-1The National
Literacy
Strategy in
USING FICTION HOOKS
There are many reasons why we read on to the end of a good book. There may be
something about the style that attracts us, the quirky use of unusual vocabulary or a
poetic quality to the language. It may be that the story is humorous and told with a
laugh a page, or that the setting and characters’ lifestyles provide a temporary
escape from the humdrum nature of our own lives.
The best books may have some or all of these qualities but they will still fail to hook
their readers for more than the first few pages if they don’t provide a reason to
pursue the story to the final paragraph. A successful writer of fiction uses a variety
of hooking techniques to catch the reader’s interest and reel him/her in as the story
progresses.
Fiction hooks usually work in one of three ways.
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The writer poses a question to the reader. The reader wants to find out the
answer to the question.
The writer creates a situation where the reader poses himself / herself a
question. The reader wants to find out the answer to the question.
The writer poses a challenge of some sort that the reader cannot resist taking up.
QUESTION HOOKS
As a reader, I want to find out…
Who?
Who is the mysterious letter writer? Is it the man with inky fingers or the
girl with a pencil case in her bag?
The old lady seems so nice, but Rudy doesn’t know that she has big hairy ears
hidden under her bonnet. I wonder who she really is.
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-2Why?
Why are the bean seeds growing so quickly? Is someone using magic?
It’s Christmas Eve. Why is the little boy climbing out of his bedroom window
instead of waiting for Santa?
How?
How did they get into the forest when a moment ago they were looking at a
painting? They haven’t even got the magic key with them today…
I know that the elves stole the honey but how did they do it? Owl was on
guard the whole time and he never, ever goes to sleep.
What?
This thing called The Gaarn is obviously really important. All the main
characters want to find it. I’ve worked out that it must be very small and that
it glows sometimes. What can it be?
So what? / What if?
The fox has been following the animals around for the last three pages. What
does he want? What is he going to do? Does he mean them harm?
Oh no! He’s going into the tower. Doesn’t he realise that’s where the dragon
sleeps? What if the old wooden door creaks?
CHALLENGE HOOKS
The simplest challenge hooks require a direct link between the reader and the writer.
Even if the story is written in the third person, at the point of challenge the writer’s
voice will surface and speak directly to the reader, to lay the hook:
“This is all turning into a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it? Have you worked it out yet?
Don’t worry, if you look hard enough you will spot the clues.”
More complex challenge hooks require a subtlety that is rare in fiction written by
children. The same technique can be used, but more obliquely and in the third person.
“Sharma knew that she had missed something important. Was it something
that the merchant had said or was it something that she had seen that morning
at the market? She went back over it all again and again in her mind."
LONG AND SHORT TERM HOOKS
Fiction hooks can be planned to work in the long term. A hook can be laid in the first
few pages but the reader isn’t let off the hook until the last few sentences. In a
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-3typical “Whodunnit?” the crime is evident at the beginning but we don’t find out
“whodiddit” until the end. (Apart from oddities like Columbo novels where we find out
who the crook is at the beginning and the puzzle is working out how Columbo solves
the mystery!)
Long term hooks work just as well in short stories and the shortened version of
longer forms of fiction commonly written by pupils in Key Stage 2.
Most common in children’s writing are short-term hooks. These may be laid
throughout the text and keep the reader on the hook for a few lines or a few pages.
They are also the simplest techniques to teach and can be included in
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Shared Reading (shared texts provide explicit examples)
Shared Writing (teacher models the technique)
Guided Writing (pupils explore the technique with the teacher’s guidance and
support)
Independent work (pupils try out/practise the technique in their own
independent writing)
TEACHING SIMPLE FICTION HOOKS
Whatever sort of hook you are laying, you want to make your reader determined to
find something out. That means that you mustn’t tell your reader everything. You
must leave some work for the reader to do, something for them to work out, some
clues for them to find, some gaps to fill in.
If you tell absolutely everything that happened, there is nothing left for your reader
to do. He / she is not part of the reader / writer partnership any more.
Make your reader work hard!
SIMPLE HOOKING TECHNIQUES TO TRY
1. Leave something out
When the action is moving along quickly, stop just before something important or
exciting happens. Then get one of your characters to refer back to it later or pick up
the plot after the event. Make the reader work out what happened by filling in the
gaps and sweeping up scraps of information from other sources.
This technique is really useful when your plot gets to something enormous, amazing or
terrible and you know that it would be very difficult for you to describe without
sounding funny or over–the -top.
