Examining and Practicing Hooks

Adapted from Meg Griffitts

Objective: Help students develop a repertoire of strategies for drafting introductions/hooks & understand that intros should engage readers and establish their purpose for writing (central idea).

Homework due: have students find and bring 2-3 examples of strong hooks.

1. Review strategies of how to hook the reader (BH p. 41)

2.Ask students to look at assigned readings for today and discuss what strategies authors employ. Are these strategies effective? Why or why not?

3.Show examples of great hooks from literature on projector and ask students to identify the hook strategy used. You can use the examples below or find your own.

  • Kristiana Colón: A Remix for Remembrance (each stanza acts as a new argument so we can analyze each section as a new ‘hook’)
  • If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger,The Catcher in the Rye(1951)
  • “Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones.”
    —An Untamed Stateby Roxane Gay

4. Ask students to share the hooks they brought & we will discuss as a class why they’re effective. (You can either have students share in groups or have each student share one with entire class, depending on time.)

5.Pull up ads and ask students to analyze the techniques the advertisers are employing. You can use the examples below or find your own.

  • Mini Cooper “We Only Come At Night”
  • Duracel “Some Toys Never Die”
  • Grey New York “Holes”

Then ask students to look more closely at ads based on other criteria to examine effects: key words, design, purpose. Why did the advertisers make these choices? What are the effects? What do you respond best to?

6.Break students up into groups of four or five. Ask each group to employ 2 of the hook strategies we’ve discussed when looking at these ads to write two different hooks for the ad.

7. Ask students to write their hooks out and turn into you at the end of class.