Essay writing is one of the significant tasks for students. It is nearly impossible that any student doesn’t write an essay in the span of his/her academic life. Every student needs to write an essay in their academic life. But writing an essay is not enough; the essay should be interesting enough for its reader. So how can we make our essay Interesting for the readers. The answer is with the use of a hook. Here in this blog, we will have a look on how to write an essay hook. Let’s start with a short introduction about what is a hook?

What is Hook?

A hook is a statement that is used to attract the user’s attention in your essay. The hook plays a crucial role in capturing the attention of the reader. Without the use of the hook, there is always a chance that the reader may miss grabbing the most critical information in your essay. That’s why they use of the hook is becoming crucial in an essay.

It allows you to make your reader concentrate on your paper. A hook is a piece of sentences that works as an attention grabber and helps you to maintain the user’s interest in your essay. A hook can be anything; it can be a question, a surprise element, quotation, a tip, or anything like that.

It not just maintain the user’s interest but also help you to create the maintain the flow of the essay. When the readers start reading the essay from the beginning, you essay may contain the solid points in the beginning. But it should contain the attention grabber that will help you to your readers to keep reading the essay. Let’s have a look on how to write an essay hook.

How to write an Essay Hook

1. Be Sure about you purpose and goals

Without a clear goal and purpose, there is no value of using the hook in your essay. You need to make sure about the specific goal and a clear purpose of your essay. It helps you to define a clear approach that will be interesting for your readers.

Now the question is how you should define the purpose of your essay. First, you need to make sure that whether your essay tone will be formal or informal. You should also clear your goal by defining what you are going to tell your audience. Then you can create some hook statements that will help you to reach your audience to the specific goal of your essay.

2. Know what type of work you are writing

We know that there are four common essay types in the world, i.e., persuasive, persuasive, argumentative, narrative, and descriptive. And you need to develop different strategies for each.

You can also use the hook on your essay based on the type of essay. And make sure that while using the hook in your essay, you need to make sure that the essay should look harmonic and logical. The use of hook varies as per the type of essay, and you can’t use a similar kind of hook to different kinds of essays.

3. Always start by creating an outline

Creating an essay outline helps you to get a brief idea of your essay. The outline is also known as the skeleton of the essay. While creating the outline, you need to be sure about your goals that what you are going to tell your readers. From this outline, you can get the idea of where you need to use the hook inside your essay.

It also helps you to structure your essay more effectively. You need to use the hook in your essay within the three highlighted areas of your essay, i.e., the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. The introduction hook will guide the reader to the body, and the body hook will guide the reader to the conclusion.

4. Write the hook based on your thesis

The best use of the hook is according to your thesis. The thesis is the highlighted part of your essay. The hook should be placed in the introduction part and smoothly help you to navigate your readers to the body part of the essay.

While using the hook, you need to make sure that the hook is not just relevant to the thesis but also relevant to the significant part of the essay. While writing the most complicated topic on your essay, you can start with some interesting facts about that topic.

5. Understand your audience

It is the major mistake done by the students in understanding the audience. Using a hook is not an easy task. You need to do brainstorming to select the appropriate hook in your essay. And you also need to make sure about your audience that what kind of hook will work as a key for your essay and your audience.

You also need to take care of their interests that will help you to attract your readers to the essay. You can use the joke if you have a similar kind of readers like your peers. On the other hand, while it is for the professionals, then there should be some interesting facts rather than a joke.

6. Make the proper transition to the rest of the essay

Make sure that the hook will help you to make the proper transition to the rest of your essay. As I already mentioned that the hook should be related to the highlighted area of your essay. This hook will allow you to shift your reader’s attention to the introduction to the rest of the part of your essay.

Suppose that you are writing an essay on art. Then you can use one of the great hooks, i.e., the quote about the art from the famous artist in the world. It will help you to grab the attention of the reader and help them to understand the opinion of the great artist about the art.

7. For long writings, You have to use the creative and intriguing hook

Sometimes we need to write a long-form of the essay. In the long-form of content, it is quite hard to maintain the attention of the users to the essay. In this case, you can use the catchy headlines as the hook of your essay.

Not just a creative headline but also a few creative lines within each paragraph of your essay. You can also add a few interesting questions within your essay that will make the users unveil what happens next. The more you create the suspense in the long form of the content, the more you grab the attention of the readers.

Essay Hook Examples

1. Literary quote

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Example

William Shakespeare once said, “Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.”

3. Anecdote

The anecdote refers to the small sense of humor that helps you to grab the attention of the reader.

Example

“As I was walking down the market, I couldn’t help but notice a drunken man fall in a dustbin, and instead of asking for help, he was asking for more beer.”

4. Pose a Question

The question works well to grab the reader’s attention. Because when we put the question in the essay, we also put the answer to that question within the essay. To get the answer to the question, the readers usually read the long form of the essay without getting bored. Your question should be engaging for the readers.

Example

“Has it ever strike in your mind what would have happened to Adolf Hitler After the Second World War?”

5. Set a scene

Creating a scene is also a great hook. Because most of people create visual cues. When you tell the story to the people within your essay, then the people create the picture of that story in their mind. But you need to make sure that the story should be interesting to the readers. You can either tell the real story, the fictional one or the event-based story.

Example

“Changing jobs was one of the hardest decisions I had to make, going from government job to the private one wasn’t easy enough for me.”

6. Use an interesting Fact

Interesting facts works great as a hook in an essay. Interesting facts work as additional knowledge to the readers. You can use the interesting fact about the topic that you’re representing within your essay.

Example

“Average family in the USA borrow $25000 loan every year .”

7. State Your Thesis

As I have mentioned earlier that the thesis is the main part of your essay. You can use it as a hook in an essay. Likewise, you can discuss the main argument of your essay at the beginning and then the rest of the supporting argument later.

Example

“Humans have to take a strong step towards to control climate change.”

8. Reveal a Common Misconception

If you reveal the common misconception within your essay, then you built credibility into your reader’s mind. You can do so by doing some research about the misconception and find the relevant evidence that is proving it wrong. In this way, you will pass the knowledge to the reader but also create a great hook to engage with your essay.

Example

“Believe it or not, Octopus can change color in lightning-fast speed, to protect itself from the danger.”

9. Offer statistics

Statistics is a great hook because it provides the authenticity of the essay. It also showcases your knowledge about the topic. You can use this hook to provide extra information about the topic to the readers and grab their attention.

Example

The social media users are growing at a rapid pace. There are more than 2.5 billion social media users worldwide.

Conclusion

A hook is the most powerful element in the essay. If you follow all the tips that we have mentioned above on how to write an essay hook. Then you will surely write a great piece of essay that will be engaging for the users. Never try to use an excessive amount of hook within the small length of the essay. You should use the numbers of the hook as per the length of the essay. If you master, when, and where to use a hook in the essay, then you can be a great essay writer.

If you are still finding it tough to write an essay hook, then you can take the help of our essay writing help services. You can also get the best deal of college essay writing help from the experts. If you have any conflicts in your mind about the how to write an essay hook then comment below, we will solve it asap.