One of the main reasons why creative essays are a good and very interesting is because of the reflexivity and the creativity that a writer could use to increase how interesting his/her article would be. This type of reflexivity is not usually present in any other types of essays for the fact that most of them would require a much more serious tone as compared to a creative essay. More particularly, what makes a creative essay much more interesting than other types of essays are the essay hooks.
These hooks for essay writing usually occur by the start of the essay, and are regarded as the writer’s greatest chance to “entice the reader to read more”. However, a good essay hook is not that easy to find. One of the main reasons is that, despite all of the multitude of ideas that we have in mind, we find it hard to choose the best essay hooks to use in all of our own creative essays. Thus, to help you in choosing, here are some hooks for essay writing that could probably help you choose the best one for your needs.
List of hooks for an essay
Trivial Question
Using a trivial question to be able to capture your reader’s attention is, perhaps, the most common yet best way of doing it. As humans, we tend to get interested in questions that puzzles us with what could be the answer. Thus, in order to capture your audience’s attention in a jiffy, try starting your essay with a question that you know, which would leave them thinking and curious for a long time. Note, however, that the question that you pose is directly related to your story and not something too farfetched, and something that is true.
Examples:
- Do you know that “cockroach milk” could potentially be the next big thing, in terms of health and diet?
- Do you know that working and living on Mars is just a few years away from reality?
Quotes from famous people
The next most commonly used types of essay hooks are quotes from famous people. Usually, writers employ this because of the mentality that we have, about how credible and useful the words of a famous man is. Because of this, most people become easily hooked in a particular piece of literature. Here are some examples of quotations from famous people.
Examples:
- “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you” (The Golden Rule; Jesus of Nazareth)
- Albert Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” (Albert Einstein).
Interesting scenery
The next most common type of using an essay hook is by projecting/showing the context of your work, on media, or even on TV, and setting a scenery about it. The reason why hooks are alluring, is because it provides the readers with the most interesting part of your essay even before reading the body of the paper itself. Included below are some of the best ideas for utilizing a scenery for a creative essay.
Examples:
- “In a kingdom far, far away lies a fountain, flowing out waters of gold, where even the fruits and the vegetables, are made of silver and gold”
- “Most of the missiles were fired from the decks of the ship. One-by-one it flew, the heaven’s resounding as some of it went askew”
Interesting fact
Aside from setting up the ‘imaginary world’ for the reader to be taken into it, another good essay hook is simply stating the facts out there. By using these trivia and interesting facts, the reader’s become enclosed within your essay, wanting to know more. In employing this type of essay hook, it is always important that your fact is both interesting enough and is related to your main point. Neglecting the second point is clearly a misleading act, and would surely make the reader think that you simply fooled them to read your article. Nevertheless, here are some of examples of good essay hooks which state an interesting fact.
Examples:
- “About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. Sadly, it is children who die most often” (Poverty.com)
- “The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy” (NPS.gov)
Your thesis statement
Last but not the least, a good essay hook can start with your own thesis statement, which either makes the readers curious and wonder what made you think that way. This is also one of the main reasons why creative essays are so reflexive, for the fact that even the thesis statement can serve as an opening line, whereas it usually goes around the middle to a latter part of the introductory section. Below are some examples of the thesis statements being used as hooks for a creative essay.
Examples:
- “This essay believes that a good hook comes from the ability of the opening sentence to relate with what the reader is interested in”
- “The author of this paper argues that unlike most other types of drinking water out there, Sparkling water is still the safest and best choice for those who wants to go onto a diet”
Conclusion
Given above are just some examples of essay hooks that we can use in our next creative essays. Good essay hooks are crucial in writing any piece of literature since these are the parts which piques the interest of the readers.
And, as we know, this is because readers and consumers of media today either don’t have the time, or think that they don’t have the time to spend time reading essays which are not interesting, and if your opening is not, then this could easily make them think that our whole essay is simply the same. Thus, in order to be able to have more audience for your next essay, make sure to employ even one of these types of creative hooks.