Small Town Mysteries. Big Time Suspense.
To fit my theme of beginnings this month on JPC Allen Writes, write a hook for this scene. This picture holds so much potential for inspiration. Here’s my hook:
The call from across the lake was like nothing I’d ever heard before and I’d lived along its shores my whole life.
If you’d like guidance on writing hooks, read my post about the 2 secrets for creating them.Drop your hook in the comments.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Since this is a mystery, someone shouting like she’s in trouble creates immediate tension.
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.
On JPC Allen Writes this month, we’re all about how to write the beginning to your novel. So my bookish question for Monday Sparks is what are the best opening lines from your favorite novels?
When I look at the first page of my favorite novels, it’s a bit of shock to realize that most of them don’t have memorable first lines. Most of my favorite novels are older, so there wasn’t the push that there is now to grab readers’ attention with the first sentence. Authors could take a couple of chapters to slowly reel in readers.
First line of the The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is the one memorable line among my favorite novels:
“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”
But here some other opening lines from my favorite novels:
“It was an old plane, a four-engine plasma jet that had been retired from active service, and it came in along a route that was neither economical nor particularly safe.” fromFantastic Voyageby Issac Asimov
“The primroses were over.” from Watership Down by Richard Adams
“Grant lay on his white cot and stared at the ceiling.” from The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
“Don’t talk droopy talk,” Archie Carstairs said. “Mother can’t have lost a twelve-pound turkey.” from Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice.
These are all great novel, but they don’t have the hooks contemporary novels expect. So let me hear from you. What are the best opening lines from your favorite novels? And if your favorites don’t have a great opening line, tell me why you like the novel despite a less than stellar hook.
Here are more bookish questions for avid readers.
JPC Allen Writes
