you have to slog through a first draft before you understand your characters and their journey through the story. Only when you’ve reached the final page are you in a position to understand how to create a hook for your particular story. Go back to your interim hook and throw it out or refine it to fit the rest of your book.
2 Secrets for Creating a Hook
The two secrets are that your hook should be meaningful and project tension. By meaningful, I mean the hook should reflect what readers should expect in your novel. The exciting opening sequence that turns out to be a dream, a flashback, or a scene on a movie set is not meaningful. Readers will feel cheated.
The best hooks also project tension, either hinting at the problem facing your protagonist that will soon become clear in the first chapters or plunking the problem in front of readers with the first line.
Here are the first line of my three novels:
A Shadow on the Snow. “I’M NOT FOOLED, RAE. YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER.”
19-year-old Rae Riley receives anonymous notes that grow more threatening. That’s the mystery she has to solve, and I begin the novel with the message from the first anonymous note. I put the problem front and center in the first line.
A Storm of Doubts. “‘Just stop it!’ The shout made me jerk and get poked by a dead branch of a honeysuckle bush. Wasn’t that a woman’s voice? Not a girl’s, not my cousin Coral’s.”
Since this is a mystery, someone shouting like she’s in trouble creates immediate tension.
A Riddle in the Lonesome October. “‘We’ve got a bit of a situation here at the children’s home, Mal.’ Aunt Carrie’s voice came over the phone.”
The line of dialogue carries tension. What’s the situation? What could be happening at a children’s home? This first line hints at the tension involved in a hunt for a missing inheritance which is explained in the first chapter.
So let me know which opening lines did a great job of pulling you into a novel.