Welcome back to The Pencil’s Edge.
Grab Attention or Risk Losing Your Reader
When a reader flips the page to a new scene, you’re standing at a crossroads. One direction pulls them deeper into the story. The other leads them to set your book aside. What makes the difference? A strong scene entry hook.
🔍 Why This Element Matters
Every scene is a fresh opportunity to engage your reader—or lose them. The beginning of a scene is one of the most vulnerable moments in your novel. If there’s no compelling reason to keep reading, many readers won’t.
Fictionary’s Scene Entry Hook element helps editors and writers evaluate whether a scene’s opening grabs attention, raises questions, and drives momentum. Without that spark, even the most well-structured story risks feeling flat.
🛠 How This Element Works
As an editor, your job is twofold:
- Evaluate the strength of the hook.
- Diagnose any patterns that might weaken the reader’s experience.
Here’s how to mark it in Fictionary:
- ✅ Strong Hook: Mark with a √ and list the hook (e.g., a provocative line of dialogue, an unanswered question, a sharp bit of action or thought).
- ❌ No Hook: Mark as “No Hook” when nothing grabs attention in the opening lines.
- ⚠️ Weak Hook: Use “Weak” if the line doesn’t raise curiosity or push the story forward.
- 🔁 Repetitive Hook: If similar openings repeat across scenes or chapters (e.g., every scene starts with someone entering a room), mark as “Repetitive.”
The Reading Room is an especially helpful tool here—read several scene openings in sequence and look for sameness or lulls.
✍️ Advice for Writers
A great hook doesn’t need to be loud or shocking. It just needs to pull the reader forward. Think of it like a whisper that makes them lean in, not a shout that pushes them back.
When revising your own scenes, ask:
- Does this opening raise a question in the reader’s mind?
- Does it create urgency, emotion, or intrigue?
- Am I repeating similar types of openings too often?
- Could I drop the reader into the middle of the action or thought?
Here’s an example from The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides:
“Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband.”
This opening raises immediate questions. Why did she kill him? What happened? Readers turn the page to find out.
You don’t need a murder to create a hook. Consider:
- A jarring internal realization
- A confrontational piece of dialogue
- A hint of looming danger
- A change in dynamics between characters
- A sensory detail that feels off
Whatever you choose, make sure the opening does something—emotionally, narratively, or psychologically.
🔁 Final Thought
Readers are always deciding whether to keep reading. Every scene opening is a promise: This will be worth your time. The Scene Entry Hook is your chance to make good on that promise. Master it, and your story becomes harder and harder to put down.
The Pencil Driven Life 