You’re writing a detective story. The story opens just after the murder of your main character’s wife. Write a terrible narrative hook for this story.
Narrative Hook
The narrative hook grabs your readers attention so you can yank them along the rest of your story. It needs to grab their attention and grab it quickly. Give them questions, and make them beg for answers.
A Good One
I’ve seen a lot of death in my profession, but none of it prepared me for the grim mask that used to be Mary’s face.
A Terrible One
In all my years as a detective, I’ve never been met with quite a hum-dinger of a case like this.
Of course I’ve never had to solve my own wife’s murder, either.
Both of these, I hope, have enough of a hook at the end to qualify as a narrative hook. While the first set’s the tone of the story well and helps establish the emotions of the main character, the latter is nearly tone-deaf to what is actually occurring in the story.
Think you can do worse? Show Me! Put your own terrible narrative hook on Twitter or Instagram and tag it #KillingPerfect
Creative Mine 