They will find it dangerous, while readers who don’t normally read taut mysteries and thrillers won’t necessarily process it the same way.

Seasoned readers of suspense fiction will attach sinister meaning to the phrase. Readers make assumptions based on their expectations, so if I ended a scene like this: You want to be sure you’re baiting your hook to capture your target audience.Īsk yourself-will my core readers feel danger when they read this sentence? When a reader picks up a suspense or thriller, for instance, they expect to encounter danger. Different types of readers will perceive the hook in different ways. As always, it’s vital to consider genre and reader expectations when crafting your danger hook.

In this article, I’ll spend time focusing on the more subtle varieties of danger hooks. That type of clear and present danger provides a strong hook to carry the reader forward, but it fades fast, so you need to be ready with another hook. Most of us can recognize action when we see it on the page, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that sort of danger hook-bullets flying, villains chasing, karate chops raining down. It must be action that makes you sit up and take notice. It takes more than action to create the danger hook. Maybe it’s three o’clock in the morning, the streets are deserted, and the car is the only thing that’s moving, pinning the protagonist in its headlights. Or maybe the automobile is squealing along with six cop cars in pursuit. Put a small child behind the wheel, a four-year-old playing around in the driver’s seat who happened to release the brake. But more often, danger and action go together, the kind of action that carries risk.įor instance, a car moving down the street is action, but there’s no inherent danger attached to the movement, so it does nothing to hook the reader. But with a few adjustments, we can make that moving car into something dangerous indeed. Sometimes the most delectable danger in fiction is subtle and conveyed by covert means, as in psychological suspense. Today, we’re going to explore how to use hooks baited with danger to snag and hold reader interest. Reading are tantalized by the scent of danger in our stories, and we’re able to enjoy it from the safety of our beds or beach chairs.Ī good book that pulls us in deep might make us feel like the danger is real, and we often experience it as such, but we can indulge ourselves in it and savor that vicarious thrill because we’re in a protected zone. Try baiting your hooks with the thrill of danger to keep your readers on the line.

If you want your readers to not just pick up your book, but keep turning the pages, you need to learn how to write a hook that will draw them through the story so they never want to put it down.

5 easy types of hooks for writing