How To Write An ADDICTIVE Hook (Act 1)

What if there’s science to creating addictive stories!?

In this series of The 3 Act Addictive Story Structure will help you craft a compelling and captivating story that reads like a movie. Have you read a book you can’t put down and you have to know what happens next? That’s a page – turner. Page – turner stories are also known as addictive stories. In this first post of The 3 Act Addictive Story Structure, will help your story flow as if it were a movie!

The hook is the most vital part of your story, this is when the reader decides they want to stick around and see what happens. The hook, if you think about it, sounds like the first line you read when you open a book. But really, the hook is what happens on the first page.

Creating a strong hook includes:

• Background
• The main character
• Internal conflict (why we care about the character)
• Character’s misbelief and is pushed out of their comfort zone

One of the best examples of this is in the movie Finding Nemo:

The story opens with Marlin, a clown fish. His wife and unhatched eggs was attacked by a barracuda and Marlin finds one small egg that survived. Nemo, who knows his father is paranoid about the big ocean, and is overprotective of Nemo. 

Wait, what is internal conflict and how does internal conflict make us care about the character? 

Internal conflict, is simple. It’s desire vs fear in which creates a misbelief, a lie that the character believes in. 

Marlin’s Desire is: 

To protect Nemo, keep him safe from danger 

Marlin’s Fear is: 

That he will lose Nemo the way he lost his wife 

Marlin’s Misbelief: 

That Nemo can only be safe if he stays inside the protection of the reef where Marlin can ensure his safety. 

Internal conflict makes us care about the character, because we understand and relate to desire and fear. Understanding the character and their motivations is what creates a close relationship between the reader and main character. The combination of internal conflict creates the misbelief, and that misbelief can be a motivating factor that can push the main character out of his or her own comfort zone, depending on how you’re telling the story, character – driven or plot – driven. 

Here’s another great example of a strong opening hook: 

In 1991, the brainwashed super-soldier James “Bucky” Barnes is dispatched from a Hydra base in Siberia to intercept an automobile carrying a case of super-soldier serum. In the present day, approximately one year after Ultron is defeated by the Avengers in the nation of Sokovia,^[a] Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and Wanda Maximoff stop Brock Rumlow from stealing a biological weapon from a lab in Lagos. Rumlow blows himself up, attempting to kill Rogers. Maximoff telekinetically diverts the explosion, accidentally destroying a nearby building and killing several Wakandan humanitarian workers in the process.

Copyright: Wikipedia                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War

This isn’t a super detailed hook from Captain America: Civil War, but by establishing the era of time, the character, and the setting helps to visualize the scene. 

So, what’s the secret!? 

To create a strong opening hook: 

• Start with action (background) or something else 
• A character displaying the reason for their misbelief
• Use the character to unfold the story further by learning more about the past 
• A strong – willed motivation that will set the course to some kind of inevitable destruction 

There are many kinds of hooks you can start your story with, like monologue, asking a question, describing a setting, or have the character introducing themselves ( this is mostly for first POV). 

Now you know how to create internal conflict, and establishing a hook. But there’s more to the hook than we realize. What I mean by that, is how can you create a visual hook at the beginning of your story that reads in your mind like a movie. 

Here’s the secret: 

1. Setting  ( time and place) 
2. Characters (wants, place in the world, and their values) 
3. Theme ( the underlying message of the whole story e.g. Friendship, betrayal, social disparity) 
4. Conflict 

For example, let’s take the beginning scene of the movie Jurassic Park: 

In the beginning scene of the movie, we immediately know the setting, characters and their roles, and conflict. Sometimes we’ll know what theme is right away, but in this case, it builds to the moment we meet John Hammond who’s cloning dinosaurs, this is when we realize the theme is about man vs nature and the idea of nature is always in conflict, since man is part of nature many of the characters believe they can control the natural world. 

I hope these tips were helpful to craft your compelling addictive hook.

Thank you for reading, and see you in the next post.