All the words have been said before. When writing an essay or any other paper, you juggle the words just to… avoid plagiarism. What a sophisticated mission! Even though you are not a professional writer, you have to deal with writing essays and papers for college. So why not practice your skills and take them to the next level? For example, do you know how to write a hook?

Even though coming up with catchy introductions is a matter of one’s linguistic talent, it depends on your wits in general. Regardless of your proficiency in English and the field you’re writing for, you can create good hooks for ensuring your paper is in the spotlight. This article will demonstrate a bunch of great ways to start an essay to hook your reader and keep them engaged until the last sentence.

What Is A Hook In An Essay?

An essay hook is a sentence or a couple of sentences in its beginning part, which serves an attention grabber for your reader. Depending on this essay starter, you can stimulate the reader to dedicate time for your paper by getting them interested in your content. Also, after being clear about writing hooks, you will also know how to title an essay or any other text.

Examples Of Hooks For Essays

Depending on the purpose of your essay, you may select the type of a hook, which will look the most natural for the introduction. Out of all great ways to start an essay, we’ve chosen the most frequent ones. They include a question, a strong statement, fact, story, or quotation.

Imitate a dialogue by posing a question

When hearing any type of question, most people tend to answer it in their head. Thus, they emotionally connect themselves to a discourse even though not being previously interested in it. Apart from yes/no questions, you can exploit any literature question tips (asking rhetoric questions or providing an answer right away). What’s more, you can refer to your opening sentence in the final part of your essay, therefore “framing” your essay and making it look coherent. Let’s see some examples:

“Why women live longer than men?” “Where would you spend the last day of your life?” “Have you ever thought why the European Union doesn’t like the idea of accepting refugees even though most of the African wars they are running away from were started due to European intervention?”

Comment: this example looks rather like a statement; however still makes the audience wonder about the real purpose behind this social phenomenon.

Clearly state your position about the issue you will discuss

One of the steps of writing an essay is putting together a thesis statement. The hook, called a “strong statement” should harmonically lead to the thesis or paraphrase it. Most of the hooks for essays like these sound confident and undisputable. Thus, it’s an excellent option for a persuasive essay. By the way, if you are coming up with the persuasive essay, you might want to avoid a contradicting argument (e.g., starting your sentence with “even though”). Take a look at the examples below:

“Humans are free to do whatever with their bodies. Thus, it’s time to stop the whole abortion dilemma by giving women a choice they deserve.” “Bullying doesn’t have a place in the land of the free, and we have to make sure our kids are protected.”

Stimulate empathy with a fact

According to the standard regulations of essay formatting, you can insert a fact somewhere in the middle of the text with a respective reference. However, if the essay is far from an academic type, you can stimulate your audience to empathize the topic by bringing some shocking data to their attention. By stating a fact, you imply a particular emotion (surprise, anger, pride, sorrow). In this way, you set the right mood, which is a stunning tip for writing speeches. Try to identify your attitude to the facts below:

“Among the adult population of our country, just 30% have read at least one book during the last year.” “By 2076, we risk losing around 647 species living in Africa now.” “Every second American has tried learning a second language in their life; every fifth has succeeded.”

Embrace your storytelling talent

When you’re not sure about how to write a hook, you may tell (or come up with) a story. This approach is used in marketing and advertising often since it makes people think about a particular character (or event) in a global context. The essay itself will serve an extended bottom-line of the story you tell.

Undeniably, telling a story will not fit into a single introduction sentence, so you have to make sure you are given enough space to use a situational case in the essay. Finally, storytelling is a flexible, universal hack, which is suitable for multiple emotional backgrounds.

“I was thirteen when I got my first job. However, it wasn’t my choice as I was the only provider in the family of four. Child labor…” “Amanda woke up early in the morning; she heard some noises outside and ran out thinking that her family had arrived. What she saw that morning would later be her worst nightmare: the waves flooded her yard and driveway – the only way she could escape from her house. Tsunami in Japan…”

Use someone’s authority in your favor

No hook ideas for essays will sound more credible than quotes. People tend to trust celebrities, scholars, and philosophers. You can easily use their strong authority for emphasizing the value of your own thoughts presented in the essay. Furthermore, a quotation can be exploited as one of the hooks for argumentative essays since you may agree/disagree with its author and justify your opinion in the body paragraphs. Just like this:

“Once, Michelle Obama mentioned, “Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.” Indeed, your attitude matters more than you can imagine…”

To sum up, these 5 core types are used in the media more than you can imagine. With slight modifications the same types can be used in various papers depending on their type, style, and your target audience.

How To Write A Good Hook For An Essay?

When someone has to write your essay for you, they will for sure choose the most relevant hook based on the assignment details you provide. However, when you complete a bunch of papers in a row, you might stick to your favorite hooks (for example, use rhetoric questions in every essay). Your choice has to be directly dependent on a type of paper. Let’s see the three most common concepts below:

Hooks for argumentative essays. Argumentative essays present both sides of an issue, thus your hook definition essay should not directly support any of the sides. All the statistics, facts, and quotes you use have to give a clue about your position or a contradiction of the issue you describe. If the argumentative essay is expected to be written in a formal style, it’s better avoid storytelling.

Argumentative essays present both sides of an issue, thus your hook definition essay should not directly support any of the sides. All the statistics, facts, and quotes you use have to give a clue about your position or a contradiction of the issue you describe. If the argumentative essay is expected to be written in a formal style, it’s better avoid storytelling. Hooks for research paper. No jokes allowed here. Any humor you want to put in your research paper will make it look trivial and unprofessional. What are your options if you are not a big fan of dull, monotonous papers? You might want to provide a summary of all the key points and statistics your research paper will elaborate on. In this way, you’ll make the reader aware of the topic on a basic level, so they feel comfortable when reading it.

No jokes allowed here. Any humor you want to put in your research paper will make it look trivial and unprofessional. What are your options if you are not a big fan of dull, monotonous papers? You might want to provide a summary of all the key points and statistics your research paper will elaborate on. In this way, you’ll make the reader aware of the topic on a basic level, so they feel comfortable when reading it. Hooks for persuasive essays. Writing these is quite easy since persuasive essays are usually full of suitable statements and facts you might want to manipulate. It’s better to get emotional in the introduction paragraph. If you are good at storytelling – the world is your oyster. The more details and descriptions you use, the more emotional your reader can get by projecting all the story elements onto their real-life experiences.

Writing skills such as coming up with an intriguing hook will be useful when putting together an essay or article. Actually, hooks are the psychological elements that keep anyone’s attention active and ready to perceive information. When delivering a speech, you might use numerous hooks to keep a dynamic interaction with your audience every 30 seconds. When telling a story in a circle of your friends, you can use hooks to make sure that no one falls asleep.

Even writing a blog post or a post for Facebook demands using great hooks instead of emoji-sets. Either you decide to come up with a joke, present an unexpected fact, or ask a question, these tricks will pay off by warming up your audience and manipulating their attention.