Don’t ever do this more than once in a story or your reader will hate you…
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-42. Start with something that doesn’t get explained right away.
Set up a situation where characters behave in an unusual way or where the
connections between people and events seem complicated. To the reader, this will
appear like a knot that needs untangling.
Don’t reveal on the first page why the villagers are so afraid of the castle. Don’t
explain in the first paragraph that the dirty old carpet you have just described in
lots of detail is precious to the old man because it is actually a flying carpet.
Just be careful that you don’t tie the knots too tight. If your reader doesn’t have
some success at untangling them fairly quickly he/she will lose interest. Challenges
are only fun if we think we stand a chance!
3. Use pronouns before you have introduced the character they refer to.
This is an easy technique. Begin by using he, she, they or we as you describe the
opening scene. This works particularly well if the story begins with action rather
than dialogue or description of a setting.
If your story begins,
“He tiptoed along the base of the city wall, keeping to the shadows. He was
sweating and shaking with fear,” then you have given your reader a doublewhammy puzzle to solve: what and who?
Is this a boy or a man? Old or young? Is it a human at all?
Your reader should be allowed to find out soon if their guesses were correct.
“He was sweating and shaking with fear. Remus was only ten years old but
already he knew how dangerous it would be if they found him.”
Here’s the next Pronoun Hook! I was right about the boy, but who are They?
4. Don’t tell the reader who is speaking when you use dialogue.
Another simple technique but definitely not one to overdo. One or two lines at the
most can be used. Anything longer can get confusing and tedious.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Have you got the map?
“No. I thought you had it.”
The lights of a passing torch-bearer lit up the faces of the two pirates for a
moment. Black Jake was scowling at Peg-Leg. “You are useless! Useless!” His
voice was angry.
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-55. Drop clues.
Lay clues around the text.
She didn’t notice the two green eyes watching her from behind the window of
the house next door.
No-one saw a tall figure merge noiselessly into the crowd.
Mark them clearly but don’t always reveal that they are clues. The reader will have
to work out if they are clues or if they are just…
6. Red herrings.
Exactly the same as clues except that they don’t ever contribute much to the real
plot. Their purpose is to provide more tangles for the reader to unravel and more
options for the reader to choose from in the search for answers.
“Aha! I suspected the old lady in the house next door all along. She seems a
bit too interested in all this. I bet it was her – or was it the gardener? I’ll
have to read on a bit and find out.”
“Mmmm… the wizard is tall, and I know he likes getting up to mischief.
Perhaps it was him disappearing into the crowd. Hang on though, the man who
came to the door selling brushes was tall as well and he seemed a bit
mysterious too.”
7. Talk directly to the reader.
This technique works well in a first person narrative where the voice of the
storyteller can address the reader without any difficulty. The hook here is to draw
the reader into the puzzle by posing a challenge or asking a question.
I was tired and wanted to rest. I knew I shouldn’t have gone to sleep so near
the caves but I had been running for over an hour. Well, what would you have
done?
That’s when we decided there was something strange happening at our school.
I expect you have noticed all the peculiar things going on as well. See if you
can make a list – that’s just what we did, and the disappearing dog was right at
the top of our list!
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-68. Set up links and networks that connect in other parts of the story.
Create two characters that clearly have a connection but don’t explain what this is
until a later point in the plot.
One person writes to another. We find out what the letter says but we don’t know
yet how they know one another. What’s the connection? Are there any clues?
There are two different settings at the beginning of the story. The plot moves from
one to the other. To begin with, the reader is trying to work out what the connection
is between a puppy playing in the garden and a baby wolf asleep in a forest glade.
Something happens on the third page that helps the reader to predict what the link
might be.
9. Make the reader work something out.
Create a situation where certain details are very important to the next part of the
plot. Give the reader some information but not in a simple form. This means that the
reader has to translate the information or think about it carefully to keep the plot
going along and not lose the action. An easy way to try out this technique is the telling
of the time.
At the point in a story where the reader needs to know how much time is passing, the
writer reveals snippets of “time information” without saying explicitly what the time
is at any point.
If it is crucial that the main character gets home before midnight, the time is
important and the reader will have to work out how much time is left.
It was nearly dark when her sisters left the house.
The invitation card said “Come To The Ball. 9pm until morning.” She was
already half an hour late.
The prince kissed her hand as the clock struck ten times.
They danced for an hour.
In just a few moments the moon would begin its journey back towards morning.
Cindy didn’t even notice as the little hand and the big hand on the ballroom
clock clicked into exactly the same position over the twelve.
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